Reboot

Hi.  How's it going?  It's been a while; I know.  I'm gonna cut to the chase.  It's been a few years since I've been posting on here mostly because my computer hasn't been set up in the last year and a half, and my great cool car pics haven't been accessible to enhance my posts.  That said, I have fixed that situation, and am moving in a positive direction in that concern.  My goal for 2015 was to build a badass daily driver and take it to as many car events as possible.  That went pretty well.  I missed a few that I was planning on, but I did a whole lot more than I had ever done in one driving season in the past, not to mention the first car on which I'd ever actually been able to afford to fund some good upgrades!  With that amazing automotive year in the rearview, I feel it's only right to kick-start my blog back into commission.  That said, I'm going to stick with the idea of weekly posts, but I'm going to have a few more categories than I originally set out to write.

Gotta get the wheels turnin' on this blog.

Originally, I started this blog to be "Car of the Week - The Cars in My Head," because I have too many wicked builds rolling around up there that I want to share, but I have no money to build and not nearly enough car friends to be able to talk about them with.  Not many people like to hear about your passion as much as you like to talk about it, especially if they're not passionate about it as well.  The "Car of the Week" part of it not only dictated how often I wanted to have posts going out, but it was also a nod to my brother who said when I was in high school that I wanted a different car every week.  While that wasn't too far from the truth, I've also been noted as seeing too much potential in vehicles and not what they really are.  I can't tell you how many deals I tried to make with my local junkyard when I was in high school, but in my defense, he had some pretty cool stuff hiding back in those rows upon rows of vintage steel.

If you can picture this without rims, axles, engine, trans, seats, twin scoop hood, and some of the floor, I could picture it becoming this car plus or minus the wheels.  I'm a big fan of Ansen slotted mags.

The rebirth of this blog, along with the name change, will bring more facets of the automotive culture into the posts found here.  I'm still going to talk about the cool cars I have lodged in my head; that's the main point of doing this; for sanity's sake.  I'm going to add posts about the builds I'm currently working on (or working toward working on, as the current case may be), posts about trips I've taken or am taking, posts about events and shows I'm attending, garage related stuff (because you need to have a place to work on these cars), crazy stuff I find working with cars and parts (we'll cover that in a second), car reviews, and write-ups about cars that I shoot.

This was a customer from the parts store who had a pretty good looking car.  She liked to work on it herself, which is pretty cool too.  See more at my Facebook page

Wait, what!?  One of the things I've grown quite passionate about while I've been absent from this page is photography.  I wish I could make money taking my cool night pictures, but the truth is the money isn't in the prints but rather in the photo shoots.  I'm working on enhancing my portfolio of intriguing car shoots in 2016 in order to be able to market my skills and get more people to hire my to photograph their cars.  I'd love the opportunity to make a living shooting pictures of cars and writing a blog like this, especially if it affords me the ability to go around to more places, shows, events, and anything else car-related to write and photograph those too.  Anything that gets me out on the road in my Vic seeing the countryside!

I'm very proud of this shot because of the subject and the photographer.  I am driving my Vic here at the 2015 Car Craft Summer Nationals in their first year in my backyard in Milwaukee.  This picture was downloaded off of CarCraft.com when they posted a page talking about the autocross that year.  I got my car into a magazine... website!  I'll take it!  I'll tell you more later.

I supposed I should update you all from the last time I posted somewhat regularly.  I'm no longer in college, so that's a start.  I work in a car parts store and also in shipping and receiving in the parts department of a local GM dealership, which I know is a turn-coat thing to do with all the blue ovals in my veins and the three out in the driveway, but I had the connection to get in there.  It wasn't the task I really wanted at the dealership, but my foot's firmly in the door, and it pays the bills and gets me discounted parts and tools from more places than the parts store would get me.

The Escape doesn't seem to have made the cut on this shot, but I only own the Vic anyways.

My current car is an '02 Crown Vic LX Sport.  You'll note that the LX Sport is a P73, not a P71, so no, it has never been a police car, but I was told that the original owner was the aunt of a cop or something like that.  Who knows?  I have no reason to make it look like a cop car, so I'm leaving it like this.  I did put some police parts into it, but it was mostly suspension parts.  I've taken it autocrossing, and it wasn't terrible.  I love this thing, and while I'd love to leverage it into a better, faster '03, I don't think I can bring myself to sell it, although the offer has been made to trade it for a supercharger setup and some cash which would be moving toward the faster Vic.  Who knows what will come from that either?

She's not done, not by a long shot, but she is miles ahead of where she was when I bought her.  Also miles away from where I bought her.  Future post...

My other car hasn't been viewed by my own eyes since the summer of 2009.  It's a '74 Ford Maverick sedan.  It has the "Luxury Decor Option" which basically consists of a fancy leather (?) bucket seat interior, fancy wheel covers, air conditioner, and some stomach-turning paint options.  This one originally cam with a 250 inline 6 and either a C3 or C4 transmission.  I don't quite remember if I figured that one out or not.  I bought it with no motor, and I wanted to do a 302 swap, but we didn't have the resources to make it happen.  Between my dad working all the time, myself not knowing what I was doing to do it alone, and not having the space or tools to make it happen through my own dumb luck, the car really had no likelihood of getting done.  That pretty much describes the build (or lack thereof) of my Maverick.  I bought it at the age of 14 in the year 2000, and I last moved it from my third neighbor's shed to my fourth neighbor's shed when we moved away from it in 2009.  Now I live in SE WI while it sits decaying in a barn in SW MN, and I often wonder how I could find a way to bring it down here and make it run just so I can say I had this car for 16 years and actually got to drive it.  Someday...

This is a picture of the cars I owned when I was 17.  Not terrible.

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up.  You can be sure you'll hear more about these cars and more in the posts that WILL be coming to follow this up and pump new and current life into this sadly forlorn blog.  I can't wait to make this what it should've been all along!

I know I only took this shot with my cell phone, but it still looks kick-ass.
If I can quote another automotive journalist, "The road is calling; what are you gonna do about it."