Ya know, my wife will not even BEGIN to THINK about approaching THAT topic. Here's why:
I grew up riding motorcycles with my dad. Dirtbikes mostly, but they were fun as hell and its where I fell in love with it. My first bike was this little Yamaha DT100 enduro that I rebuilt with my dad dang near from scratch. Most people talk about a basket case bike, well this litterally came inside a milk crate and a basket.
2nd bike was another Yamaha, this time IT175. Oh these bikes were awesome back in the day. I had that one from the time I was about 13/14 yrs old, until the day I re-enlisted in the Army. And here's where the story begins...
I'm at this program for those that were Navy, and are going Army. I'd been away from my family for over a month and it was starting to get to me, and the place I was then at only allowed 1 hour of free time. Not much, but gotta call the wife in that time and relay important information. So I call this one night, and she says to me, "Hello love! Guess what?! I finally got a solution to that weight issue we were having for when the Army moves us to wherever your next command is!"
Now, for those that are not military, if you are having the gov't ship your household goods to your next duty station, you are allotted a certain amount of weight depending on your rank. We were not allotted that much.
So here I'm thinking, "Sweet, did you sell the armoir? The entertainment center that's to big for our current TV? Did you sell the extra bed we don't need?"
Excitedly...emphasis on that...EXCITEDLY...she tells me, "Nope! I sold your bike!"
......
Ten minutes go by, she says she can hear me breathing, but I do not...say...one...word. Finally, I have to know, "Ok...who did you sell it to?"
"The neighbor across the street from us, he gave us a really good deal on it."
I love my wife, but when I asked how much and heard the response, I could have grabbed my weapon and shot the pay phone, praying to God that bullets could travel through a phone line to bust her in the head.
50...dollars. That is NOT a typo. Fifty, five-zero.
I told her I'd talk to her the next day after we had been to the grenade range. I didn't call her that night, or for the next week and a half. I was that pissed off. You'd think exploding grenades and firing clip after clip of an M-16, combined with beating your friends up in Combatives would help relieve some of that stress...but it doesn't. Your bike becomes part of you. When you're driving a cage and you see someone riding their bike, all you can think of is being on yours, and how fun it would be to feel that freedom. She knew I was extremely upset with her about it, and whenever she tried to apologize, I quickly cut her off until she never brought it up again.
For the next 18 months after I completed that part of my training and got to where I'm currently at, and after the family joined me, I kept dropping lines about missing my bike, how nice the weather was, how in Cali they have some of the best dunes for dirtbike jumping, etc etc.
Finally, gas prices spike sky high and I get another idea. We own a minivan with an 18 gallon gas tank. So I start to play THAT card. "Honey, you're not going to like this, I just filled up the gas in the van." Oh? How much? "80 bucks."
Imagine this going on for a few weeks until finally the total litterally equals 120 bucks to fill up the tank, and I have to use our cash card twice just to fill it up all the way. Finally, one morning, I break that price to her, and this is what I hear:
"God, we got to find a cheaper way to get you back and forth to work! Do what you have to do: get your bike, get a sma..."
That's all I heard. Three months later I was the proud owner of a 2008 Cobalt FASTER Blue FZ6.
<bows>
. This was to pay for the deposit for our first home together.
