My Sweet New "Old" Scooter Needs a Name!

Ok everyone, you have to check this out!  This sweet little 1984 Honda Spree has 154 miles on it, spent it's life in an old guys basement, and is now mine!  It took a bit of tinkering to get the severely varnished carburetor and gas tank cleaned up and operational, but now this baby "runs brand new"!  She now purrs like a kitten!
I have always wanted a moped for tooling around town.  Plus the fact that I use way less gas to run to the local market makes my cheap heart skip a beat.  You have to see my big, dumb ass on this thing.  I already had a road rage incident with a meathead in a van that seemed to think I didn't belong on the road  on a 2 horsepower scooter.  He got the bird for his efforts, and if I could have gotten him to stop I would have given him much more!



We gotta come up with a name for this little cutie since our girls love our cars to have names too ( a fun game they started with their Papa Jack and Grandma Suzanne, who are both killer creative at coming up with car names.)  I thought I would reach out to see if any of you had any ideas.  I consider it a "she" so keep that in mind.  Also she is white in color and is a one seater.

Please share your creative name ideas in my comments section.  My kids will choose the best name and we will announce the "Moped Title" by Monday 8/1/11
Your prize - The privilege of knowing just how damn creative you are and also knowing that our family will be using your name choice joyfully for many years to come.  Put your thinking caps on!

Have fun!!!!

Happy trails -

Wacky dad

Good Woman

Okay, I have to give some screen time to my wife today.  We have been married 16.5 years and have known each other since the early 80's when we hadn't even become teenagers yet.  We met taking sailing lessons at East Greenwich Yacht club in Rhode Island.  Then as we got older, we became instructors together and taught all the EGYC rug rats that followed in our footsteps how to sail.  She was the patient, outgoing instructor who taught the beginner and A. beginner group.  I was the hard ass racing instructor who tortured those who dared to join my intense group.  It was a great way to spend our summers and share our love of sailing together.  We still share that hobby today and happily are passing it on to our girls who have joined the Yacht Clubs Youth sailing program now renamed Greenwich Bay Sailing association 

So enough with the background on us.  Time to get to this post's topic.  I wanted to take a moment today to show you just how great this wife of mine is.  I was looking through old video from one of our recent family holiday weekends.  We stayed at a hotel while visiting family during that weekend.  The hotel had a pool.  We told the kids we'd bring our bathing suits with us and head to the pool later in the day when we settled in at the hotel after visiting Cathy's family.  We got to our room and the kids hurriedly dressed for the swimming fun.  Cathy and I were both tired from the drive to see the family and from all the holiday socializing but we put on big-kid pants, got into our suits too and headed down to the pool.  When we stepped through the door of the humid filled, sticky little pool room we both looked at each other with the "what the hell were we thinkin' look".

It was a crowded, loud, hot and chaotic scene we had just walked into.  And to add salt to the wound, the crowd we were going to be sharing this pool with seemed a little rough around the edges (no judgement here, just knew that my Marine dad protective instincts went on alert).  Right then and there I knew I sure as hell was not going in that pool and it was all I could do not to turn around, leave the whole family in the dust and run like hell back to our room.  But again, I pulled up my big-boy pants a little higher and ventured into the chaos (and for anyone who knows me personally, you know that just the crowded space I had to walk into would have been enough to turn me on my heels and get-the-hell-outta-Dodge).


(While waching video - Side note 1, check out the poor bastard at about 52sec in who comes into the frame...that sorry sucker could have been me and notice that dad is heading for the ladder asap...
Side note 2, the young girl Cathy is talking to sitting on the edge of the pool is Cathy's cousin Ellen.  She came over with her sisters to go swimming with us - NONE OF THEM WENT N. LOL)

We walked into the pool room and found one tiny little spot to put our stuff at.  Our kids were chompin' at the bit to get into the pool but I was having a Papa Mario moment, also known as the The Asciolla family curse, aka germaphobia.  I was having me a low grade panic attack.  It was all I could do to just sit in a chair in this mess of cooties.  No way in hell was I getting in that skin-cell filled, virus collecting, bacteria incubating pool of nasty.  The wife saw the panic in my face. As she got herself and the kids ready to plunge in, she asked me if I was coming too.  I minced no words... "NO WAY IN HELL", was my response.  She did the Cathy head -tilt and tried a little convincing including mentioning that she too thought this scene was pretty gross but was willing to go in and the kids really wanted to swim.  But when I told her I wasn't even willing to take off my flip flops and place my feet (MY NASTY FEET) onto that pool deck, she knew it was a lost cause.  And this is when her "greatness" showed.  She stood up tall, spun on her heels with kids in tow and plunged herself and the Costantino Clan into that nasty bath of botulism.  Yes, I know what you are thinking, as I was also thinking that same thing at that moment..."WHAT A WOMAN!"  The family played in the pool for a good half hour, splashing around, being splashed by the spazoid kids around them and my wife smiled, laughed and made the best of it (although I watched her watch that clock like a hawk knowing that with each minute that passed, she was one step closer to getting the hell outta there and into a shower). She even took them in the whirlpool for a few minutes (I won't even go into what I was thinking about the nastiness that that sucker must have been stewing)  After a half hour we were outta there.



When all was said and done, my wife made the kids take the hottest showers of their lives, made them shampoo and soap up 2x's before getting out of the tube and then took one of the longest showers she has ever taken in her life.

So to my dear wife I say thank you.  Thank you for being the better person during this crazy family moment and making this experience all about the kids, not about yourself.  We make a good team.  I just couldn't do it, you knew it and "stepped-up"...Way to go my dear and next time, let's just stay next door at the non-pool hotel and tell the kids that the hotel  that has the pool closed forever!




Still Skerved!


Wacky Dad

Phavorite Photo Phrames

Is it done spinning 'cause I think I might puke.

What's that?  What did you say?  You want to go hunting

Beauty

They say I can ask for Anything.

    

Baaaahhhhaaaahhaaaaahaaaa

First big catch

Blue Beauty

No caption needed

Was' Up?

Captured

Running from the capture

"Cool" job

Sun Bathed Beatuy