Faith is a pretty name. We don’t do gifts, either, she likes to surprise me sometimes but I’m with you on that one—gifts are a daily tradition, not annual. I have an R1 story for you, @galenkp...
Having grown up on bikes, back in ‘09 I built my first Harley, I called it my hot rod, since then I’ve had several. My hot rod had 1,586 CC’s, 118 HP to the tire. Nothing could hang with that thing, nothing. People in their corvettes, muscle cars, crotch rockets, didn’t matter. When someone would instigate a race next to me at a light or wherever, it was on—nothing stood a chance.
One night my buddy Dougie pulled up at the hall on his brand new “Yamaha R1,” whatever that was. I had my bike, eventually he wanted to race, I went through the shpeal about how he didn’t stand a chance—yata yata. Well, sir, my goodness gracious, I can’t believe they sell those things to just anyone! That same hot rod that ate up anything on the road didn’t stand a chance to that thing! Dude, I didn’t stand a chance! I could hit 105MPH in first gear on that bike, by the time I hit second, he was 100 yards in front of me. I couldn’t believe it. To this day, compared to Ducati’s and all of the others, that R1 was the fastest thing I’d seen.
Hope you enjoyed the story, thanks for striking the memory. Here’s that hot rod and, yes, that’s the living room. Cars park in the garage, where washer/dryers, dart boards etc go, hot rods park in the living room.