Adventioneering

I have decided that deer are not my friend. I’ve also decided that I think
since the state of Kansas goes to the trouble to tell me when and when
I cannot kill deer, and charges me for the privilege, that clearly they
are exerting property ownership over deer.

In other words, a piece of state property wandered into the road and
damaged my precious. I want to be compensated.

I couldn’t care less about the plastics damage, and the damage to the
fog-lights and fairing. All that was coming off anyways, it’s just
a question of the body damage. The wing panel is bent slightly on the
edge, but I think at this point that it is salvageable. The headlight
box is totally trashed, but only the front panel and side panel. The top
and bottom panels of the box are okay.

I did some research and it turns out that he headlight boxes are actually
this huge $590 part called the “radiator support panel”. Replacing it
with a new part would require tearing the whole front of the truck off,
including the radiators and A/C condensers, drilling out the welds, and
then welding a new one on.

I am going to sit on it a bit until I am clear thinking and decide if I
want to go through that or not, or if I just want to find some guy to weld
a couple steel panels back in place. If someone welded a box together
and straightened out the bent edge of that wing, I could cut the holes
for the headlight, turn signal, etc myself and put it all back together.

On the good side, I kicked off another useless part, the mud flap. It was
the last one left, and I think it didn’t like the treatment this weekend.

This weekend I think I’ll pull it out, wash it off, and pull the plastic
and crap off the undamaged side. A sawzall will probably trim the bumper
down into something a little more useful, all those unnecessary and
unwanted pieces.