Throwback Thursday: Christmas lights...

Here's a posting of mine to the British Cars email list -- a primitive, text-only form of social media from the 1980s. This one is dated December 8, 1989, just two days before my oldest daughter's second birthday, and it introduces something which we would go on to do every year: put the top down, bundle up, and look at Christmas lights. In later years, I'd take the kids out one by one in whatever two-seater I had at the moment -- I've always had at least one. Very special holiday memories for all of us.

And, in spite of the calendar saying it's April, it's an appropriate memory. Just last night, we returned from a visit with the same daughter, who along with her husband have just bought their first home. We sat on their new patio after dinner, sipping wine and just talking. After I left, it occurred to me that I had brought over a half-gallon of locally produced espresso ice cream to share after dinner, and we never even opened it.

Proof positive that if you raise your kids around British sports cars, they will grow up to be more fun than ice cream.

Enjoy this memory!


Well, okay, so I'm a winter wimp... Still, I love northern California winters and British convertibles. I've had the MGB out the past couple of days (we just celebrated our first anniversary!), enjoying the morning fog, the evening condensation on the inside of the windscreen, the cold air whipping my cheeks and blasting down the nape of my neck in the one place where the scarf and the hat don't meet.

Next week or so, I'm going to do something that I've been longing to do since, well, for over two years at least. We have a baby girl (sniff, she's not a baby anymore, she just got her first Big Girl Bed, and we packed up the crib) who'll be two on Sunday. She *loves* the cars, especially the MG. Loves to ride in it; during the summer months, when I came home, she'd run to the screen door, make such a fuss that Kim let her out and Torrey would run to my car and clamor to be let in. I'd set her in the passenger seat and ask, "Ready?" "Go!" she'd yell, and we'd race all the way into the garage at the heady rate of 2 or 3 mph... The Targa Florio, the Marathon de la Route, and the Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans together couldn't be as exciting.

Well, sometime in the next week, I'm going to bundle her up, put the seat in the B, wrap myself in my big jacket and cap, and we're going out to look at Christmas lights. With the top down. The only thing finer would be if it were a YA Tourer -- they have four seats -- but I figure this is as close as we can get to a one-horse open sleigh without buying oats.