Greetings. My name is Sue. Andy kindly gave me access to his blog so that I could share my thoughts and feelings about our mutual friend Shannon Criss. Thank you Andy.

Since Andy has an entry titled Shannon’s Garage, I’ll start by sharing my time in Shannon’s garage.

Though not a regular attendee, I joined in on a few Wednesday nights in Shannon’s garage. I usually only stayed an hour or so since it was clear this was time for the boys to do their stuff. I would sit back and smile as I watched them discuss what needed fixing, how to fix, fix it, not fix it. It was comical, yet organized and manly.

The other times I spent in Shannon’s garage were about he and I. I recall one of my first visits. Shannon gave me the tour. The braces and casts. The tools. The fishing rods. The race leathers. The trophies. The custom-built workbench. And of course the photo collection. I went home knowing much more about this man I was falling I love with and longing to have my photo on his garage door.

On subsequent visit I was sitting on the LT as Shannon was futzing with something. In a pathetic little girl voice I rarely use I said “I’ll never have a photo on the garage door since I am only a passenger”. Shannon stopped what he was doing and walked over to me. He took my hands, said it didn’t matter and asked me what was something I was passionate about. I told him waterskiing. He asked me to give him a photo of me skiing.

I searched through my photos to find the perfect one. On the water. Off the water. In a tournament or not. I finally decided on a photo taken on Lake Shasta. It was at dusk so the lighting was lovely. The spray was a perfect arch.

The next evening I went to Shannon’s to deliver my photo and found him standing at that perfectly built workbench cleaning some sort of motor part. I gave him the photo and told him the story about when it was taken. He handed it back to me and asked to put it on the door. Because the photo is an 8X10, it took a bit of time to find a spot that wouldn’t overlap with another photo. Funny, when I looked for the photo during Shannon’s Life Celebration, I had to giggle at how out of place it looked amongst all the riding memorabilia. But never mind that, Shannon wanted my photo on his garage door.

And I saw something surprising on the garage door the afternoon.

Shannon and I were on a typical Sunday ride. We ended up at the Mystery Spot as I had not been there. What a crazy place that it. Anyway, we picked up a bumper sticker. While we were dating it was on the wall near the door into the house. As the years past, I would visit Shannon but did not spend much time in the garage so I didn’t notice it was gone. I was surprised to see the bumper sticker on the garage door. That day was a special to him as it was to me.

I got a call one evening from Shannon asking me to come over and help him. He said he needed another set of hands. When I arrived I saw the LT lying on its side. Oh my, I was taken by surprise. He looked sheepishly at me and apologized for letting “your baby” I loved that bike, more about that later, tip over. We heaved and hoed and got the LT upright. On occasion I would tease him about it.

Something I don’t think many garage visitors noticed was a map of Great Britain pinned to the underside of the rafter boards above the mailbox. Pushpins marked every place Shannon visited in the Mother Country. Shannon and I have a common love of GB so he set up a stool for me to stand on so that I could add pins to every place I had visited. When I was done, we shared stories about our individual visits and talked about visiting together one day.

I liked to watch Shannon move around his garage. His tool boxes where neat and tidy. Bottles, cans, jars set out in what I assumed was a logical pattern. I know if I wanted the half-inch, wood handled, square, angled, wrench with the nick on the top, OK I made that up, he could walk up to a tool box, open the drawer and find it. That man was orderly.

I received many phone calls from Shannon using a speakerphone he saved from a junk pile at IBM. I could tell he was walking around the garage doing this and that, chatting away about the day’s news. The garage, where he found, and created, happy times.

Shannon loved being in the garage. I can picture him now. Oh, I miss Mon Petite.

Shannon’s garage.