Happy New Year 2024!
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| image source: dreamstime.com |
Thoughts as the old year of my automotive hobby winds to a close.
Next April I will celebrate the tenth year of producing my blog. That is a considerable milestone. I have kept at it seriously, posting a new entry every week. My stable of old cars has provided me with a good source of content. I know that there are some people out there that read my blog, but there have been times when page views rocket it to a couple of hundred a day! I don't know if the site has been discovered by bots or what. A couple of months back page views were the highest ever. I wonder if an AI program was searching for language data, draining my posts of phrases, looking for speech patterns, colloquialisms or what.
I find it hard to believe that so many visitors only read it for a month. Maybe they didn't find it that engaging.
I enjoy producing this blog, it is one of the best parts of my automotive hobby. It doesn't take up any room in my garage or driveway, doesn't leak any oil, and I never get my hands greasy! It's also a bit like jogging, it's regular exercise for my writing skills. Just as you'd have to train steadily to run a marathon, I think that you have to write steadily if you want to write a book someday. Or at least a few short stories.
The state of my hobby is good.
I have four hobby cars and they all run. I'm glad to report that I don't have any non running projects taking up space. Except for the lit CEL in my '96 Mustang. everything else is doing fine. Not that I have the opportunity to drive all the cars. They often sit for a month or more as I don't drive all that much. It would make more sense to have fewer cars which I would drive more, but it's the selling that's the hard part.
I had told my Wife that when I turned 70, I'd give most of my tools to my Son. One of the reasons for having a newer, lower mileage fleet was to hopefully cut down on the need to wrench. However, I still need to do some fixing, and I do use my collection of tools. I don't think that I'm ready to give them up next year, it just seems to be too soon, but the idea of a mostly wrench free existence gets more and more appealing. 70 will be here next year! It's hard for me to believe that I'm that old, I still feel good enough most of the time. Besides my Son currently only has a one car garage, and doesn't have anywhere to put my tools ... yet. I'm operating on the assumption that he'll even want them!
As always, I've devised an escape plan if things don't work out with my Riviera. The Riviera has proven to me that I prefer a quieter, smoother, more comfortable vehicle to a raspier sporty car. I still like a car with a nice interior, my Navigator reminds me quite a bit of my Jaguar XJ6. Leather and wood with nice colors. I'm thinking that a compact CUV like a Lincoln MKC might fill the bill. Either that or a Cadillac XTS or maybe a CTS.
Today I pointed out a late model Lincoln Continental to my Wife as it stopped next to us at a traffic light. Her reaction was quite positive. That may be another direction. An MKZ might even fill the bill.
One of the reasons for buying the Riv was so that I could become active in the ROA. I should reach out to the former regional coordinator and see if he can hook me up with an email list of local guys that would be interested in getting together. Anyway, it's not going to happen before the end of the year.
Sometimes I'm feeling kind of bored with the whole car thing. I just need to pick out a few events, like swap meets, cars and coffees, or shows and just go. I went to a Datsun swap meet in Manteca as a vendor this year. I sold everything cheap, especially to buyers that were interested in buying a large quantity of parts. My goal was to get rid of the inventory that I've been sitting on for years. I was pretty successful and even made a couple of bucks.
Just go... that's good advice, no need to sit around and complain. I'm lucky that I'm able to get out. I've got the cars, the money for gas, and the time. Not to mention the health, can't take that for granted.
I've still got a list of projects that I haven't finished around the house. I had planned to get them done within a few years after my retirement. I find it's best if I have the supplies on hand, then I can work at my own pace. I told my Wife that now that I'm retired, she would never get another eight hour shift out of me! Painting the exterior of the house is a big job that I put off last year. I'd like to get that done, it will be the last time that I ever do that.
All in all I feel that I've been very fortunate this year. The world is going through a very rough time. Being thankful for what we have is a good way to close out the old year, as well to begin the new.
Thanks to everyone that takes ten minutes a week to follow my blog, I hope that you are entertained.
Happy New Year to all!
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