I broke out the old YZ today to clean it up and do a couple of things. It has been far too long since I touched it. I’ve lived in my current house for two and a half years. I haven’t ridden it in all that time, and it was probably at least a year before I moved that I last did. It was still dirty from that outing. The bike had been neglected for so long that the air filter disintegrated in my hand when I tried to pull it out.
When I went to clean up, though, I caught a whiff of something that really took me back. My grandfather on my mother’s side wasn’t the handiest man in the world, but he tried his best. Whenever we finished some project that took twice as long as it should have and it was time to clean up he always pulled out his trusty Goop hand cleaner. He loved the stuff.
He’s been gone eight years now (almost to the day), and wasn’t doing a whole lot for a decade or so before that. The smell of Goop, though, still takes me back to working in the shop with him when I was a kid. Even though it isn’t the best hand cleaner around, I still use it to this day because of him. As soon as I cracked that tub open a smile crept across my face.
Gasoline is great, and two stroke exhaust gives me an adrenaline rush, but nothing in the shop gives me the same feeling as that little white tub.
So...anybody else have a shop smell that evokes fond memories? Anything you keep around even though there are better alternatives just because of a mental association?
When I went to clean up, though, I caught a whiff of something that really took me back. My grandfather on my mother’s side wasn’t the handiest man in the world, but he tried his best. Whenever we finished some project that took twice as long as it should have and it was time to clean up he always pulled out his trusty Goop hand cleaner. He loved the stuff.
He’s been gone eight years now (almost to the day), and wasn’t doing a whole lot for a decade or so before that. The smell of Goop, though, still takes me back to working in the shop with him when I was a kid. Even though it isn’t the best hand cleaner around, I still use it to this day because of him. As soon as I cracked that tub open a smile crept across my face.
Gasoline is great, and two stroke exhaust gives me an adrenaline rush, but nothing in the shop gives me the same feeling as that little white tub.
So...anybody else have a shop smell that evokes fond memories? Anything you keep around even though there are better alternatives just because of a mental association?