Saturday was gorgeous. I went out to run a few errands on B2 and forgot a fundamental rule as I approached my own driveway: expect the unexpected.
A friend had dropped by and parked his bike on the other side of Derek’s truck. I couldn’t see it until I actually pulled in and for the amount of room I had, I was moving too fast. I tried to make my turn tight enough but my highway peg clipped his exhaust pipe and launched me into the side of Derek’s truck at which point my face hit my windshield. Ouch!
The bike I clipped is a beautiful, new Honda VTX with a spectacular paint job. Somehow I hadn’t touched the paint (thank goodness!) but I did put a little crimp in the end of the pipe. Its owner, Blaine, was cool as a cucumber when I told him what I had done. “There’s a problem with that pipe anyway,” he said, pointing to some slightly wonky chrome almost invisible to the naked eye. “Don’t worry about it!” So I didn’t. I was so embarrassed though and my lip was swelling and had a small split where it hit the hard plastic. I also cut my gums and got a small cut on my forehead. I’m very lucky it wasn’t worse for the beautiful bike or my face. And I didn’t even leave a mark on the truck or on B2.
The lesson here is, don’t assume. I thought I would have as much room as I always had to pull around the truck. With the big bike there, that real estate was cut by half and my speed, although just a few kms per hour, made it unsafe. Blaine said he should have parked in a more obvious way or out of the way. Nope, this one was all my fault. I’m also going to try to find a full-face helmet that doesn’t make me feel claustrophobic. My bruised lip will thank me.
Now the reason Blaine was at the house was because he had ridden past and noticed the garage that he has watched being built on Facebook. He pulled in to see how it was going and ended up staying all day and helping Derek finish the outside. Two people, especially these equally tireless ones, made it a one-day job.
Derek wanted the front to look like a barn and so he went for pine planks instead of a board-and-batten look. The foot-wide planks are milled straight on both edges so they could be installed very tightly. Time will age the pine into that wonderful barn board look. That aging process can be accelerated with a vinegar and steel wool process but neither one of us is interested in taking that on. The sun and weather will take longer but will be much easier. At the end of the day, once the cut planks and weather-stripping were installed, we had a beautiful pine finish.
Beats the heck out of that shredded blue tarp we started the season with! Next, the man door and a few more finishing touches. Stay tuned!
Beware of the unseen, it can bite your ass. Other than a few bumps, I’m glad to hear that you’re okay and that the garage is coming along.
Something’s been bothering me. I can’t for the life of me figure out how you cut your gums. There are only two ways that I believe this could have happened. 1-you hit the windshield so hard that it cut clean through your lip and then into your gums which, fortunately, is obviously not the case and 2-you must have had the absolute funniest and most horrific grimace imaginable on your face in order to pull back your lip far enough to actually allow the windshield to make contact with your gums! Now, as you know, I’m very glad you weren’t hurt and you caused no major damage to body, bike or truck, but I have to tell you I would pay good money to have been standing there when your little mishap took place just so I could get a glimpse of what that face looked like! Call me crazy but that shit’s funny to me!!
Oh, baby brother. As soon as I read the second sentence I realized I DID have a grimace on my face and that’s how they got cut! HAHAHAHAH! I bet it would have looked funny but I’m also glad there is no footage of it!