Head Count....

Nothing has gone wrong here in Arizona, but rather my old friend from when we lived in Urbandale, Iowa has come to visit me here in Mesa....

Of course we are like a couple of old magpies yaking and yaking about our cell phones, (androids) and BMW cars and the like.   Roger has worked at the dealership in Des Moines off and on for years, so he really knows his cars...

Today we were off down to the North side of Tucson looking at new spec homes that are available for sale in the Twin Peaks area....  We are not serious customers, but perhaps if all the ducks fell in a row....

Biscuit went with us today and she had to stay out in the car and bark at all of the construction workers around the new homes...  I'm not certain she is really mad at those workers, but rather just can't understand why they won't come over and play with her while dad and Roger are inside looking at all those houses....

I just didn't want to be missing in action for too many days, so I am checking in for the head count...

Retired Rod

Trailer is repaired...

Ok, when I wrote the post yesterday, the thought that weed police might somehow refer to wacky tobacky never even occurred to me...  And we don't live in a gated community either...  We live on an ordinary city street, in an ordinary neighborhood of families of every nature...

But this big housing development does have a homeowners association to keep the common grounds up and what ever else they do for over $100 a month from each of us.... But they do have some form of enforcement if you step too far out of line.....  Just let me put up a 60 foot tower with a ham radio antenna on it, and I will hear from them in a heartbeat.

I waited well past noon for the call from the trailer repair place.......   No call forthcoming... What to do.....?  I decided to go and deal with them face to face....

Seems that I got lucky again...  The axle spindle was not damaged, but they had a dickens of a time getting the heated outside bearing off of the shaft...   This is just like commenter Tom suggested in his comment of a couple of days ago...  Evidently the hub was damaged as well, either in the process of getting the outer race off of the axle or from running so long without bearings..  But a lot of torch heating and pounding was required....  I don't have a torch here, and after about so long, frustration would have set in on my part as well...  So it turns out best that I simply hired this work done...

It was over $200 for parts and labor, but at $85 an hour, that seems fair in the big city....  They even took the other side apart and re packed it with grease as well...  The trailer is now back in storage with a very greasy wheel to atest to the experience...  Degreaser and a power washer will be in order when it gets back here to the house...

Speaking of a power washer, I went to Home Depot and purchased their cheapest power washer...  $99...  The birds have roosted on our wrought iron dining set in the patio during the summer...  They have Pooed all over it and the concrete patio...  The black table is mostly bird poo white...  And using a broom and the hose was ineffective...

So I spent much of the late afternoon power washing the back patio and table and chairs...  I would wash things up and let them dry for a while, only to find out it still turned white with poo again as it dried..  The sun finally went down, so perhaps tomorrow I will be back at it again.... But it is much cleaner tonight than it was before I started...

I will also use this washer to clean the outside of the motorhome when I get it back over here in the next few days....  The trip out here covered the front with bugs, and the rain coming out of Albuquerque on Friday made the entire rig a sloppy mess...

Not much else to report from here...

Retired Rod

Weed Police

After writing last nights blog, my neighbor came over and knocked on the door offering to help me return the motorhome to storage...  Since it is in front of his house too, I do feel that he wanted it gone from out front as well.

So we chased each other over to the storage lot about ten  miles away... He has a new camero with a big engine, so I got to ride home in a a very legitimate muscle car..  With its 6.2 liter V8, it just rolled as easy as pie...  I wonder how fast that fellow will go......

Anyway this morning I drove over to the trailer repair place in Apache Junction, where they agreed to take in my axle repair but they had no way to come and get the trailer...  Citing insurance problems, they wanted me to cripple the thing on over there.... in his words......

I had no choice, without a truck or any way to pull it besides the Arizona car, I hitched it up and stayed under 25 mph..  I used the cruise control to stay at the slow speed so I wouldn't get the urge to go faster...  The back wheel wobbled back and forth from side to side scaring me to death but I made it.....

They were to call me back when they found out something....  I didn't receive a call yet today...  Maybe they couldn't get to it today..  I didn't call them back either, perhaps scared of the outcome..

Mid morning, the landscapers that work for our home management company that looks after our place while we are in the Midwest arrived to clean up the weeds and trim all the trees and bushes... There were two of these fellows and they worked for over two hours...

They did more work in that time than I would have accomplished in all of the next week...!  Plus they had a trailer and hauled away all of the clippings...  This will cost me when the bill comes, but it will be worth it not to have all of this clean up hanging over me..

I can now concentrate on replacing the bushes that didn't make it over the summer...  And that would be several that I purchased and replanted last spring..  Desert plantings can be really hit and miss...

So both the Motorhome and the trailer are gone from in front of the house and the weed patrol will be happy that the place is cleaned up...

And yes, the home owners association does have inspectors that will contact you if your place isn't kept free of unwanted weeds.... I gathered from talking with the main landscaper fellow, that I was very near that point in June when he first came to our house....  We, the neighbors and I, laughingly call them the weed police....

Retired Rod

Lucky !

Yesterday I dropped the back ramp door on the utility trailer and unloaded the motorcycle..  I was concerned about the storage lot and whether I remembered the code to get into the lot....

I rode directly there and recorded the phone number from the sign on the gate ino my cell phone...  I couldn't find the number on the internet..  Absolutely no recognition of the business anywhere.. They have only been in business for a little over a year but still no listing..

And I did check out what I thought the code was on the combo lock..  Nope!!  So I gave up and rode back to Wal Mart for some swiffer pads and some new shorts....

I never did get back to the storage lot like I had planned, as the interior house work trumped the outside things....   Dirt from the summer dust storms cannot be kept out no matter how tight things are closed up..

This morning though I was determined to go put that trailer away...  So I unhitched it from the motorhome thinking I would use the car to move it...    That was when I walked around to the driver's side of the trailer.... and looked in disbelief..  The bearings from that wheel are completely gone and the hub is riding directly on the axle spindle....

It wasn't that way when I was at McDonalds in Holbrook... So somewhere as I was driving up over the mountain on Friday, the wheel got hot and the bearings self destroyed... It remains to be seen if the axle spindle isn't also wrecked...   And perhaps the entire axle in the process...

The cost of this repair will exceed the price of the trailer....  Decisions....

So the motorhome is still in front of the house as the trailer place is closed on Sunday..  And I was lucky that the wheel didn't come completely off of the trailer as I was coming down the mountain on 6 % grades...  Always seems like something gives out on these long mileage trips...

Retired Rod