Let's get right down to it here, we're all adults. I've been biting my tongue for many weeks now, witholding some relevant news out of sensitivity to one person. But I feel that enough time has passed, and lives have been moved-on-with, that I can finally tell you that I have a very "significant other." I regret that gaining her meant losing a friend (that she used to date), but I've never known another girl cut from the same fine cloth as Vanessa, and I stand firm in my decision. She's immensely talented, thoroughly beautiful, frighteningly smart, sharp as a tack...and tougher than leather. A very welcome addition to my life and as fine a partner as I could ever hope for. I feel *incredibly* fortunate to have her and look forward to many wonderful shared adventures ahead.
As an aside, she lives in Milwaukee (long-distance being another testament to the strength of my feelings for her). I rode the scooter up to Milwaukee last weekend for a visit, a nice trip of about 90 miles. It broke down once on the way up (in the pouring rain), but I got it going again after about an hour and rode on with no further complications.
On the way back though, I started to lose power and pulled over to investigate. Sounded like the flywheel was loose or something, but I ended up pulling the cylinder head off and found some metal fragments chewed up and embedded in the piston. That is a very bad sign. I cleaned it up as best I could, bandaged it all up, and about 90 minutes later, rode on south into uncertain darkness near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. About 2 miles down the road it started to lose power again, I pulled the clutch, and it cut out completely. Seized the piston; it wouldn't even kick over. I pushed it back to a gas station I'd seen a while back and called for help. Forrest and his girl Jen drove 40 miles or so to the middle of nowhere to my rescue and got me safely back home. Unfortunately the scooter had to spend the night in Waukegan, chained to a lamppost at the gas station until I could figure out how to go retrieve it the next day. The Scooterworks delivery van vehicle is "dodgy at best," so the odds of making the trip and back with that were slim, not to mention most of us can't legally drive it. Liz suggested that we might be able to fit it into a Honda Civic hatchback that she had access to, so after a nice dinner at Alice and Friends, we were off, making the journey out of the city and into real country darkness. Nice. We got there and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief to find it still there. I stripped it down (crashbars, rack, seats, etc), drained the gas, and we wrestled into that goddamn car. Amazing! Many thanks to Forrest and Liz for being real Champions and Helping A Brother Out in my hour of need.
The scooter is out of commission for the time being; it'll need a fair amount of work. The good thing is that 1) nobody was hurt, and 2) the failure wasn't my fault, it was mechanical. Quite a weekend, all in all.
Posted by pj at September 16, 2003 06:43 PM
