Wow, there is still a week to go this month and I've already been to ten events. I've got pictures from all of them up. On June 4 I went to the Twilight Cruise at the NHRA museum. It was kind of cold that day but, there was still a great turn out. There were several out of town cars that arrived early for the LA Roadster show. On June 7 Ron, Lee, and I hopped in Norm's 53 Plymouth wagon and bombed all over SoCal having a great time. We started out with Breakfast at the Loose Caboose in Crestline, then over to Lake Arrowhead for the Wood Boat Regatta, next over to Big Bear for a car show, then we went back down the mountain to catch up with the 4ever4 guys. We stopped by the Route 66 Cruise in Rancho Cucamonga on the way there. Finally we added Wayno to the group and capped the evening off with beer and red meat at the Buffalo Inn. On June 13 I started out at the Fairplex to help set up the Hop Up compound for the LA Roadster Show, got a few early swap meet purchases and then headed over to Thumper's party. Unfortunately, I was a little late for that one so I went over to Socal Speed Shop for their open house. About the time that one was winding down, a few of us went over to Bobby Waldens shop for his open house. On June 14 & 15 I spend the days at the Fairplex once again at the LA Roadster show. On the 21st Ron and I went up to Hesperia for the High Desert Roadster's run. There were only aobut ten guys there but we still had a good time. Finally, today I went to 40 Ford Day at La Palma park.

As you may know my life has been a pretty rocky road for the past couple of years and especially bad since the first of this year. Since I lost my job and haven't been able to find a comparable corporate gig in 4 months, and my wife of less than 3 years is filing for divorce because she "made a mistake", I find myself with no responsibilities and no ties other than my extended family and my friends. I get a "Do Over".

My brothers pitched an idea to me that seemed a little far fetched at first but the more I thought about it the better it sounded and the last few weeks I am very excited about it. My youngest brother owns a very successful 4 wheel drive and sand car fabrication shop (www.3dsandcars.com) in Visalia, California. The shop next door to his is coming up for lease and they suggested that I lease it and open a hot rod shop there. I would have free reign of his shop to use his equipment and could even "borrow" guys on his crew when needed.

I plan to have "Highway 99 Hot Rods" open for business by July 15, 2008. I will start out by building a few spec cars. I've already got 80% of the stuff I need to build a 32 highboy including a new chassis and Brookville body. I also have ideas for several products that I want to develop, produce, and market. Third, as word gets out locally, I'll do hot rod repairs and upgrades for the local market. And finally, I'll do complete ground up builds for customers, these may be local or not.

I've got a lot of ideas for promoting the business. I'll leverage the traffic that I get from this web site. I plan to keep the photo coverage of events going which will mean trips to SoCal and NorCal a couple of times a month. I'm sure that's the main reason this site gets an average of over 750 unique visits per day. As soon as I get set up in the shop I plan to transition most of the existing web site's content to www.highway99hotrods.com.