New York Times: "BMW’s Boxer: A Classic Design Is Updated and Refined " [Archive]

AZ-J

07-05-2009, 01:39 PM

Jeff,

Can I admit that your post and that article made me cry?

At 11 in 1968, I came home from Summer Camp, and there was Dad's new R50/2 in the garage. In the ensuing years, Dad taught me to operate it, then ride it (at 11 I was not quite tall enough to reach the floor from the seat, I was 5'2", that took two years to 13 5'9"). I rode that bike in parking lots for hours at a time, from 13-17, and when I was licensed at 17 (in NY) rode it for another 1.5 years, when my parents split for a nasty divorce in 1975-77. I only got to use the bike sparsely from then until 1980.

In 1981, my new stepbrother became driving age in FL (15) and I received a call from Dad. The 50/2 was being crated and shipped to me at my new Tucson address. I rode it to 1991, when Dad told me to garage it and get another "everyday" use bike, or sell it and get another bike. Not being a handy mechanic, and too busy with wife and babies, I sold it, and bought another bike. Years past, and I had several bikes, but Dad passed in 2005 during surgery, trying to come to my younger daughter's Bat Mitzvah months later.

I now have an R1200S (which is not the HP2 Sport) but the closest bike to it, which is not it. I have thought so many times how I wished Dad lived long enough to see this bike and this "association" from the old boxer to a new one.

That article just reinforced what I have been thinking for the last year since I got the R1200S. It so makes me wish I could turn the clock around. So, the article makes me cry as it shows me, how and how much I miss Dad.

'Nuff said.