2005

    quite happy amongst the trees

    yes - that's the Ocean out back.

    Born here

    eventually life led me here

    where I served a 7 year sentence of cruel and unusual punishment

    a further 4.5 years in solitaire confinement was served here

    where I became the world's highest rated Cougar vendor 2002.

    In-between luxuries I lived several years atop of my tool box in my Econoline Vans traveling around repairing old cars and trucks for the finacially challenged.

Opening "Ray's Mobile Auto Repair" was the best thing I did for myself in my 20's.

    In my 30's best I did was I quit drinking after a party I had one Easter in my Camper. No more hangovers was and is the resolution since 1998. Over 12 years hangover free. I did make some of the best beer any man at any time has ever drank on this planet using raw grains and hops. No tablets or kits this was the real thing. Receipts to $11,000 last three years I drank would have tallied more like $50K in clubs. I since poured my money and time into my car collection I had been building since my days in High School.

    My 53 Mercury M-100 I built from a complete pile of parts and pieces. Some which had been on the old farm for longer than I. My buddy Boomer rescued me from the Rocky Mountain hell I had myself in circa 1983.

    Each year I would have to install another engine. 390 292 272 223 until I finally was forced into a sale of $700 by 1984    

    One of my High School rides. It was free from a neighbour down the street. I painted it blue and keystone magged it.

   My beloved Park Lane. $25 well spent.

    Wheels and motion had always been me. This particular cart survived a couple seasons, barely. Every  time I used that old cart it would break. Once it didn't break but for sure broke day before and day after, as well as every other time.

Prior to that it was rototiller engines and the tuning of said rototiller engines. I could "power tune" at WOT until the piston rod exited the unit which I did a couple times. I was 12.

    Always too poor to pay anyone to fix anything I learnt early on how to take things apart. Later I learnt how to put them back together and even later how to make them work properly. I assembled countless engines and transmissions and rear ends out of parts and pieces I would scrounge or trade for. Not until I discovered the internet did any $$ ever really change hands. There never was any money here and I am a member of the recession generation of the 80s where jobs were non existent. Being poor gave me a wealth of knowledge. There are several things I wish I didn't know now.

    I saved old parts on the dark side of the mountain for a couple decades before the internet option surfaced. I estimate somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 cars and trucks have passed through my hands.

NEXT