Old Members who haven't been on here in awhile

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:27 pm

im still alive. got out of the business shortly after my oldest was diagnosed with leukemia. it was just too much to try and be there at the hospital and try and make a living that in this area is almost a dead industry. now if i built off road vehicles or race cars id be in business but, i dont.....at least i dont enjoy it for profit. i like to work on my own stuff for fun. we moved not quite halfway to lexington from where we were in a little town called demossville. its got 2 churches and a post office. but when i look out my backyard no one is stealing my kids bicycles or trying to steal my grill for scrap. plus if i wander out back and up the hill there is about 20 acres up there to do whatever i want. my neighbor is cool and always playing with cars, its actually really awesome, we got a civil war era house with 5 bedrooms and its been renovated to have 2 full baths and theres an outhouse out back too. its still a little north of where i lived as a kid but in the same county. lol, theres only like 15000 people in the whole county. sometimes i get the itch to build an audio system in my daily driver, an old ram 1500 but then i realize to do so would tap into money i have earmarked to eventually buy another mustang and go fast. oddly enough i got into the quick lube business accidentally. i had a friend who was a mgr. for a smaller locally owned chain offer me a job there till i could find something and wound up getting promoted before that happened. then got promoted again and was running my own stores. then got sent to atlanta for some industry certification classes and then quit and went to work for a privately owned valvoline franchise where the money is better and i only work 4 days a week. but i still need a couple days a week to take care of the homestead. takes about 5 hours to do the mowing and trimming. got a lot of wood to cut. started a veggie garden. and as soon as i get this old chevy 4x4 out of here a mustang should soon after takes its place.

Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:44 pm

Hey There,
It's nice to hear from ya, sorry to hear that your oldest is battling cancer. I everything is going OK.

Wow, sounds like you live in a pretty cool area. The 20 acres sounds nice, time for you to get a dirt bike!

Well if you get that stang, you better post some pics of it in the garage. We need more than 5 cars there.
Feel free to post in the forums whenever you want, I'm trying to get everyone back and use the forums to keep in touch. Doesn't have to be car audio related.

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 2:50 pm

thanks chris, she actually just got cleared of cancer in december. her iv port comes out in june and except for the occasional blood work to make sure everything is still good its over with. she has been cancer free for the last 4 months. 20 acres around here is probably average with some places having 100 or more. i dont know if you guys heard about the tornados in ky back in march but we move just about 5 miles from the center of piner where the northernmost tornados hit and maybe 10 miles from the southernmost tornados in this area. it pretty much devastated this area and they actually had to post police at the end of some of the back roads to verify you lived there. a friend who is a county cop said he actually had people tell him they wanted to take pictures for facebook.....he rather "politely" told them to get the f@@k out of there. hes a local guy too so he was working to keep away rubberneckers instead of helping friends and family.

Post by **GlassWolf** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:51 am

that's fantastic. I lost my best friend to Leukemia, back in 1976. Treatment for it has come a long way since then.

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:45 am

yea its definitely changed a lot. losing someone to cancer is a terrible thing to go through. i had my grandmother die of breast cancer on christmas morning when i was a kid and im glad things have gotten better. it seems the older i get the more that goes wrong with me and everyone around me in my age group.

Post by **GlassWolf** » Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:03 am

Amen to that, brother

Ryan from Ohio · Post by **Ryan from Ohio** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 4:20 am

That is very good news Terry. Speaking as a parent it is a stress that is almost unbearable when something happens to our kids.

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:24 pm

true, i have always said, if i have to die today, let me outlive my kids.

where the hell is bill and joe?

Bwcad1 · Post by **Bwcad1** » Tue May 01, 2012 3:51 am

Im around.

OnYrMrk · Post by **OnYrMrk** » Sat May 05, 2012 3:02 pm

I have been doing most of my time on wetdub.com and facebook. I work for the federal govt now (FAA) as a Information Security Auditor and travel the country checking out government databases to see if they are up to the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) standards. I competed with Team Focal for a few years, then moved to Team Hybrids and nearly had Scott Buwalda build my mustang. But I learned some seedy stuff about Hybrid so I decided to distance myself from them.

I have since sold my mustang, bought a 2007 Audi A4 2.0T Quattro and plan on putting Helix Competition amps with MicroPrecision speakers in it. I have a friend who is a distributor and he needs the product in the lanes, so I volunteered.

I will poke my head back in to see how things are going from time to time but being on the computer everyday for 8-10hrs a day...wears on a person, so my nights normally are away from the computer. I hope all is going well with everyone.

Bill is whooping tail on his little Genesis coupe, and i hope to see it in the lanes soon. Who knows, maybe one of these days I will be in one of you guys' neck of the woods. In June I will be back in DC for an assessment.

--Joe