back to basics

I went to a hot rod show last year with my cousin Dave, his son and his grandson. They are real long time car nuts and hot rodders. I could learn a lot if I could spend more time with these guys. While walking through a building full of stuff for hot rodders to buy one of them remarked that he remembered when everybody had to make these parts for themselves. Hot rodding has grown over the last fifty years from the only way a young man could have an exciting car to some sort of monster that devours tons of money from the participants. It takes lots of time and therefore lots of money to have everything on a car shiny and perfect. It takes lots of money to have lots of horsepower and lots more money to have a great leather interior.

And it all started with guys chopping sheet metal off of used cars so they would go faster and handle better.

Well a backlash has started, there are now guys building cars again some what like the old hot rods. Take an old coupe body, leave the canvas off the top, no fenders no hood, slip in some old V8 and other old fashioned parts, don't worry about the interior once you get some seats in it and forget all about the paint it doesn't make you go fast anyway, and you've got a hot rod.

I like the whole idea.

Back to basics. Realize that you don't have to have everything you thought you wanted to have fun. Don't need all that stuff to get the job done.

Play some rockabilly in the background. Stand up bass instead of a Fender Precision, stand up drum kit and one guitar. GO!

For a lot of us that is what needs to be done to make improvements in our lives. Get back to basics. Let go of stuff all around us and concentrate on the basics.

There is so much clutter here I don't know if I can find the basics anymore. Might have to keep a basics diary, write it down everyday.

Keep the parts that repeat, discard the stuff that never even shows up and ponder on the stuff in the middle.

Basics.