Yeah, yeah, it’s been a long time. The end of summer came far too fast and I had too many (non-car related) projects to complete. It’s really easy for me to get out of the writing habit and it didn’t take long to start focusing on other things and not want to start at all. The thought of picking of the pen (so to speak) wasn’t that interesting for a while but a new year has started and I feel like I’m gaining some momentum.
The biggest change around here since we last met is that I’ve set a hard deadline of getting the Challenger back on the road this year. I was talking with my wonderful wife about my self-imposed pressure of completing the car. It’s a project that I’ve wanted to work on with my sons and then enjoy in the summer cruising to shows, to the beach, or to ice cream. My sons are getting older and in a flash won’t be at home anymore. I’ve been working hard on my book and any other project that would allow me to scrape funds together to get back on the road. I was working so hard and was so focused that it had almost become a nuisance when the family got in the way. All of this focus was in anticipation of spending some fun times with my family. That’s not a healthy way to think.
It was pretty clear that the budget wouldn’t really allow a reasonable time frame if I stayed on the same path. Now this is when my wonderful wife asked me how much it would cost to finish. I took the question as one of curiosity when she really was thinking as the visionary she is. I came up with a ball-park number and she asked “what if we took it from retirement?”. Oh, the humanity. How could we do something like that? That’s the untouchable money. So we talked about it many more times. I came up with a more accurate budget and we eventually decided to pull the trigger.
To be clear, this isn’t the best financial maneuver and it wasn’t even on my list of possibilities but there’s a lot to learn for two boys when building a car and this is that important, at least to me. When I made the call to my account manager, I explained what we had planned and felt a little embarrassed by what we were about to do. His first words were “I totally understand, you’ve got to live life.”
So there we are and that was another reason I had stopped writing, I started ordering parts. Oh man, that’s fun. I love stuff showing up all the time. Now I’m making some serious headway in turning the car from a painted steel shell into a real vehicle.
By the way, the deadline is the week following labor day. That’s for the Cruise to the End of the World in Long Beach WA. I’d really like to have it before then but that’s the hard date. We’ll see how productive I can be.
Next up, finish steering column assembly.
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