Denaye Giroux Blog: Merry Christmas

Who’s excited for Christmas?

We all have those childhood memories of our favourite presents, delicious food and great company. The holidays are a time when families can get together for a few days, forget about the craziness of our busy schedules, and get some down time to relax with the ones we love most. For me, I’m the only child left in Yorkton; all of my siblings have moved away.  My older sister, Amber, lives in Sylvan Lake, my younger sister, Dallyn, is in Lethbridge, and my younger brother, Morgan, is in Vancouver. So it’s a little hectic to get our schedules to line up so we can all spend some time together. Dal arrived here last night. I usually end up spending the most time with her every year. With the rest of our family all over the place, we spend a day with my Dad and Step Mom, Lorrie, out in the big town of Rhein, and then make the trek down to Weyburn to see our Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and little cousins. My Mom will be spending her Christmas down in Sunny California with her parents, so while we’re freezing she will hopefully be basking in the sunshine.

One of the best Christmas presents I received was many years ago when I was 13. We all woke up early Christmas morning, opened our last presents then Dad said there was one more gift for us all. He told us to look on the Christmas tree and to look for something that didn’t belong. We found a set of keys hanging on the tree. He then told us all to look outside. So we all ran out to find this mint 1977 Ski Doo Elan 250 Deluxe. Now in Saskatchewan, since we can’t ride our bikes during the winter, a great way to make the long winters go by fast and still get that adrenaline rush is to go sledding. We put some major miles on this baby over the years. Getting pulled behind on the toboggan, falling off multiple times, and then realizing many years later that there was such a thing called hand warmers and suspension. Needless to say, my Dad still owns this machine. He uses it for work and rides it in the local Rhein derby.

What do I wish for this year? Well, because I took a step back from racing I would really like to take a vacation somewhere hot. Being racers we always get a chance to travel to some of the coolest places but most of the time all we see is the race track. We don’t get a chance to just cruise around, site see, or sit back and relax like “normal” people would do. This would be our first trip somewhere that didn’t have anything to do with racing, training or anything like that. Although, I can see myself really missing moto if I went on vacations like that every year. It’s not really my kind of thing, but is on my bucket list to go somewhere just to relax.

Here is to hoping everyone has a great Christmas holiday. Let your inner child out and have some fun, spend lots of time reminiscing about your past, and look forward to a bigger brighter future.

Happy Holidays Everyone!!!
Denaye