Gomer the Ratster.4

I was riding up to an intersection on the downhill side of a road one Thursday afternoon. The light went from green-to-yellow-to-red-to-green and I shifted from fourth-to-third-to-second-to-down on the road. The driver of a car rushed over the crest of the road, sped down the hill, and changed lanes right into me, scooping up Gomer's back wheel with the car's right rear wheel, ignorant that I was beating on the right rear window and yelling that I was being dragged along for an unpleasant ride on asphalt. She wasn't ignorant for long; her passengers alerted her to her mistake straight-away.

The driver pulled over and apologised, over and over, for running into me. She was driving a company car on company business without a driver license. I got her boss's name, number, and insurance information, and sent her on her way.

Boy, was I annoyed! I was gonna miss work, and I was gonna have to fix my bike, and all because some silly simp drove into me. I picked up Gomer and walked her back up the hill and up the road to the local shop a couple of miles away. My pants were wrecked, my jacket scuffed, and I hurt quite a bit. I limped for a few days thereafter. I went to work the day after the crash.

I called the driver's boss. I got the driver. She transfered me to the boss. He wanted me to take Gomer to his airplane mechanic and have his mechanic repair the damage to the bike. I told him nothing doing; would he want me to have my bike mechanic fix his airplane if I had crashed into it? This guy's attitude was that I was trying to rip him off. All I wanted was fix Gomer, buy me new pants, and pay me for the one day of missed work. I didn't care about his attitude. I just wanted my way. The boss told me that the policy number that his employee gave me was the wrong number and gave me a different policy number.

I called the guy's insurance company and gave the claims adjuster the policy number. The insurance guy told me that he could not help me until Monday morning due to the fact that it was Friday afternoon just before closing. Monday morning, the insurance agent told me that policy number that I gave him was no good. So I had to call the driver's boss. Well the boss was at a meeting, no, he could not get me the right policy information until he was done with the meeting.

I was not a happy camper. I wanted to beat the driver with a ball-peen hammer. I hired a lawyer instead. Fat lot of good the lawyer did me. The insurance guy called me after I hired the lawyer with the good news that they then had the correct policy information and were ready to help me. As soon as I said I had hired a lawyer, the insurance guy could not help me, after all. Ultimately, I got $700 out of a $1500 settlement. What a joke.

From time to time after the accident, I would have trouble starting Gomer. I would replace spark plugs, adjust valves, take 'er in for tune-up, and still would have trouble. Gil at work told me to get rid of the Mikuni carburetor, that it was junk. Gil told me that Jap parts were junk parts. I listened to him because I actually believed that he knew bikes. The shop manager at a local shop told me that Mikuni carburetors were junk. I believed him because I thought as a shop manager, he knew bikes. I had two different guys who told me the same thing, and I concluded that they were right.

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