05 August 2011
Counting your lucky stars
It's a day like any other day, you're rushing around to get your business handled, and then it happens.
While it's not really your business why I moved out of the wilds of Agua Dulce and back to the big city (besides, it's not the point of the story), but the fact was that I had made several trips that weekend to get stuff moved out of the old place and in to the new. Between that and going about my normal business of shoeing horses, criss-crossing every major freeway in north L.A. county, I was behind and bound to catch up. Needless to say, the throttle on Ruby (the 2003 shoeing rig) was running pretty near wide open.
I had completed most of the tasks that were required of me prior to going to Oregon to work for Gordon Haight for a few days, but I was running late. I was on my way to the Flyaway, the place one goes in the San Fernando Valley if you don't care to drive to LAX, when it happened. I hit what could be considered a tremendous bump and something was wrong. I looked in the rear view mirror and could see that the shoeing body that had been attached to my truck for some 200,000 miles was, but wasn't. Realizing that I didn't want the thing to come completely off the truck, I limped it to the safest place I could, which happened to be the Flyaway parking lot. Besides, I had a plane to catch.
Ya know, 15, 20 years ago if something like this happened, I would have been having a case of the "poor Me's" but at this stage of the game, as I stood there and looked at shoeing body setting crooked on the frame (no other damage I could see), I was thankful. I was thankful that my rolling machine shop/hardware store didn't come completely off the truck, and I was thankful that it happened on a street rather than a freeway. As I reflected, I also thought, what if it had come off when I was going 65 miles an hour down the 14, or worse yet, the 5 or the 405. Nope, I was and still am pretty thankful that no one got hurt, and that the contents of my truck weren't strewn about some metropolitan thruway.
Several years ago I started telling my help that "it could be worse" when something didn't go our way, and it always could. All I can say is; the next time the Fates deal you a blow (and especially you who are younger than I) think about it. Often times it could have turned out way worse than it did, but for some reason it didn't. Count your lucky stars, shut up and drink your coffee.
While it's not really your business why I moved out of the wilds of Agua Dulce and back to the big city (besides, it's not the point of the story), but the fact was that I had made several trips that weekend to get stuff moved out of the old place and in to the new. Between that and going about my normal business of shoeing horses, criss-crossing every major freeway in north L.A. county, I was behind and bound to catch up. Needless to say, the throttle on Ruby (the 2003 shoeing rig) was running pretty near wide open.
I had completed most of the tasks that were required of me prior to going to Oregon to work for Gordon Haight for a few days, but I was running late. I was on my way to the Flyaway, the place one goes in the San Fernando Valley if you don't care to drive to LAX, when it happened. I hit what could be considered a tremendous bump and something was wrong. I looked in the rear view mirror and could see that the shoeing body that had been attached to my truck for some 200,000 miles was, but wasn't. Realizing that I didn't want the thing to come completely off the truck, I limped it to the safest place I could, which happened to be the Flyaway parking lot. Besides, I had a plane to catch.
Ya know, 15, 20 years ago if something like this happened, I would have been having a case of the "poor Me's" but at this stage of the game, as I stood there and looked at shoeing body setting crooked on the frame (no other damage I could see), I was thankful. I was thankful that my rolling machine shop/hardware store didn't come completely off the truck, and I was thankful that it happened on a street rather than a freeway. As I reflected, I also thought, what if it had come off when I was going 65 miles an hour down the 14, or worse yet, the 5 or the 405. Nope, I was and still am pretty thankful that no one got hurt, and that the contents of my truck weren't strewn about some metropolitan thruway.
Several years ago I started telling my help that "it could be worse" when something didn't go our way, and it always could. All I can say is; the next time the Fates deal you a blow (and especially you who are younger than I) think about it. Often times it could have turned out way worse than it did, but for some reason it didn't. Count your lucky stars, shut up and drink your coffee.
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