WHEN THE SHOP HAD TO DROP EVERYTHING | SEPTEMBER 2026 - Volume 8

September is supposed to be about full plates, and if there’s one thing I understand about that, it’s having too much on mine.

Around this time of year, our house gets a little crazy. The kids are back in school, there are sports and activities, college classes and applications, and somehow there always seems to be another form that needs to be filled out or another deadline creeping up. Then there’s the shop, which has a way of making sure there is never really a quiet day.

I can usually look at everything going on and make some sort of mental list of what needs to happen first and what can wait.

But every once in a while, something happens that completely rearranges the list for you.

This was one of those days.

A customer had a dirt bike in the shop and came by to check on the progress. My husband was talking to him about the work and going over what it was going to cost. It was a completely ordinary conversation, the kind that happens in our shop all the time.

Then the customer suddenly dropped to the floor.

At first, my husband thought he was joking.

It wasn't until he realized the man wasn't responding that everything changed. He wasn't breathing, and it appeared that he had taken what looked like his last breath.

My husband immediately started CPR.

One of our employees saw what was happening and came running. He practically vaulted over the lift and the bikes to get there, because apparently when someone is having an emergency in a motorcycle shop, you don't exactly have time to carefully walk around all the obstacles.

Another customer, who happened to be in the shop and was also in the Army, was told to call 911.

The shop went from talking about motorcycle repairs to everyone doing whatever they could to keep this man alive.

My husband and our employee continued chest compressions and rescue breathing while they waited for the ambulance. There wasn't a lot of time to think about anything other than what was happening right in front of them.

After what felt like much longer than it actually was, the customer finally came around.

He was confused and didn't really understand what had happened. My husband worked to keep him responsive while they waited for the paramedics, trying to keep him from slipping back out again.

The ambulance arrived in roughly five minutes, although when you're standing there watching someone fight to stay conscious, five minutes feels like a very long time.

The paramedics took over, and even then, the customer lost consciousness several more times while they were treating him. Eventually they got him onto the gurney and took him to the hospital.

And then we were left standing in the shop, looking at everything that had been going on just minutes before.

The motorcycles were still there. The tools were still sitting where we'd left them. The estimates still needed to be written. There were still phone calls to make and work that needed to be finished.

But none of it mattered anymore.

Thankfully, the customer survived.

He's still grateful that my husband reacted as quickly as he did, and we're grateful that he happened to be standing in our shop when it happened. If he had been somewhere else, alone, things could have turned out very differently.

It's a strange thing about owning a shop. People come through the door because they need something fixed. Sometimes it's a tire, sometimes a carburetor, sometimes an electrical problem that has everyone scratching their heads. You get used to thinking about parts, labor, estimates and whether the customer is going to approve the repair.

You don't necessarily expect that someone is going to walk in one afternoon and need you to help save his life.

That day was a pretty good reminder that not everything that comes through our doors can be put on an estimate.

September's theme for us is having a full plate, and I think that's true in more ways than we usually realize. Sometimes the things filling our lives are responsibilities we've chosen. Sometimes they're things we love. Sometimes they're things we wish we had a little more room for.

And sometimes something lands on your plate that you never saw coming.

When that happens, you don't get to decide whether you're too busy or whether there's room for it. You just have to deal with what's in front of you.

That day, the motorcycles could wait. The paperwork could wait. Everything else could wait.

A life couldn't.

We've had people come through our doors carrying enough baggage to fill a truck, but every now and then, the story attached to a motorcycle is stranger than the motorcycle itself. Next month, we'll tell you about one that involved a dark night, an unexpected visitor, and a situation none of us saw coming.