The Wheels Were Falling Off AGAIN!
Good morning! I want to start this by reminding everyone that this story is from the past. I know I bounce around a lot from post to post and talk about current things also but the story of the GJ shop is already in the books as is most of what I am writing. I am working my way forward through all of the bad and good times that have formed me into who I am today. I am not really sure why I am doing all of this, why I am bearing my soul to the internet, admitting all of my faults to complete strangers and shining a light into the dark side of my life. Part of it is to show reality in a world filled with filters and fake happiness. Another part is to show what I believe to be the REAL happiness that I have found through Jesus, hard work, and motorcycles. Anyway, here we go again.
You’ll remember from my last post that everything was coming apart, right after I opened my GJ location. My mechanic had just called me and informed me that he had broken his ankle while test riding (wheelieing) a customer’s bike. So many things are wrong with that situation and I really can’t possibly explain the feelings that I had when that went down. So now here I am without a mechanic in a location that is 65 miles away, a looming workman’s comp claim (which I had never had before) and no idea of how to handle it. So… I dug my mechanic’s clothes out and began to commute back and forth from Montrose to GJ. I didn’t have any other options that I could see. I couldn’t hire someone over night and I couldn’t just close the doors. I didn’t have any clue how bad his ankle was so I couldn’t even guess at how long this was going to take. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that since I had moved my really good front end guy up to GJ I now had no one to run the front of the shop here in Montrose. I had assumed that roll here and was going to eventually fill it down the road. I wasn’t the only one who had to commute. I asked my front guy from GJ to commute back to the home I had asked him to move away from. REAL nice Morgan!
So lets get this straight. In one loop out of a dirt bike, we had gone from a shaky foundation that was built by a guy who didn’t really know what he was doing to a tumbling house of cards. My front guy and I were crisscrossing the western landscape every morning and evening, long distance high fiving each other as we passed in our cars and neither shop was getting the attention that it needed. To say I was stressed is one of the absolute biggest understatements of the century. As you might be able to imagine, I let that stress begin to cause all sorts of problems in my personal life too. Ruth had raised questions about the idea of starting another shop anyway and now it was becoming very clear that her concerns were not only valid but somewhat clairvoyant. We were just getting straightened out as a couple and a family from my horrible decisions in the past and now the wheels were coming off again. Fortunately not in the same way but the lug nuts were loosening and it was about to get ugly… AGAIN!
Thanks for tuning in again. I really enjoy writing and I hope some of you enjoy reading it too. As you can guess this story is about to take another ugly turn. Life is like that, just when you think you are killing it and have it all figured out, something happens and if you are like I was, you let that derail your progress and you slip back. I am learning now to put less reliance in myself and more in God as I move forward. I realize now that I am not strong enough to handle all that this broken world has to offer. I am just not enough. But… God is MORE than enough and He can handle it. I am not talking about some magic hand that is going to come down from heaven and wipe all of your cares and troubles away. Nope! He has given us free will and believes in it so much that we all get to deal with the consequences of our actions and sadly sometimes the actions of others that directly affect us. But if we truly trust in God and keep working at things that are good and glorifying to Him, it will all work out. Almost never like we want it to but it WILL WORK OUT!
Have a great day today and please spread some love around. Spread it like there is no tomorrow! I will be turning 43 this Friday (9/14) and I want to celebrate that by showing love and if any of you want to celebrate with me, please do the same! Give someone a hug, call a friend and tell them how much they mean to you, high five the check out kid at the store!
Today I am thankful for this computer I am writing on, DIRTBIKES, and my two amazing boys that I love more than life itself.
