Thursday, February 17, 2011

Payback For My Glimpse of Spring

A few weeks ago I had the chance to jump on the bike one Sunday and go for a short ride around the local backroads when the weather jumped up to about 65 degrees. It had been more than a month and a half since I'd been on the bike and I was going through some serious withdrawals, so the chance to go "knees in the breeze" was more than welcomed by me. I hit the road and just wandered around the county for about an hour or so, enjoying every minute of it.

Well, about a week later I was going to work, and when I got in my truck and looked at my Nightster parked in the garage directly in front of my truck, I noticed that the rear tire looked a bit low. No biggie, I thought, tires lose 3-5 pounds of air pressure a month (something I remembered from my days in motorcycle sales) so I figured I'd just pump it up when I got home, which I did.

The next morning it looked flat again. Uh-oh, I thought, this could be trouble. So I pumped it up again - thank God for my Black and Decker portable air pump - and checked it again the next day.

Dammit all, anyway. Looks like I was about to pay for my Sunday ride, literally. I had the wife look at the back tire while I rolled the bike back, and I'd only gone about 6 inches when she said, "Yup, there it is!" I got off the bike and took a look and there, embedded almost dead-center in my rear tire, was a goddamn roofing nail.

Son of a bitch!

It was going to be nearly a week before I'd have a day off to get the bike to the local stealership to fix the flat, so I spent every other day or so pumping the tire up to preserve the tire until then. And yesterday morning at around eleven AM, I called my insurance company and told them I needed a tow. Roadside assistance, including tow trucks, are covered by my insurance policy (GEICO, in case you care) so it cost me absolutely nothing to have the bike towed in for repairs. TWO HOURS LATER the truck showed up, and ten minutes after that we're on the way to Harley Haven to get the tire fixed.

Once I got to the shop the service manager, a heck of a nice guy named TJ, took one look at the tire and told me that he thought they'd be able to save the tire and not have to replace it. The good thing about having a bike with spoked wheels is that you have to run an inner tube in the tires, whereas solid wheels use tubeless tires. If you get a nail in a tubeless tire you're pretty much screwed, because Harley dealerships and most indy shops will not plug a tubeless tire. If you plug a tubeless tire and it fails on you at highway speed, the only place you're going is DOWN and there won't be a damned thing you can do about it. But with a spoked wheel you run a tube, and unless the nail is in the sidewall or damages the belt, all you have to do is replace the tube - you don't even have to plug the hole. And, as luck would have it, that's all they had to do.

But the really sad part is this: the tube was $14.55, and the labor to install it was EIGHTY BUCKS! I am in the WRONG line of work!

In any event, it took about 70 minutes to get the tire fixed, and then I was knees in the breeze on the way home, and damn it felt good! I had a chance to ride again today going across town to my dental followup appointment, and the ride today was even better than the ride yesterday! And this weekend it's supposed to be in the 80's and I'm off on Sunday, so you wanna guess what I'll be doing?

All things considered, it could have been a lot worse with my tire - I could have had to replace it, and the tire alone would have cost me $125.00, plus the tube, plus the labor...it could have been much, much worse.

But still, it just goes to show you that nothing in this life is free.

Even though, some things are worth the cost.

IHC

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Timeless Truths

I saw these on the only forum of which I am a member, and they struck me as being so funny and so true that I just had to share them here. Enjoy both the quotes and the irony of how true some of them are, no matter how old.

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress. -- John Adams

2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. -- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. -- Ronald Reagan (1986)

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! -- P.J. O'Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! -- Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. -- Mark Twain (1866)

17. Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it. -- Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. -- Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly native American criminal class...save Congress. -- Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. -- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. -- Thomas Jefferson

25. The biggest difference between Republicans and Democrats is the spelling. -- Anonymous

IHC