Hey, readers. I hope you had a good holiday season, whatever you celebrate, and I hope the hangover from New Year’s has finally subsided. Mercifully, the holiday season treated me lovely this year…Santa was very kind (even though the fat elf forgot my four-wheeled requests yet again this year), time with the family was lovely, and the peace and tranquility of time off was sorely needed. Notice one thing in that whole statement: not one damn thing about cars. Not a one. Not when Haley and I went up to Andy Warren’s Christmas party. Not once during Christmas or New Year’s. In fact, there’s been minimal vehicle involvement since just before we went on our break. There was some involvement, but not much. I did go down to join Uncle Tony on his New Year’s Eve Facebook Live stream for a bit, and Chris and I did some work to the Dirty Cougar to prepare it for the next King of the Heap race, but that was about it.

It might not come through with the writing, but in person I’m exceedingly car-centric. Even Brian and Chad can find other topics to talk about when not actively in-depth at work, while yours truly usually has to force any other subject. What made me take a break? Over-saturation. Here’s the rub: you can burn out from immersing yourself too deeply into your work or hobbies. You know that statement about “everything in moderation”? Yeah…I forgot it in 2019. I drove myself to anger over a transmission. I was so focused on that one car that I ignored the other project, Haley’s Mustang, in the shop for most of the year. All of the repairs that the Cougar needed were put off until the last minute, it seems. And by the end of the year, I was so fed up, so frustrated, that I was spending every day surfing the web for vehicles to replace the Imperial with. I actually put that car up for sale…and no shocker, no buyers.

For the break, I told myself that except for Cougar work, I wasn’t touching cars until after New Year’s Day. How well did that go? For the most part, I kept my word. The Cruze made life difficult when it’s hydraulic slave cylinder started bleeding out brake fluid, but it’s parked for the time being right now as I flip a coin between “spend $750 for a $120 part” and “this car has GOT to go”. Work on the Mercury has actually been great…it’s now sporting new bearings, new front brakes, and new power steering lines that don’t piss out all of the fluid at the first hint of a corner. It keeps getting better and better, and what’s even cooler is seeing Chris’s reactions as the AeroCat comes back to life. Hell, I even spun some wrenches on the Imperial again, fixing some damaged components in the drum brakes and preparing for the installation of some Craigslist-find headers that should work on the 367, which brings the car closer than it’s been in over five years to true street-legal driving. It even has three functional forward gears, something that took ALL FREAKING YEAR to get sorted!

And the fun part? I’m enjoying the work again. I’ll be the first to tell you that my temper is never faster than when I’m spinning wrenches. But so far, so good…and that includes the fun of drum brake springs, or changing the power steering lines on a Fox body’s rack with the rack still more-or-less installed in the car. I just needed to not only walk away from certain projects, but sometimes cars in general to get my mind right. I’ve been wrenching on the Mustang again, and I’ve been planning out what 2020 will bring. Happiness is a good vacation, but vacation is over…time to get back to work.