Staggies

Finally finished it! Many of my older friends know that I loved to ride motorcycle when I was in my early twenties.  Having kids and being focused on them had kept me from buying a new bike up until 7 years ago when I came across this one sitting in some kids garage.  I threw him an offer and he was good with it, so I brought the bike home. It wasn’t running when I bought it but I took care of that. Then it was on to cleaning it up and getting it painted.  I got the plastic prepped and ready for paint, and then life got in the way of finishing it. Once we had the house built and the kids got deeper into sports, I just didn’t have the time, or even the desire to work on it that much.  I did scratch the itch to ride by picking up a couple of dirt bikes for the kids and I to rip around on, but that only lasted a few years.  It lasted long enough for Hayden to ignite a love for riding though. He didn’t want to see the dirt bikes go, but they just didn’t get ridden near enough to keep them.  Back in late March to early April, he asked what I had planned for this bike. I told him that I just wanted it gone to the highest bidder because I had no time and no desire to even mess with it anymore.  That’s when he asked if he could have it. He thought it would be fun to finish it together and then he would have himself a bike to get around on. Of course I was a little leery as a father, but I knew how much I loved them when I was young so I wasn’t going to tell him no. Once I agreed to it, it was all he could think about. Most of my last texts from him are asking when parts will be here, or links to videos he had found of what it sounded like.  It wasn’t very often that he was excited about anything, but he was pumped about this.  After my beautiful son left us, I made this thing a priority. I spent a lot of hours out in the garage trying to get it as close to perfect as I could.  With the help of some amazing friends and a whole lot of temper tantrums, I have finally been able to call it done.  Now I haven’t said much of anything really about all of this on Facebook, but I just wanted to share this with all of you because it meant so very much to him. It has been something that I could pour myself into when I missed him most, and it has helped me get though a lot of tough days.  Now I get to ride it in honor of him. I know he would have loved this thing as much as I will.