Honest....the check's in the mail!
And that's the latest word from GEICO. They mailed the check to Patriot, and when it arrives the parts for my Softail will get ordered and repairs can begin.
Backing up a little, Patriot Harley Davidson's estimate didn't quite jibe with GEICO's, with a small difference of about $2,500! Patriot found damage in places I would never have thought to look, and I'm glad I took the bike to them for the work. GEICO never put up a fight, and readily agreed to Patriot's estimate, so once again, they get Gold Stars for being cool to work with.
Now even the lower estimate dwarfed the lousy hundred bucks the minivan guy offered for me to forget about the wreck, which says a lot for his stupidity, especially if he though I was dumb enough to take it. Fuck him. Let his insurance company pay the big bucks, and maybe they'll raise his rates so high he'll be extra vigilant for bikes in the future.
All that is the good news. The bad news is that part of the repair involves tin and paint work, which might take a month or more since it comes from the Harley factory. I'm hoping for very early August, but we'll have to wait and see. Maybe I'll get lucky...maybe not. At any rate, when I get it back there will be new fenders, new back tire (the wheel is OK), new kickstand, new rear lights, etc. etc., and it'll be ready for the road.
For the foreseeable future, I'll be riding the Joker, bitching about a sore ass and a rough ride. And also complaining that with no back seat and rear foot pegs, the odds on me picking up a passenger for a midnight ride are just about zero, at least until the Softail is back in the garage.
On a side note, I learned this: I will NEVER be careless about those fenders again. It turns out that just the rear fender, painted up in the Copper/Pearl Black/Pin-Striped 105th Anniversary color theme, runs damn near $900.00!!! Next time I'm tying something down, you can bet I'll be more careful. Yikes!
In other news........
In just 2 weeks, Southern Comfort jumped up 1,000 page views, to well over 11,000 total hits, and now averages more than 500 page views per week. With the increased readership, I need to clean up my act a little. I tried out a new format, along with a "Best of SC" set of options over in the right rail to make popular articles easier to find. The list of popular posts is based, in descending order, on the number of times an article was read. If you like or hate the new format, let me know.
Cowboy
