I owned a 1979 Yamaha XS1100 when I bought my first Goldwing, the 1982 GL1100 pictured to the right. I then sold my Yamaha to my buddy Donnie, and we rode those bikes thousands of miles over the next few years. That would have been circa 1995.
Donnie and I hosted karaoke as a team for a guy named Jerry whose neighbor Lucky also hosted karaoke. Over a short period of time, Lucky became a close friend of ours. We would often hang out with him and his wife Joey playing board games, or just out in the garage while he worked on one of his projects. He always seemed to have family there, and the atmosphere was always festive.
One day I called Lucky's phone, and his granddaughter Turquoise answered. I asked if her grandpa was there. He was, but he asked her who was on the phone. I told her it was Tom, the guy who rides the Goldwing.
"It's Goldwing Tom," she yelled out to him. Then she told me he was coming.
He was chuckling when he got to the phone. He told me, "Sounds like you got a new nickname!"
As he told the story to various friends, the nickname took hold. Donnie started calling me Goldwing Tom at our karaoke shows, and soon people in the audience were calling me Goldwing Tom.
I’ve embraced the nickname. It has a nice double entendre, and it flows well.
If it weren’t for the timing of the call, though, she might have told her grandpa that it was Triumph Tom, Yamaha Tom, or Shadow Tom, none of which would likely have stuck.
They say timing is everything, and it certainly was when it came to how I got the nickname Goldwing Tom!
