17 Nov 11-17-16 We Can Do Anything With the Right Tools

My best friend when I was little was Jim Copley. We still keep in touch and every time I head back home, I try to stop in to see Jim and his family. Well, Jim got his first motorcycle when he was 8. My dad told me I couldn’t get a motorcycle until I was 12, so Jim had his for 4 years before I got mine.
When I was finally 12, I decided I’d by my first motorcycle from my older brother. And this turned out to be my first lesson on negotiations. I was sitting at the dinner table and I asked Curt if I could by his motorcycle. Curt said, sure, make an offer. So I told him I would pay him $700 for his motorcycle. He said “you got a deal”. I looked at him and said I thought you would make a counteroffer. He said no way, that was $300 more than he wanted anyway. I looked at Dad to see if he would step in and help me out. Dad told me a deal was a deal and I ended up paying Curt $700 hard earned dollars for that motorcycle. Lesson learned again.
That bike wasn’t all that great, so after about a year I sold it and ended up buying a Suzuki RM 250. Which is one of those racing dirt bikes. You know, the ones that make a whole lot of noise when you give it gas. It was loud, fast, and fun to ride. Jim Copley had a Honda XR 185. We rode all over the place on those motorcycles. I’m amazed at how far away from our homes we could go on our motorcycles. Somehow we would find trails and end up 20 miles from home. And equally amazing, we would find our way back. It’s a good thing Jim’s motorcycle had a light on it because mine did not and we needed it at times.

If any of you have ever had dirt bikes, you spend about as much time riding them as you do fixing them. Jim Copley’s basement and my basement looked like a motorcycle shop. We had parts scattered everywhere. I think in most cases, we could fix whatever was broken (which quite often was a lot). But I always remember Jim telling me that we could fix anything with the right tools.
I think of that saying a lot now. It’s true. We can fix anything with the right tools. In our line of work, remodeling, we have all kinds of tools we can use to fix all kinds of problems in your house. Every trade has special tools, whether it’s plumbing, electrical, sheetrock, or painting. But they also have special skills they’ve learned over the years and those skills are a tool as well.
So I like the saying that you can fix anything with the right tools because it’s a positive way of looking at things. If there’s a problem or a challenge or if something really is broken, between what tools you possess in your mind and in your hands, I am quite certain you can fix anything.