About the car dear....

As I alluded to yesterday, I'll get a bit more in depth about the goings on of my car over the past couple of years. I figure it's better to update the past starting with the oldest and working forward so stay tuned for life with kids and I want to ride my bicycle.

OK, the car is still broke as of today. I had a double whammy happen in July of 2005 that pretty much set the course for it setting the past two years. I was on my way to the dealership to get a brake problem figured out. The rear ABS wasn't working correctly and would allow the rear brakes to lock up while the fronts were still moving. I figured this one out after nearly causing a coworker to soil himself when I went from full acceleration to full braking around 70 MPH on a side street by my work. Lucky the tail just stepped out to about a 45 degree angle, I let off, hit the gas and straightened it back out as if I had planned to do it. Checking the look on his face I swear I thought I was going to have to break out the leather cleaner for his seat. So, I never figured out the problem and was planning to take the car to an open track event in July so I figured it might be a good idea to at least attempt to fix the problem before the event.

I headed up to the dealer at the prescribed time and like usually hammered the car from a stop sign. Only this time I was greeted with an all too familiar sound of the engine coughing itself into oblivion. The car lost power and the engine died while I rolled to a stop about a mile from the dealer. Now I'm pissed and going to be late for my appointment. I hop out to assess the problem by looking at the motor, cussing, and in general just being pissed. After a few minutes I get the car restarted with some effort by applying the gas and getting it back to a rough idle. I'm so joyed at this point I shut the hood and jump in the car. Now for those really astute readers, you'll notice I left out a certain activity that MUST be done before taking off. Any guesses? OK, I won't keep you hanging, remember those fancy hood latches I installed, guess what, they need to actually be latched down to be effective, DOH! So at 30 MPH the carbon fiber hood decides it wants to see the world and attempts to separate itself from the evil bonds of my car. So wham, bam, screw you mam, and now I'm at the side of the road again with the hood flopping next to the passenger side of the car. It's only held on by a now pretzel shaped hood hinge and nothing else. Here are a few shots of the damage:




So, broken hood, bent hinges, dented roof, dented fender, various scratches, and some other damage from my own little oops. All told the damage came in the ballpark of $4-5K estimate from the body shop. Luckily my insurance covers stupidity and I only had to pay the deductible which is a small price to pay for being that dumb.

So I now flipped the hood back onto the car and hobbled my way to the dealership about a half mile away at this point. I cancelled my brake appointment and grabbed a ride back to work from the courtesy driver at the dealer. I hauled the car home later that day and there she sat while I stewed.

For those that know me, they know I have a bad history not just with this car, but with my previous Contour as well. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do at this point. Do I fix it again, sell it, pummel it to death with a sledge hammer and dance around the broken bits? Alas, I got the body work estimated and collected the insurance check so now it was time to figure out the fix. Through some good luck and a little work, I acquired all of the repair parts used or as blemished seconds for a song. I even had someone decide to buy the old hood and rework it even though it had a corner ripped off and several damaged areas on the main portion of the hood.

All of this left me with a pretty decent amount of money to sink into the actual body and paint work. I was driving around town one down and noticed an absolutely awesome set of flames painted on a newer SS Silverado. On the truck was an ad for a paint shop with a website. Curiosity got the best of me and after checking out their work, having the owner look at my project, and discussing finances, I decided to go with something new and exciting to redo the car, but still retain some of the original understated character. This was all happening in the fall of 2005. I finished up my part of removing the engine and various other pieces and delivered the car January of 2006. Work started and stopped numerous times along the way as I was in no hurry to get the car back and I pretty much knew that the price I was quoted was fill in work between higher paying gigs. As such, my car spent a year at the paint shop and I picked it up in February of 2007. Of course, with all things, it wasn't quite done at this point as the hood and bumper were still needing the final buffing. I just picked those up in November! Ahh well, at least the car is back together body wise now. I will post up some finished pictures, but not until the car has made it's debut at Spring Zing 2008 which is our annual meet for the Contour Enthusiasts Group (CEG).

Now that the body is done and together, it's my job to get the drive train back in operating order. The good news is that the most expensive and long lead time parts have been purchased and now it's pretty much up to me finding the time to put it all together. At least I have a mandate from on high (my wife) telling me to get the car done so we can hit Spring Zing this year after a 2 year hiatus. Now if I could just find where all my time went. Oh, that's right, it's being sucked up by my other mandate which is to have our basement remodel complete in time for Christmas. At this rate, I'll be frantically putting up our tree on Christmas eve in lieu of the frantic assembly of toys that most families go through. Stay tuned for our next installment of what the hell I've been up to for the past couple years.

Something new?!

Wow, I should really pay more attention to the time. It's only been two and a half years since I've bothered to write anything here. I guess things change over time and some things stay the same. I'll probably switch over to talking more about some bike stuff in lieu of cars since that has become my main hobby now. I've also become a father to a beautiful little girl now who is 19 months old. At least the sex stuff hasn't changed much, wait is that a good or bad thing? Actually, there has been an interesting change on that front. I'll try to give you a brief overview here and then get a bit more in depth in some future posts.

So, I switched gears from cars to bikes, how the hell does that happen? I'm not talking bikes as in motorcycles, crotch rockets, hogs, or whatever you want to call them. I'm talking the two wheel kind that you pedal to make it move. From this:

To this:

Note the sexy legs in the second picture. At least I haven't started shaving them, yet.....

As far as how this could have happened, it's probably any one's guess, but I'll at least take a stab at explaining it. My car has been broken for 2 years now (more on that for another post), I've been lazy and packed on about 12-15 pounds, my job was really stressing this spring, and it was a beautiful day. For some reason the stars all aligned and I just thought it would be a beautiful day to take a bike ride last April. I called Miranda on my way home from a busy day and told her to get ready as we were going to dust off our bikes and take them out. Thinking back, it has to have been 3-4 years since either had been out of the garage and even then it was for a few short rides here and there. As it turned out, the day was beautiful, the ride was just what I needed, and I was hooked (putting it lightly).

Well, since I should actually be doing a few other things beyond writing right now, I'll shoot some more updates in future posts. Let me know if you're out there reading...

The tradeoff?

It seems that there is always a tradeoff. In this case it happens to be my sex life for time spent working on my car. It never seems to fail, if I spend more than a weekend or two in a row and any time during the week working in the garage or more specifically on my car, the frequency of my sex life plummets.

I know there is at least one issue with not being able to spend time together during the time I'm spending working on other things, but I tend to wonder if there isn't underlying jealousy of some sort as well. To give you a bit of history, I'm a recovering car junkie! LOL, well at least that's how I like to put it. Let's just say that I spent a good deal of the first couple years of our marriage under the hood of a car and not under the hood of my wife. I learned the hard way that tends to lead to very bad issues with wandering wives. I am happy to say that it took us about a year to get things worked out, but once we moved past it, our lives were much more fulfilling.

The problem now is that there comes a point in time where I must invest certain amounts of time working on my car or cars in general as I have a side business that includes me building engines and modifying parts for cars. A couple of times a year I have some big shows, races, etc that I go to and that's usually preceded by some frantic rush for 2-3 weeks of working on finishing things up whether it be on my car or stuff I'm doing for other people. This flurry of activity usually hinders our time spent together and also the aforementioned sex life.

I guess I'm mainly just complaining because I can, but I don't see why the two have to always be connected. I really long for my wife to be a part of this hobby/business that is so important to me. Unfortunately I have yet to find a way to pique her interest in this subject. She will attend events with me and look at some of the nice vehicles or watch the races for a short amount of time, but she has no real interest in cars other than just to view them. Other than that, she stands around bored while I'm engrossed in talking to different people. Often it does involve technical subjects that I don't expect her to appreciate, but with some basic knowledge I know she could have a lot more fun at these events.

I'm pretty well resigned to the fact that I won't ever have her interested in cars other than keeping on me to get her classic mustang out and running. I really do plan to make the time to work on her car soon, but with everything else going on, I find it harder and harder to get additional time. I wonder if I'd suffer the same penalty of sex for working on her "fun" car? Hmm, I see a possible experiment coming. If I spend a copious amount of time on her car, is it still "car time" or does it count as "us time" since I'm working on something for her? I'll try to remember this and keep you guys updated.

Speaking of you guys, is there anyone out there? I haven't seen a single response yet. Not that I'm seeking to be blog of the year or anything like that, but it would be nice to know if there is anyone at least browsing occasionally. I might have to bug one of my blogger buddies and find out how to do a number tracker. Well, I suppose I've bored you enough for one huge post.

Rewind to the beginning

Since it just struck my fancy to start blogging one day I didn't really introduce myself so I'll see if I can't give you some background. I'm a Midwesterner, happily married to a wonderful woman, I'm a car nut, sex nut, amateur creator, and love to build things. More or less I wouldn't consider myself too far out of the normal range of guys. I'm on the back half of my 20's and we have no kids so life is still pretty free flowing on what we do for fun and the occasional whim. I was given the nickname of "Buckshot" from my grandpa many years ago. I never really went by the name, but at the advent of my online adventures some dozen or so years ago, I was affronted with the mystifying task of creating a screen name. Being that all the cool names a late teen could come up with, this one happened into my head and kind of stuck. In reality though my grandpa probably named me after a semi famous Nascar racer, the literal translation of the word also seems to fit my personality.

Alas, my grandpa died a few years ago and I never took the time to thank him for a good nickname. It's funny how people that you don't really think of as influences on your life affect you when they pass away. He was the typical quiet guy that never really opened up emotionally, but that was part of his generation. In any case I miss him and wonder if I'll have the same recognition once I'm gone.

As far as why I'm creating this blog, I don't quite know! How's that for an answer. I tend to be bored at work, but my mind never seems to shut off so this has become the most logical way to put that unspent energy to work. Much better than actually doing something like real work, huh?! If you couldn't have guessed by the previous few posts, I really enjoy cars and occasionally enjoy working on them too. My job is a somewhat typical desk type affair, so cars give me an outlet to do something creative by working on and modifying them. I also gave you a bit of a taste into my sexual side which is something new for me to discuss at random. Even with the anonymity of the internet there are a ton of people on various car forums that I visit who could easily google and find this blog. It will be interesting to see if the connection is ever made. However, since I don't view sex as something that needs to be hidden like some dirty secret, it will just be out there as another part of my life, kind of like eating.

That's about it for now. If there are any things you'd like to know I'll see what I can dredge up.

Cars and Sex

Could anything go more perfectly hand in hand? As promised I'll go a little bit into something my wife and I are looking at for a business opportunity. We've met up with a wonderful couple that have an online site and just recently opened a store that sells high end sex toys, massage oils, and various other enhancements to a healthy sex life. Unlike the typical "sex shop" this place is run by an awesome couple who do the best job at promoting healthy sexual relationships between partners that we've ever come across. In turn, their store has inspired us to try to partner up with them to some degree and look into the possibility of opening a similar shop in our city that is definitely lacking something like this. We want to create an atmosphere where all adults are welcome to come and seek both new and exciting things to try, but also to get advice, insite, and learn as well.

So while my lovely wife gets the opportunity to play with all of these great toys and of course share them with me, I get to help out in the behind the scenes. I'm very excited about the opportunities that abound and hopefully as things progress we'll get our own web site started and go from there with a store opening in the next 6-12 months if all works out.

I know that this may cut severely into my car hobbies, but at the same time it's going to also make sure that I need to turn more of the money I make from building motors and various modifications into this venture. I can't wait to see what we can come up with. Just for anyone that happens to be viewing my blog (I'm not sure if there is anyone even looking) I'll even post up a picture of my first foray into combining these two great things. Here is a toy that I've taken and I feel made better by powdercoating it:

It went from a polished stainless ring to this awesome shade of blue with just a little work. It's a bit odd taking orders from various people you've never met to customize what's basically a sex toy, but I guess it's all part of the business. For those who are wondering what this particular item is, it's a metal cock ring made by Gear, personalized by yours truly, and sold by our friends at Freddy and Eddy.

Let's hope this works. I'm very new at all of the html and other programming needed to make a fun blog! I really hope as time goes on I can learn more about making webpages and in turn make this site more visually stimulating as well.

Does the spending ever end?

You know, I really do understand the fact that modifying your car comes with a certain price tag involved. However, does it ever end once you start? I just figured out yesterday that I should really be dropping another $500-$600 on a quality oil cooler. The upside is maybe I can get my oil temps under control. I happen to run about 285+ degrees when I'm out on the track so I've got to get a handle on it for this year. I'm really hoping to get some more track time than last year. One full day on a road course followed up by a fire the first session of the next day really cut into my track time. I ended up fixing everything this spring so the car is just about back on track.

I'm also excited about getting my new hood back from the paint shop this friday. In lieu of leaving it the typical carbon fiber look I've decided to paint it out, plus my new hood latches are pretty cool too. I'm getting closer and closer to being ready for our big show coming up this month.

Beyond that my wife and I are looking into a new business venture- sex toys! I'll post more on that in a different post.

Let's give this a shot

OK, as this is my first foray into publishing a blog, I'll see if I can follow the KISS method and not screw it up too badly.

I'll skip the introductions as they should become apparent as I go along. I'm not sure what all this blog will be about. I'm guessing a lot of car related topics as I really enjoy working on my car, but there will also be some day to day stuff and I'm sure a few nice tidbits about my personal life with my beautiful wife might make it on here as well.

I spent most of the weekend working on fitting some new parts to my car. I got a couple of really cool hood catches and some various parts to install for my car by UPS on Friday, so I knew my weekend was pretty much set.
Aerocatch


Pretty sweet install if I do say so myself.