Monday, December 21, 2015

Christmas /Birthday

I am one of those fortunate/unfortunate ones who has a birthday close to Christmas. For the most part it was kinda drag. It was hard to have birthday parties because it was so close to Christmas. Sometimes you would get the "combined" gift ('here's your birthday and Xmas gift!'). There was occasion when it worked to my advantage. Like in 1974 (75?). For a couple of years I had put a brochure on my dads dresser of a Yamaha 80 I wanted. I made it very clear that if they got me this for Christmas, it was totally OK to make it a birthday/Christmas gift! Heck... I think I even mentioned it could apply to next years gifts as well.



I still can remember that feeling one Christmas. All the gifts had been opened and... no Yamaha. My dad asked me to go into the den and grab something he needed. I remembering being mildly disappointed there was no Yamaha this year, and slowly walked over to the Den to grab whatever it was for my dad. And there it was! It looked brand new although the headlight was broken from when my dad had pulled it out of his station wagon. I was star struck. Numb. My first real motorcycle! Heck this thing was even street legal!
I seem to remember it snowed that Christmas. I had never used a clutch before so learning in the snow was hard but I was determined. We had family coming over so I couldn't ride it much that day, but the next day was spent cruising the back alleys of my neighbourhood on that GT80. I probably slept beside that bike that night.




4 comments:

MARSHALL OVERCLOTH said...

great X-mas story

MotorParade said...

Love it!

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Jimmy Mac On Two Wheels said...

Awesome story! What a great dad. Merry Christmas.