Rides and Tales

For the past year, or so, my daughter has been riding this 2007 Yamaha 250 Virago
(now, “V Star”). I’ve been a Honda man for a long time to begin with, and am a proponent of liquid cooled machines, but I got to  admit that the littlest Virago is an impressive small cruiser.

I’ve owned and installed Slipstreamers in the past so I didn’t balk at the unfamiliar design of the hardware.

There’s not much room for the fudge factor on the curvy Virago handlebars but the Spitfire went on without any more hassle than is inherent with the handle bar-mount design.

Part 1:

In Ireland, there is a structure built to mark the Winter Solstice that pre-dates the oldest pyramids by 2,000 years.
That’s probably neither here, nor there, but at this time of year there is always a lot of discussion about  Christmas coinciding with older Germanic or Roman winter observances.  It has a accusatory ring to it,  like the heathens got ripped  off, or something.

Anyhow, I just wanted to say to the detractors, “We had it first, so just back  up”.

Part 2:

My missus is  a creative kind of gal and during Christmas time she really shines.  This year,  when not  turning starfish into Santas  to sell to the tourists , she managed to make herself a set of antlers and strung some tinsel on them for decorative  Christmas head wear.  They came out so well that I didn’t realize they weren’t real antlers for a couple of days.

She wore them when she played bass for the  Johnson Grass band, at a toy run, a couple weeks ago. I told her at the time that they looked a little pagan, or something, that I could feature a native shaman wearing them.

I was very disappointed with the guys, though, when I found out they’d been around her all day without complimenting her rack. (it turns out they’re leg men).

Part 3:

Good writing, like all art, uses the element of transition.

So,  Christmas morn,  Jill gets up and dons a plaid skirt,  her antlers, then cranks some Scottish music (and a little Zydeco) on the juke box.  I played it cool.  She was some kind of tickled when, later,  she opened my gift to her, an Irish drum, called a bodhran [BAW-rahn].

This is a popular instrument used in traditional and traditional-style Celtic bands (including the one playing on our Victrola, earlier).  Wacky-pedia tells us that the bodhran is a fairly new addition to Irish music and its particular history can only be traced to the 1600s, though it may be related to an earlier  “war drum”.

In her right hand is the hardwood beater, or “tipper”.

We be jammin’, soon, man.

Yesterday, that sexy granny reminded me that her company’s Christmas dinner was scheduled for the p.m. and that she and our daughter would be pleased if I’d join them, for said soiree, at
La Playa Mexican Restaurant, in Port Aransas.
(La Playa [lah PLAH-yah] is Spanish for “The Beach”.)

Our date was for 7:00 p.m. and I knew by five that the big yella bike would remain in the shed while the little red truck conveyed me yonder. I figured daughter would appreciate not having to ride back home with her mom in what promised to be 40°F.(5°C.) weather and possible rain, not that I’m any big-time fan of riding in cold wet air, myself.

Our pc is configured to display the current weather and forecast for both Flour Bluff and Port Aransas on the homepage. My missus doesn’t always check it closely, though. In fact, about an hour before I was going to leave she called and asked that I bring her chaps. I taunted her, of course.

The feast was enjoyable. The girls’ employers and co-workers are great fun.

At the end of the evening daughter and I piled into the truck and headed for the big Bluff. I figured the fan belt was squealing because of the cold, seeing as how I’d replaced it recently. The squealing stopped a few miles down the road, though, when the belt broke, the idiot lights came on and the temperature gauge pegged.
I put on my emergency flashers and pulled onto the shoulder as the little woman whizzed on by, daughter’s cell phone safely tucked away in her saddle bag (I don’t own a cell phone).

Not wanting to end up standing in the cold wind, answering damn-fool questions for a county cop, I pulled the truck off the dark shoulder and into a swanky hotel’s parking lot. Of course, when the sexy granny came back looking for us, she was looking on the wrong side of the street and missed us twice (she was moving at a pretty good clip, too).
So… Daughter donned her black leather motorcycle jacket over her tie-dyed hoodie and I put on my riding jacket and we braved the cold to find the swanky hotel’s office.

The first sight to greet us was not the clerk but , rather, a sign informing us that we must be at least 25-years-old to register. The clerk then came out of the back office and eyed us coldly, as if we weren’t already cold enough, then asked what she could do for us.
I told her we had car trouble and asked if we could use her phone to call Flour Bluff.
She warmed, some: we weren’t intending to stay.

Daughter got on the horn to her brother while I was in the next room.
I guess the clerk overheard her telling the kid that ’she and Daddy were broke down and Mom was on the way home’, and decided that, perhaps,  we were  not a filthy old  lecher and biker honey team out to desecrate a swanky hotel room with our  shenanigans, after all.
As a factual matter, she became quite sympathetic and got my name and number to
(she says) pass on to the next shift in case they have questions about my truck. Then again, she may be considering placing an erotic phone call to the distinguished owner of a fine Nissan mini-truck. It’s happened.

The lad drove out to the island and rescued us, the truck stayed at the swanky hotel.
Jill felt so bad for having missed us that I barely had the heart to tease her about it. Barely.
The party being over, we turned out the lights, but as the song goes, “Tomorrow starts the same old thing again”.

Did you know that “Aransas” is a bastardized Basque word that means ‘a difficult undertaking’?