The unsolvable problem with personal development - A Gearhead Trinity Dilemma.

A Hot Rod Go-fast-soul (Go fast. Die young style, the Jesus way.)

Blind boldness.  (Old testament God style)

A sense of elegance. (My inspiration here is the Holy Spirit)

Those are the 3 things you need to be a goto gearhead and mechanical mastermind.

There is just one big problem; Age.

Here's what; when you're a wild teenager with appetite for cars and bikes, to produce blind boldness is normally not a problem. It's a given factor. 

If you're a natural born motorhead a hot rod go-fast-soul normally arrives effortlessly in your early 20-ties.

But style and elegance requires more experience, time and an artistic mind to develop. This comes slowly from nowhere and evolves as we're getting more mature. I don't want too precise about age here...

Another parameter is mechanical precision. When you're really young, wild and full of speed, needs and the urge to do deeds, service intervals and correct wrench torque is not on the agenda. Because you're busy having fun and making errors. Normally you don't win races based on self-made stuff at this age. You're imortal as can be and powerful, but you ain't got no money. Which is good.

As a gearhead grows older mechanical engineering skill evolves and his or her stuff starts to work properly.  At this point you might get champagne and climb the winner stand. You're on the way to be a mechanical mastermind and an amazing driver, but deep in your heart you know that you're getting sane and there's nothing you can do about it.

At some point in time we felt the urge to build a Landspeed Racer, a Volvo Amazon Landspeed Racer. 

(yes it's still in US, ready to race)

If you've got the strength and the passion, you can carry on and enter next level and reach for elegance. But as you coming closer to elegance and sophisticated speed you feel poor and you suffer because you've lost the wildness. You suffer, but on a high and comfortable level.

This is how I repair a quarter panel on our Olds -49 these days. I would have used a somewhat simplified method when I was a teenager...think bondo. 

Some of us are trying hard to bridge 35 year of personal development as a hobby mechanic by working on small engines once in a while. But it doesn't seems to help...the result becomes too good over and over again.

Almost none of us can be all the above at same time. Is it even the same person who tuned those mopeds at 15 that build race cars and restore vehicles later in life? Is the guy or the girl in the old picture really you? A philosophical question that can drive you crazy.

A few of us are surprisingly fit to cope with the gearhead Trinity dilemma.

(this is a rather old picture though...) 

But at some point it's time to stop thinking and just feel comfortable no matter age and personal development...since we have turbos and superchargers for all that wants to go fast and make fun last.