Week 3
This week made a good effort to skew last week's data point. Not all positive, but certainly interesting.
Tuesday night, I'd slipped out to the garage and was fitting new bearings in a scooter transmission. A heatgun and welding gloves were involved; parts were nice and warm too. While fitting one of the more fiddly bearings, my phone starts blowing up from an unfamiliar number. I am unprepared to answer, so I ignore it. Three times. Then the phone rings from a familiar number. I get the housing situated so it wouldn't fall over or lose the freshly installed bearings, secure the heat gun and get my gloves off. I answer before the call goes to voicemail; the party on the other end of the line is not who I expect.
It's a first responder, calling to tell me that my friend has been in an auto accident. Shit...I ask for the intersection and say I'll be there in 40 minutes, based on the area/distance and hit the road. On the other end, the first responder tells my friend that she hopes I won't drive too fast getting there. Sorry to disappoint ma'am...I made it there in 22 minutes flat.
My friend is on a backboard, in a neck brace and being moved away from his car. The driver's side of his car is smashed in, all the glass on that side is blown out and the car has been turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise by the impact. To the right of his car is another car with similar damage. I'm puzzled by the configuration, until I learn that there was a third car which hit both of them and tried to flee the scene. The third car wasn't getting far, going by the vital fluids it had dumped in the intersection. To complicate things, all three cars were black, so determining what bit came off which car was a bit challenging.
After checking on my friend in the ambulance, I combed my his car for personal effects before it was hauled off. Thankfully, I got everything important and almost everything that wasn't quite so important. I learned which hospital he was going to, then went to pick up his mom and sister to take them to see him. Thankfully, he wasn't seriously injured...mostly bruised and shaken. The rest of the evening was spent ferrying people around town, but everything got taken care of and my friend went home that night.
The following evening, I drove him out to the new car lots to get an idea of what to replace his car with. Get back on the horse and ride if you can, right? It was late, but there were no salespeople bugging us, so it went well.
Thursday night was a planning meeting for the May ride around Arizona. It went well. My only concern is that a trip through Zion National Park has slipped in and the ride is now being broken into 7-days. Never been a fan of scope creep, but there's time to remediate things before going kickstands-up. Glad too see I'm not the only one interested in taking a longer touring ride on a scooter. Dinner afterwards was amusing. A vegetarian restaurant was selected, and it was funny to watch the more stalwart meat eaters come to terms with it. I'd eaten earlier, so I just went with a spring roll appetizer, which I will admit was pretty good.
Saturday was a garage day, and work got done. This makes me a happy camper. If I can sustain the "every other Saturday" routine, I may actually get to fix some of my own crap in this lifetime and be able to go out and ride it...what a novel idea!
I slept in today. A guilty pleasure, to be sure. Got the truck washed. Fixed the front spoiler on my sister's car. Watching the Pats lose was counterbalanced by watching the 49ers lose. My sister tried a new pizza recipe on us that was somehow healthier and still tasty. Finished the scooter transmission I'd been working on back on Tuesday. Started on the CVT section and ordered parts; maybe I'll finish that by next weekend.
All around, not bad. Clearly could have been worse.
In other news, Tucson pedestrians are as dumb as the mourning doves when it comes to placing themselves in harm's way. The city keeps installing crossing mechanisms to make it safer to cross major roads, yet these morons will still find themselves stuck in the middle of the road, a mere 100 feet or less from a crossing mechanism. The city insists that the pedestrians need better protection. I insist that you could encase the road in a concrete culvert with no access other than at major intersections and that those dummies would still find a way to get hit by a car in the middle of the tunnel. I'm not sure what reward they get by not crossing at a crossing mechanism or intersection, but I'm certain the risk isn't worth it.
That's all for now. Keep calm and carry on.
Tuesday night, I'd slipped out to the garage and was fitting new bearings in a scooter transmission. A heatgun and welding gloves were involved; parts were nice and warm too. While fitting one of the more fiddly bearings, my phone starts blowing up from an unfamiliar number. I am unprepared to answer, so I ignore it. Three times. Then the phone rings from a familiar number. I get the housing situated so it wouldn't fall over or lose the freshly installed bearings, secure the heat gun and get my gloves off. I answer before the call goes to voicemail; the party on the other end of the line is not who I expect.
It's a first responder, calling to tell me that my friend has been in an auto accident. Shit...I ask for the intersection and say I'll be there in 40 minutes, based on the area/distance and hit the road. On the other end, the first responder tells my friend that she hopes I won't drive too fast getting there. Sorry to disappoint ma'am...I made it there in 22 minutes flat.
My friend is on a backboard, in a neck brace and being moved away from his car. The driver's side of his car is smashed in, all the glass on that side is blown out and the car has been turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise by the impact. To the right of his car is another car with similar damage. I'm puzzled by the configuration, until I learn that there was a third car which hit both of them and tried to flee the scene. The third car wasn't getting far, going by the vital fluids it had dumped in the intersection. To complicate things, all three cars were black, so determining what bit came off which car was a bit challenging.
After checking on my friend in the ambulance, I combed my his car for personal effects before it was hauled off. Thankfully, I got everything important and almost everything that wasn't quite so important. I learned which hospital he was going to, then went to pick up his mom and sister to take them to see him. Thankfully, he wasn't seriously injured...mostly bruised and shaken. The rest of the evening was spent ferrying people around town, but everything got taken care of and my friend went home that night.
The following evening, I drove him out to the new car lots to get an idea of what to replace his car with. Get back on the horse and ride if you can, right? It was late, but there were no salespeople bugging us, so it went well.
Thursday night was a planning meeting for the May ride around Arizona. It went well. My only concern is that a trip through Zion National Park has slipped in and the ride is now being broken into 7-days. Never been a fan of scope creep, but there's time to remediate things before going kickstands-up. Glad too see I'm not the only one interested in taking a longer touring ride on a scooter. Dinner afterwards was amusing. A vegetarian restaurant was selected, and it was funny to watch the more stalwart meat eaters come to terms with it. I'd eaten earlier, so I just went with a spring roll appetizer, which I will admit was pretty good.
Saturday was a garage day, and work got done. This makes me a happy camper. If I can sustain the "every other Saturday" routine, I may actually get to fix some of my own crap in this lifetime and be able to go out and ride it...what a novel idea!
I slept in today. A guilty pleasure, to be sure. Got the truck washed. Fixed the front spoiler on my sister's car. Watching the Pats lose was counterbalanced by watching the 49ers lose. My sister tried a new pizza recipe on us that was somehow healthier and still tasty. Finished the scooter transmission I'd been working on back on Tuesday. Started on the CVT section and ordered parts; maybe I'll finish that by next weekend.
All around, not bad. Clearly could have been worse.
In other news, Tucson pedestrians are as dumb as the mourning doves when it comes to placing themselves in harm's way. The city keeps installing crossing mechanisms to make it safer to cross major roads, yet these morons will still find themselves stuck in the middle of the road, a mere 100 feet or less from a crossing mechanism. The city insists that the pedestrians need better protection. I insist that you could encase the road in a concrete culvert with no access other than at major intersections and that those dummies would still find a way to get hit by a car in the middle of the tunnel. I'm not sure what reward they get by not crossing at a crossing mechanism or intersection, but I'm certain the risk isn't worth it.
That's all for now. Keep calm and carry on.