[ATVYP]

Porch: I'm glad the steering box worked well! It was pleasant meeting you and your family. I wish you the best of luck and hope we run into each other again sometime.
Carlos from Showwheels: Thanks for your offer, and I will let you know when I get a little closer to road-worthiness. I checked out your website and it looks like you have some great stuff.

It has been a CRAZY summer with teen church camp, pre-teen church camp, the MO State FWB Meeting, the National Association of Free Will Baptist Meeting in Memphis, VBS, and all the other schedule filling items that fill the calendar of many youth pastors. It was a great summer and we accomplished much great stuff, but I'm ready for a "routine" - if there is such a thing! The boys are back in school anyway.

So I definitely have some off-time built up from working 24/7 for several weeks in a row over the summer. As soon as I got caught up (with paper work, office stuff, helping Dad fix his Onan powered mower, and the list of honey-dos) I headed out to work on my toy! It's amazing how the stress disappears and nothing else seems to matter so much when you get lost in loud background music and the noise and sparks of a grinder.

I spent last Saturday at the Springfield, MO swap meet. WOW! Talk about a HUGE swap meet! I had never seen such a massive event. I wish they had been able to organize it somehow, perhaps between different types of venders. We walked from 7am - 5pm and never hit the same isle twice. That is a good way to catch the car-bug and build some personal motivation to come home and get to work! I learned a few things 1) Very few people put new stuff on old cars. Perhaps the electronic stuff scares some? 2) I was really surprised how much sloppy work is out there. Well-done builds are few and far between in the "real world" - and I apologize if I just slammed anyone. Why don't people take a second longer and do things right? 3) These old cars and trucks are worth A LOT more money than I realized, or that they use to be. I guess they aren't making any more of them. It doesn't take much to build a $25,000 - $35,000 vehicle.

So I've been working. Here are a few pictures.