My Weekend With Gearhead
Gearhead and I have been friends for the last dozen years. Oddly we only see one another once or twice a year. He lives in the Salem area and I live in the Astoria area. It's a two hour trip and we are too practical to visit on a whim. Besides I get farm envy when ever I visit him. He has a nice spread of land, a great barn and shop and lots of farm equipment.
Anyway, last weekend was our once a year to catch up face to face as we attended an annual conference. I am always fascinated by his mastery of not just having the right tool for the job, but designing and building the right tool for the job. He shared photos of the new fork lift he built that will do 60MPH, and yes it is advantageous for him to have a forklift that will go that fast. It has all the creature comforts such as a hydraulic powered tow bar that he uses to hitch up to his truck without getting off his lift.
We spent some time discussing a joint writing project that we are involved in and he always has ideas for things I should write about in this blog. We spent some time (like 14 year olds)proclaiming who is a douche bag and to what level their douchedom rises to in comparison to douches we have known in the past. We have a douche scale.
Gearhead is an inspiration to be around, though I doubt I'll ever get my shop as clean and organized as his. He makes things happen and he doesn't accept failure as an option. He retired while in his early 40's and went into agriculture full-time. He has a success record that most people could never achieve in a life-time. This is because he knows right from wrong and he possesses a moral compass which makes him incapable of passing on an inferior service on to anyone.
There are few people I consider as a friend, but Gearhead is one of the six people I'd put on that list.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
7 Comments:
Six is a reasonable number of good friends to have. If you have more than, say, ten, you have to wonder how close and “good” they actually are. (Kind of like Facebook “friends.”)
The two of you sound like two peas in a pod…
Glad you got caught up with Gearhead. Hope he wasn't in our neck of the woods because I woulda hurt you for not letting me tag along and meet this legend.
I was just so happy that our time spent together was in just the perfect litle segments as not to exceed the absolute 4 hour MAXIMUM.
For those of you that don't know about the 4 hour rule; here's how it works:
There you are, having a nice visit with Guy. You reach the end of the fourth hour and from somewhere up in the sky above, ">> DINGGGGG!! <<<
A bell rings.
You're like, "What the???..."
Just then, he reaches across the table, closes your eyes with his fingers and places a quarter on each eyelid, stands up, crosses his heart and mumbles something in latin.
Then, to your amasement, you find yourself walking out of the cafe door, (which hits you on the ass because you can't see where you are going) and it is just then that you realize what the quarters are for:
As you stand in the cafe parking lot,peering back in through the window, watching Guy boot up his laptop on wi-fi you notice that his truck (the one with the dent in the tailgate) needs the meter plugged.
But even after all of that, you are just happy that he is back to writing something that you will enjoy!
You realize of course that I just spent the last ten minutes staring in awe at the phrase "hydrocephaly powered tow bar".
Man, I so want one of those!
Guy, I am so VERY, VERY sorry for taking so long to thank you for the nice gift!
I forgot all about it and just now opened it.
For the rest of you, Guy presented me with a small gift, perfectly wrapped with a nice note, hand written and all.
Let's let this serve as an example of the long lost elegance of true friendship from days past.
Still not sure what the gift is; some sort of water bottle looking thing with a hose and elongated tip.
But then the nice, nice note:
Dear Gearhead, I finally found the perfect gift that has YOU written all over it!
What a Guy!!
Thaks again!
And most I don't see all that often, but it's great when we get together.
Auntie, Across the river isn't our neck of the woods, sorry. I do go over there once a year, but last weekend wasn't the time for that trip.
Gearhead, it's nice knowing you watch the clock and know when the bell will toll.
Darev, damn spell check, that was supposed to be "hydraulic." Hydrocephaly is what happens if I spend more than 4 hours with someone.
Gearhead, you have no idea how hard it is to find a douche bag let alone have it printed with with the Astoria Rust logo.
I suspected it was supposed to be hydraulic. Figured it was either a typo or an inside joke. Either way works for me!
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