What are you doing today ? 2019

[chimp koose]

congrats on the grandchild !  

[enjenjo]

Congratulations. Too bad she didn't know the schedule.

[Ohio Blue Tip]

Me and the Boss took the 32 out for it's last blast Sunday.    Went to Northport which is North of Traverse City.  About 400 miles of leaf looking.  Time to put it away and start working on the 52 Chevy truck again.
Drove the whole way in the left lane with the left turn signal on!

[WZ JUNK]

Me and the Boss took the 32 out for it's last blast Sunday.    Went to Northport which is North of Traverse City.  About 400 miles of leaf looking.  Time to put it away and start working on the 52 Chevy truck again.
Drove the whole way in the left lane with the left turn signal on!

If you are an AARP member, and have your ID card, you can legally drive with either blinker on.

[Crosley.In.AZ]

Congratulations on the new grand child!

[Carps]

This is more like what I did yesterday and the day before, but since Enjenjo was kind enough to ask it's only right that I respond.

Frank wrote:
Hi Carps,
How you doing old buddy?  How has retirement been treating you?  How's your
health? I don't do Facebook, not time for that. I'm still wasting my life
building hot rods, and tinkering in the shop. I had a health scare a couple
years ago, massive blood clot in my right leg, but it was treated
successfully. I have been building custom T5 transmissions, making
adapters, and one off disc brake conversions. Right now I am installing a
Xj6 front suspension into a 54 Chevy 3100.

Frank


Hi Frank, good to hear from you, I figure some of the round table gang might like to read my response, so here goes.

Retirement started off slowly as I had to rebuild my life and my home after it was demolished when the huge tree at the top of my driveway fell on it.  That was while Ann was hospitalised so I was living close to the hospital and didn't become aware of it for a week or two and by then it was too late as ongoing bad weather had really made a mess of things.  My insurance company wiped me because they determined the tree was riddled with white ants and there's no cover for damage caused by termites.  Check your policy.

After three major surgeries in less than the same number of months, Ann deteriorated rapidly and passed away on Feb 10th 2015.

While the house was under construction the furniture etc. was in storage and the cars were moved out of the garage to safer digs.  Of course I visited the property most days to check on progress, which was slow and expensive due to regulations and ridiculous requirements, like building a retaining wall to hold back a solid granite natural wall (AKA Mountain) that hasn't moved in 500,000,000 years.  The required excavation and wall construction took 12 months and cost me over a hundred grand.  It's a long story, but I had to fight the local council (City Hall) all the way with permits and litigation as a result of my removing other termite-infested trees without their permission.

Over the 2016 New Year holiday weekend my garage was broken into.  Well broken apart actually because I'd bolted doors closed from the inside and the mongrels couldn't get access, so when they couldn't even rip the access door from the side of the building they ripped a wall out.  All they took was some cordless power tools but not after they ripped every carton of household stuff open and pulled the contents out and spread it over the floor.  By the time they got to the tubs holding my built model cars, they were clearly frustrated and just dropped them on the floor and walked over the built models some, which had hundreds of hours work in them.

Worried that I'd kill myself, as my * ticker tried to do when I packed and moved most of  the furniture, books etc. unassisted into the storage unit, my friends Col, Kris, Dale and Kylie came to my rescue and did all of the heavy lifting.

A week later nothing was left in the garage other than a few odd tubs of car parts and what was on the walls, including about 250 license plates, 1 from every car I owned, others from my friend's cars including Mike Keehn's green Chevy S/D, Jay Carnine's Plymouth, Jim River's personalise plate, The HAMB plate from Bob Klessig's Chevy and a bunch more from places I'd visited (at least one from every US state).  When I got to the property on the Saturday after the first break in the front door was off the mounts.  The cops said the first mongrels must have told somebody else what was left in there and they'd come to get it.  They must have been in there all night because they unscrewed ever plate from the wall.

The car plant was closed late in 2017 (the entire Australian Auto manufacturing business was killed off as a result of a political p*ssing contest) and I continued working until December 29th.  Life at home was pretty lonely but I was getting along OK and managed to publish another three books.  Although I did become a bit of a hermit and some of my friends tried to set me up with dates, I really I wasn't interested and scalded them badly when they did that.

Health wise I'm doing pretty well now.  Missed the NSRA 50th because I was in hospital after picking up a bug that tried to kill me.  Long story but by the time I got to hospital my kidneys had already quit, the liver and a few other vita organs had packed their bags and were headed out the door and my left leg was four times it's normal size and glowing red as a result of my poisoned blood boiling.  I wasn't expected to last the night and had it not been for a recent life-changing event, I probably would have given up.  After a couple of weeks in an isolation ICU unit I was sent back to a special care ward and finally allowed home under supervision a few weeks later.  The kidneys are back at around 85% and most other organs are working properly except the Adrenal gland isn't making potassium so with my heart med's and the new stuff I take so many pills that I really do rattle.  To the NSRA's credit they sent me my entry pack, mug and two different T shirts along with some other cool stuff.

The life-changing event is a long story.  So I'll save the detail for later, but early this year I found a new lady, or perhaps she found me, neither of us was looking for a relationship, it just kinda happened.  Her name is Jeanette and she's given me a whole new lease on life.  She has two sons, one of which is a mad crazy hot rod fanatic.  Jeanette owns a 1948 Ford coupe that's been a hot rod since the sixties and Corey now has a '30 Model A coupe that we've been having some great adventures with.  Jeanette lost her husband only five weeks before I lost Ann and we kinda helped each other out a few times then one day we realised we'd become more than just friends and the rest is history.  My daughter and Mother In Law are delighted and ma in law gives me a hard time if I turn up at her place without Jeanette.

I still can't do heavy work on my cars and even considered selling the Ford but Corey talked me out of it.  He's now become my arms and legs.  A bit like my apprentice, I teach him and he does the work.  He's a bloody good fabricator and welder which is unusual for an 18-year-old kid these days, he's kind of like my apprentice, but sometimes the master coz he's up to speed with modern stuff.

I do spend a little time doing Facebook, usually post a few photos once a week and the rest of it is with the hot rod clubs and Early Ford V8 Club, for which I am both social director and Newsletter Editor.  Both jobs keep me busy and the rest of the time I just waste doing whatever looks like it might be enjoyable.  There's also my column in Australian Street Rodding Magazine.

Good to see you got through your health scare and continue to enjoy life doing what makes you feel good.  The XJ 6 suspension swap is popular here but I think a little underrated in the US, where I haven't seen so many of them.  They work great under early and fifties era F100s so it'll be good under the Chevy.

I trust Fatcat and his family are also well and everybody here at the Roundtable too. It's strange coming back to where internet hot rodding started after being MIA for so long.  I might just hang around a bit.  However, I cant post photos because I told photo bucket to take their money grabbing ideas and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.  I was already paying good money for the space I used and they wanted more to allow me to continue sharing my images.

[enjenjo]

Good on ya Carps. Maybe we'll meet at Louisville next year.

[Carps]

Good on ya Carps. Maybe we'll meet at Louisville next year.

Let's call it a plan.

[348tripower]

[kb426]

^^^^^
Thanks for the update.

[Charlie Chops 1940]

Hello Peter,

Great to hear all the news. You're a tough guy! Stick around.

[chimp koose]

  glad to hear you are doing better

[sirstude]

Good to hear from you.  I was thinking about you last week and wondering how things were going.
Doug

[Ohio Blue Tip]

Good to hear from ya.

[phat46]

Good to hear from you.  I was thinking about you last week and wondering how things were going.
Doug

Same here, I was wondering where Carps went, now we know. Great to hear from you again, keep you chin up!