I take it the "oooooh's and aaaaaah's" translated as "how did you not already bash those in?" I would have to admit, it would take a lot of finese and patient navigating to avoid such a mishap for so long... Either that, or a lot of spare fenders! ![Yup yup :yupyup:](https://board.marlincrawler.com/Smileys/marlin/yupyup.gif)
I made it almost 3 years like that, not much finese allowed with stock gearing for the most part.