Yes, this is truly the end of an era. No, I'm not leaving the magazine as your humble editor, but I have moved on. As far as housing, anyway. For 10 years I've been a hermit on top of a hill, living in a motorhome on dirt, without the benefit of electricity, cable, phone, or any modern convenience. Somehow that allowed me to save some coin and buy a house in the worst real estate market anywhere-Southern California. I say worst because nobody can really afford to buy here. But I bit the bullet, as prices won't be dropping anytime soon, and realized that the investment would be worth the pocketbook pain. So now my new domicile is in the 'burbs, complete with all the niceties of normal living, like electricity that comes on without pulling a rope.
Not that most of you really care about where I live or how, but it made me think of you guys with heated garages and lifts, as well as the time you have to devote to your favorite 4x4 project, and how my own projects have been languishing because of my former living situation. Instead of 25 various 4x4s flung across a muddy hillside and no place but the front stoop to work on, I now have a big backyard with Jeeps and trucks parked neatly behind a fence (so the neighbors don't complain). And that magnificent two-car garage that came with the house? It's packed so full of junk I can't even see the one project rig I parked in there in the first place. The whole idea was to have a garage so I could work during inclement weather or cold dark nights without having to lie in the mud with a flashlight while wrenching on a driveshaft. Have you ever tried to find U-joint needle bearings in the mud at night? That's fine, and even fun on the trail, but not when you're getting ready for a trip.
So now all I have to do is figure out how to clean out the garage so I can actually work on my junk. That was the whole point of moving anyway-it was really a decision to get stuff done, an end of one era and moving on with the next. But now that I'm stymied it's back to the same old story-no time or room. I guess I'll have to build a shed out back to store all my various treasures I've collected over the years, so I can safely store my spare stack of engines and transfer cases as well as used spring bushings. I'll use my pile of bent frames and mangled bodies to reinforce the existing wood fence so the neighbors can't see all the quality junk I'm saving. And yes, a few rusty relics of no value will be donated or discarded, which probably should have happened when they were stored the first time. It's a hard lesson to learn about storage and room, such as the diminishing size of space one has relative to the amount of treasures collected. Or as a friend once noted, "You have too many Jeeps." I simply said, "No, I just don't have enough room."