So Monday I parked a customer’s Odyssey van in the Ready lot, next to the 7 ft tall chain link fence. Well it seems that the owner, who bought it new 200,000+ miles ago drives out and scrapes the entire left side of the vehicle. After 200,000 miles she hasn’t figured out that her minivan doesn’t bend in the middle. And somehow it’s my fault for BACKING INTO a tight parking space.

Now this morning,

A Pilot that I worked on Tuesday late, I parked it outside the fenced lot to be picked up after hours. I set the park brake like I always do.

The customer dropped off his grand-daughter at 9:00 last night and drove off. She drove away and heard noises from the back, beeping noises and the Brake warning light was on. So she sat in the parking lot for an hour until her family came back to pick her up. Apparently she has never used a park brake before, and it’s my fault.

I suppose I’m responsible for everyone else’s obliviousness. Come on people!

He would have been 77 today.

It’s that time of year that the garage business gets weird. Last week we had college students dropping in out of the sky because they were leaving for University of Missouri the next morning and ‘I’ve been meaning to get my car looked at…’. So we bust butt making a car worthy of a four state drive. Now, well it’s crickets.

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So it took 3 days for SpinRite to do it’s magic. No bad sectors reported, only a bunch of ECC (Error Correcting Cache) errors which unfortunately are the norm for today’s high density hard drives.

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I returned for day two of Appleseed, the weather was much cooler than the previous day’s 92F and I started of better than the first day, but it wasn’t to last. A series of misfires and failures to eject hampered my shooting; then as fatigue set in my shooting started coming apart like my golf game.

A few minutes cleaning my rifle’s fire control group of unburned powder and soot along with a bit of CLP returned my Marlin to reliable functioning, but my frustration and fatigue had gotten the best of me. Fat boys can only jump up and down so many times before we’re tuckered out.

I’ll spend some time dry fire practicing and will do another Appleseed Project event later. I may also use the AR-15 for the next event, I just have to watch for sales and stock up on ammo, or pick up a used Ruger 10/22 or Marlin 795. The format favors box magazine fed rifles, I wasted many precious seconds on reloads in the timed portions, then rushed checking my NPOA (Natural Point Of Aim) and my breathing became ragged as I had to roll over on my side to reach forward to open the Marlin 60‘s tubular magazine. Not that it is an excuse really, it just is what it is; a time and cadence killer.