Untitled

Shawn called in on Monday saying he had "personal issues" he needed to deal with and went to work at the welding gig--where supposedly things like safety had been corrected.

I personally had a good feeling about it all morning until Shawn called me on his lunch break.  He said first thing, they had a safety meeting.  All good intentions aside, literally less than 5 minuets after the safety meeting a man was screaming "Get it off me!  Get it off me!"

Apparently while lifting a panel, 2 on one side were ready, two men on the other side were not and it landed on one's foot.  The man's foot is broken.  On another occasion, a clamp broke and began to fall towards one of the workers.  Thankfully, luckily, the worker saw it just in time before it hit him in the back of the head with about 800 pounds of metal.

Shawn debated this all day, thinking this may be his only chance to weld.  "Do I go back to a job I hate, or do what I love and just wait to get hurt?"  This argument lasted hours but to sum up, Shawn went back to old job where he "might" get hurt and it wasn't a definete thing.

So when he came home yesterday he had a proposal.  Shawn has ALWAYS been in love with motorcycles and yet has never had one.  He once planned to build chassis and sell them over eBay until he made enough to buy his own bike.  He did sell one, but the profit was barely worth the time and effort put into it.  He continued to buy parts here and there (to my dismay) and there they sat in the old den and the garage.

He said he wanted to talk to me first.  He proposed going into buisiness with Ray.  Ray is the guy who was hired shortly after Shawn transferred in apartment complexes.  Ray and Shawn hit it off right away and I was glad to see it because Shawn has a thing about making friends:  They always burn you and it's not worth the time and grief.

Ray is a real cool dude, his english is about 90% (this IS Texas, duh) and mostly all he does is work, work, work to support his wife and two boys.  When Shawn called in on Monday & didn't provide a thorough reason, Ray and the manager over there blew up Shawn's phone with concerned vioce mail messages.  Ray even left a message on our home answering machine saying, "...If there's anything I can do or anything you need...."

What Shawn wants to do is build mini bikes to start, then graduate to full size custom bikes, building from the profits and so forth.  We can buy much of what we need on eBay as we always do and keep everything right here in the garage.  Supplies and materials would be split down the middle, as would profits, after the cost of another round of materials.  I told Shawn I had no problems with this as it has been his second love for many, many years (I'm his first, duh)

Ray seemed really excited about the deal though Shawn did tell him to talk it over with his wife first and foremost.  Shawn does not want to be the cause of any ripples.

Sometimes things are meant to be.  Shawn started looking for a job soon after he transferred to the complex.  Shawn has also been looking for an engine guy forever, someone he could really trust.  Shawn is great with his hands, knows a lot of stuff, but knows little about engines.  Coincidenatlly, Ray knows tons about engines.  Coincidents are God's way of remaining annonymous, right?

I was at first concerned about going in with someone else as I've read story after story of two friends going into business together, one burns the other, and they never speak again.  Shawn reassured me over and over this would not happen.

This could be a really great thing & I'm interested to see how things pan out.