Tis the time of year when stories of families pasts are told around good food and good wine. We reminis about good times, and found memories. I am going to share with you a story of my family: It all started when my father retired from the Air Force. He had a very successful career in the air force, ranging from flying the fastest jet made (the SR-71 blackbird) to workin on air force one with two or three presidents. His favorite past times were teaching tennis to senators daughters and driving fast cars. For a good period of time he did "time-distance" street rallies driving Trimuphs, a small british sport car. His collection consisted of TR-4s to TR250s. One day he was side swiped by a lady, which was auctually the destruction of most of his sport cars. After collecting her information and what not, he walked up a hill where there was a BMW delership. Hearing of their amazing conering capabilities and their oustanding performance he test drove a 1970's 2002. Possibly one of the most boxy looking cars ever made, it today remains one of the most collected BMWs. It cornered and accelerated as well as his modified TRs. He bought it on the spot. The story coninues when one day he was walking down to his car in the parking garage. There looking at his pride automobile was this short elderly man. My father than asked him if he could help him, not knowing this mans attentions. In a german accent the man replied "ah yes BMW, 2002, this is a good car, I can do good to this car." Ends up that this man was the head mechanic for BMW Alpina, a small sister company of BMW, that would take a stock BMW and tune and modify it to its performance capabilities. They worked on my fathers 2002, and he ended up with the first Alpina 2002 in America. To this day Alpina creates some of the highest performance BMWs that a consumer can buy. He sold the car when it reached 100k Miles. At the time that was the life expecticy of most cars. Now realizing that BMWs can last much longer (the 1986 I gave to my brother has 215k miles on it, the 87 Race car has 320k miles, and my 1992 has 176k miles on it) I painted a picture of the car that started it all. For the longest time my childhood dreams were to be just like my father. To be successful and be able to tell my children of the days when sports cars flashed their lights at eachother, to have amazing stories of events that would spark the dreams of my offspring. Looking at myself today I realize that I have become my father, maybe not in the sence of same career choices, or goals, or environment. But in the sence that at one point my father worked his ass off just to afford rent and his Car, and today I am in his shoes, working my ass off to afford rent and my BMW. I painted this picture of the car that started it all for my father this holliday season.