Mending Fences

A challenging day for the family started with this.

Well.....that wasn't what I expected to do on a Friday afternoon!

It all started with a Winter storm that arrived on Thursday here. We were told for a day or two ahead of Thursday that we would get a lot of snow, but by 11:00am on Thursday nothing had fallen from the sky. Now here was my dilemma. 

My son uses the "Truck With No Name" these days as his way to get back and forth to community college classes. He's a new driver, with barely any experience, and he's maybe driven on freshly fallen snow once, maybe twice so far this Winter. Compound that with the truck, which if you know a two wheel drive truck at all, is a handful on slick surfaces. Well, then it could be understandable that a driver with a developing sense of throttle control and senses for what the wheels are doing might be at a disadvantage.  

And I thought we'd escape with a dusting,as the weather forecast was saying the snow would end soon after he left. But it didn't. It got worse and we ended up with a couple of inches, maybe more, of slick snow. Maybe I should have driven him to school.....

But maybe he needed a lesson. Well.....he got one! And he cleared out 16 feet of a woman's fencing made out of solid lumber. He knocked the bumper hard enough to loosen it up, (haven't fully diagnosed that, but it is derivable), so he didn't mess the truck up badly. But he did cause a significant amount of property damage. We had to call a tow truck to pull the vehicle off the fence and out of the ditch. Two wheel drive with no positraction, ya know? 

The end of a hard day.

The landowner was distraught as they have a dog that they like to let loose in the fenced in area, which now was not so fenced in, and they wanted a solution now. So...

Mrs. Guitar Ted, my son, and I had to buy some snow fencing, some wire, zip ties, and a wire cutter and attempt to patch the opening in 25-30mph gusting winds. This all with sub-zero wind chill. 

Now, I'm not complaining, my son had caused this property owner undue concerns and damages, so I was fine with helping out. It was just not what I had expected to have to do on a Thursday afternoon. And let's face it- I am a bicycle mechanic, not so much a fence mender! 

I'm not sure we made any difference in the situation with the fence in the moment, but we did begin to mend another fence. That being the one between two parties that maybe saw each other as adversaries in the beginning. Afterward? I cannot speak to what the landowner was feeling, but we came home and had a good discussion about how to deal with a situation like this, and to have compassion on a stranger. We learned that owning up to your responsibilities is the right thing to do, and that sometimes that can lead to better outcomes. (For one thing, the police did not issue a ticket to my son.) 

There will be consequences to come that must be dealt with. Insurance, fixing the bumper on the truck, and maybe some unforeseen issues. But I am happy and grateful it wasn't worse, and in the end, if there were lessons learned and (hopefully) remembered by my son? 

It was all worth it then.