First and last

I met TMO for the first time when I was 8 (about 24 years ago) at the Clown Ramp in Dallas. He was hanging out in his truck with Jeff Phillips, who at that point in my life, I thought of asa rock star. I think TMO was wearing a rasta hat and Tye-Dye. The first time I talked to him was about 7 years later at Whip and Dip. Long story short, I was driving home on 35 and saw 2 guys (T and Dan Wilkes) skating and I decided to stop. That session was the first time I really talked to TMO. He too was like a rock star in my mind. After that we started skating on a regular basis; the rest is hstory. In 1994 (I think?) he rode with me to Chicago in a 1977 Ford pickup on an ill-planned and ill-advised road trip looking for a lost love. That was a defining 5 day moment in my life. I remember visiting the Shedd Aquarium with him and my then lady friend. He rode with me when I bought my first Vespa, and he tried to teach me the patience to work on it. I remember him coming to the house to show off his first BMW R100/7. I have a picture of that day somewhere. That Beemer was the first in a long line for TMO. Over the next few years  I followed him to numerous motorcycle rallies and had the pleasure of camping and partying with him more times than I can count. He was there to help me pick up my bike when I dropped it on the way back from Lake O' the Pines, and again when I dropped it in someone's driveway in Austin. During the next decade, living with me in the house that my parents left when they died, he proceeded to teach me most of the things I know now (the kind of things that college and a handful of other friends did not). When I last saw him on New Years eve, he told me, in the most serious tone, how proud of me he was, and how he knew all along that I was capable of growing up, achieving my goals of finishing school, teaching, and living a life that I never really dreamed of having. Other people might have said the same thing and congratulated me, but it meant the most coming from him because he was one of very few people that has always been a part of my life. Wow, that aint the 1/2 of it.