Photo Hunt - Chipped

Theme: Chipped ** Become a Photo Hunter

It's another Saturday's Photo Hunt and the theme is "chipped." I love taking photos and this is just a lot of fun. The only requirement is that you use only the photos you take. No copying others or using photos from some webite. Besides, using your own is more challenging. Sometimes I go out looking for something new to use and sometimes I use past photos, like this time. That is okay. So go on over to tnchick and join the fun.

It doesn't technically start till sometime Saturday morning, but I'm working very early tomorrow morning to help pay for my college books. So Photo Hunter visitors, I will be by later in the afternoon to check out your cool photos.

These photos came to mind from a trip to Beaver Creek, Colorado in September 2007. My husband and I went away for the weekend on an all expense paid business retreat. We were the only ones to show up at the five-star hotel on motorcycles. It was a retreat just riding up and back. The parking attendants made us park our own bikes - no tip there, lol.

Well, on the way back home I kind of chipped my helmet (see photo above). The duct tape fix is kind of hiding it. The whole incident broke my heart.

You see, we were on our way back home and I was on a motorcycle scavenger hunt that summer in a contest with the Mountain Shadow Riders (a chapter of Women on Wheels (R) . I got a lot of elevation signs on this trip and actually one first place!!! The above photo is one of my elevation signs. I stopped to get a scenic photo (see below) and my bike was leaning a bit more than usual parked in the dirt. I left the engine running, to get that quick photo, and left my helmet on the seat. It vibrated right off the bike and onto the ground - ugh.

I just wanted to cry. I was stomp'n mad at myself (literally). That helmet was only a few months old and it was chipped and the visor snapped at the right hinge. We weren't sure if it was going to be fixable or not. Luckily, I was able to order all new parts and I still wear it today. Yes, I know once it's dropped you are suppose to replace it, but that was one expensive helmet and I couldn't afford to do that.

I tried riding without the visor, but it had snowed the night before and it was darn cold. My eyes were tearing up bad from the cold wind, even with sunglasses on. So after a few stops of trying a few things, my husband (Sir Duct Tape) reaches into his saddle bag (with a MacGyver twinkle in his eyes) and promply whipped out his hunk'n role of "fix-all" duct tape and fixed my helmet right up. Larry the Cable Guy would be proud, hee hee.

After that, everytime we stopped somewhere that I needed to take my helmet off my husband would come over and carefully peel up the duct tape so I could get it off. We got some weird looks. Even more confused looks when he would duct tape it all back!! Life is never dull.

Wishing you a "No Chipped" and duct tape free weekend in your part of the world ,

Biker Betty :)