I am a lucky guy

1Having broken my collar bone, there was no way for me to swap over my summer tires. I was expecting to have to drag them to a tire shop just to get them on. Instead my partner offered to do it for me.

2Other than showing her where tools were, she did the whole thing.

3A competent partner who enjoys both car work and helping me. And who happens to be beautiful, intelligent and lots of fun. Lucky, lucky me.

 4

Shocker, motorcycles can be dangerous.

1

The evening of April 20th could have gone better. Dumped the motorcycle in a parking lot. Net result was a broken collar bone, and an even more battered bike.

I was driving through a mostly empty Home Depot parking lot. I was leaning the bike way over being silly since it was the first time out this year. Best I can piece together I road up higher on the tread of the brand-new tires where it was still greasy and not worn in at all(first time out on the tires) and the rear tire kicked out. I lowsided the bike and took the brunt of the impact on my shoulder, then skidded for a bit. Proper gear meant no head impact and I scraped the shoulder of my jacket and not my actual shoulder.

The bike actually took the impact pretty well. There are scrapes on several parts(brake lever, headlight ring, turn signal, & engine casing. The mirror broke and the bar end bold is bent. But a friend rode it home from the accident.

I called Progressive and filed a claim. They ended up paying me very fairly for the bike, and let me keep it for a $50 salvage payment to them. As I had already been thinking of upgrading, and wasn’t going to be able to fix/repair it for 4-6 months I decided to sell the bike.

After a week of dealing with craigslist BS(no I won’t take $300, no I won’t trade for your Playstation 4, no I won’t meet you at 5am so you can test ride it) a polite guy named Frank came buy, took it for a test drive, and paid me my $500 asking price. He’s planning to fix it up and ride it, so the bike will live again.

I will probably get a new bike, either once I’m healed or once something interesting comes along. In the mean time nearly every project I have is on hold, which is intensely frustrating as I have $1000 worth of truck parts & and newer engine just waiting to be installed.