The School of Hard Knocks

Although our liberal education system will disagree with me, it is a proven fact that the school of hard knocks is the best teacher. There is nothing like failure to make one amend one's ways and to do better with much improved results. (But then of course you can't make the poor little ones fail, it may hurt their self-esteem - hogwash).
    Anyway, this is not a tirage about liberals and conservatives, but about an incident that occured some years ago, which caused us to use the terminoly used by Castlecraft Trailers in their website, "go from this" - "to this".
    One of the reasons we went from this; Bikes on top of the car

to the picture below is for one simple reason; "Hard Knocks", bikes in the canoe in the back

is because of a hard knock caused by this, though not this particular one, but one in Pensacola FL.

Just five or 10 minutes prior to arriving at the hotel, which we knew had an overhang at the entrance we said to ourselves, do not forget we are taller, considerably taller, with the bikes on top.
    The reminder didn't work, we drove under the awning at slow speed, "Bang / crunch", terrible sounds as we looked at each other and said "the bikes." We slowly backed up without causing additional damage.
    Interestingly enough the bikes suffered no damage, one had a bit of paint on it but that was it. The damage was to the Yakima made Subaru bike rack and unfortunately to the roof of the car.
    We completed our Florida trip on when we returned home the car was put in the body shop. $1,100.00 later for the roof and about $250.00 later the cross bars and bike rack was good as new.
    Since that trip the bikes have travelled in the canoe, which actually has improved gas mileage quite a bit as
windflow over the car is much less disturbed or disrupted.