Random Thought 5 Fathers Day

Well, as I lay in my bed this Father's Day night, wondering what I'm going to fall asleep to on Netflix now that I've finished watching Scrubs, I remembered a conversation I had with my family when we were out at my paternal grandparents house about childhood memories. As my dad and uncle relayed stories of the childhood and how blessed they were to have parents that let them have motorcycles and buy dangerously fast cars, and how my grandpa spent the time to teach them how to work on the cars and do it right.

It all brought me back to how blessed I am right in this instant. I'm blogging about this crap because my dad and grandpa (Both grandparents actually) instilled a passion for gearheadedness (some say bullheadedness as well) and how much that has effected my life. If you know me, my WORLD revolves around internal combustion. From the earliest days of rocking out to our Van Halen tape in the old 67 Plymouth Barracuda. Fastback Formula S, (we still have the tape, and the car) to nowadays when we're leaning over the hood of my 28 Ford Model A Sport Coupe. I think I've spent more time in my garage with grease up to my elbows than I have sleeping and my dad has been there every step of the way.

Because of my dad, I can pretty much rebuild a lawnmower blindfolded. Because of my dad, people I hardly know ask for my "professional opinion" on what is wrong with their car/mower/scooter because they know my dad, and they know I've been right beside him in the garage my whole life. It's bit of a blessing and a curse. 

For one, everyone things I am a genius when it comes to fixing cars, but I'm not. My cars don't break because I know how to maintain them properly, so 90% of the time, when I'm in the garage, it's tinkering on a small engine. Lawnmower, dirt bike or snowmobile, because they are much more prone to failure because they usually run at much higher RPM's and require more upkeep because they wear at a faster rate. The reason my dad knows so much about cars is because he had to rebuild half of his when he was a younger man. I was given a perfect running truck that I still haven't touched since I started driving it. I can tell you about the cylinder shut off system in the new Chrysler Hemi's but I can't tell you how to troubleshoot them.

Even still, I can BS my way through most stuff, or at least give a general idea. And I'm pretty thankful for that. About the only time we've ever had to send something in to be fixed is our transmission, and that's because that's just a pain in the butt to work on.

So yeah, I'm thankful for my dad. I'm thankful for my grandpa's too. They gave my parents the knowhow to do a lot of cool stuff. Something as simple as maintaining a dirt bike just comes second nature to me, but some people don't even know how to change their spark plugs.