A Belated Merry Christmas From The Gang Here At "Jack And Bark"

First, let me say: I owe return emails to at least eight readers of this site. You will all hear from me today, I think. I decided to celebrate Christmas by not writing to people or texting them back or even answering the phone.

As you can see, it was a great holiday for at least one member of the staff here at this highly-regarded blog...

Back in April, I wrote about my son's desire for a Yamaha PW50. His experience on his electric motorcycle over the course of the past two seasons has been remarkably positive, so I've been considering the idea despite the fact that, you know, I just kind of crippled myself on a motocross bike.

When a member of the local sportbikers' group listed a Yamaha TTR90 for half the price of a new 50cc bike, I figured this would be a smart way to go about it. With the new bike in the garage, John would be highly motivated to demonstrate his safe and skilful handling of his electric bike this spring. But because it be just a bit too big for him, I wouldn't feel compelled to get him riding it right away the way I would had I bought him a new CRF50 Honda at the local shop. (That's something I came this close to doing on Christmas Eve.)

So this morning we rolled out to get it. I was horrified at how enormous and powerful it appears to be. Then John swung a leg over the thing and demonstrated his ability to operate the choke and start it and balance it on tiptoe, which was even more horrifying. I figured he'd be big enough for it when he was eight, or maybe eighteen, or possibly thirty-eight. It's now apparent that he'll be flatfooting it come April.

What did I get for Christmas? I'm glad you asked. I got the Lego LMP from Danger Girl, a Star Wars shirt from John, and a new Kiton three-button jacket in electric blue from myself. Now I have something new to wear while I'm hobbling around the Detroit show in two weeks.

As we near the end of the year, I want to (im)personally thank every one of our readers. Some time in January, we are going to reach one million views on this blog. Such a thing seemed highly improbable when I started it, and even when I consider that 72% of our traffic is from my ex-girlfriends hoping to hear that I've broken my other leg in a tragic bathtub accident I'm still pleased to have this kind of interest in the modest talent that brother Bark and I bring to the autowriting game. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. And if you have any advice on how to turn the maximum throttle setting down on a TTR90, please feel free to comment below!