Take a moment to think it through...

The other day on Facebook, I mentioned one of Finagle`s famous Laws `Everything takes longer and costs more`  For some reason, I was reminded of another one- `If anything can go wrong it will, and at the worst possible moment,` This in turn reminded me of a story roughly in connection with motorcycling which yet has a universal moral.
  I had just started work at RNAD Bull Point and rode my bike (not this one ) in to work each day. The subject of bike maintenance came up at lunch and one of my colleagues told me the following cautionary tale.
  He too had had a motorbike in his youth and was intending to carry out some work on the clutch. Bike engines are very close to the ground and to avoid standing on his head for hours, he thought he would raise the bike a couple of feet off the ground. He put two piles of three breeze blocks five feet apart and placed a sturdy scaffold plank between them. Another plank was placed at the end of the horizontal plank to form a ramp. So far, so good. He then attempted to wheel the bike up the ramp but found it was too heavy. Without another thought, he climbed astride his bike and kick-started the engine, then easily rode the heavy machine up the ramp stopping neatly half way along the plank. It was at this point that he was struck by the conclusion he should have considered before he took this course. The plank was too narrow for his feet to reach and he was two feet off the ground...
   He did not have much time to consider his predicament, as the bike started to fall over, and he had no option but to make a kangaroo-like leap to safety abandoning the poor bike which fell heavily to the ground, bending the handlebar and foot-rest. A roar of unsympathetic laughter greeted this conclusion from the other diners listening. Still there is a clear moral to the tale isn`t there?  But it IS funny, as other people`s misfortunes often are...

    Bye for now, going to check the car for its Controle Technique visit tomorrow. At least it has four wheels and can`t fall over...