My first shop, when I was doing cylinder head work and engine assembly. This must have been around late 95 or '96. Ahh, the memories.

Here's how you make your own hot tank in the backyard of your mom's house. First, you request MSDS sheets from the companies which sell hot tank solutions. From these, you can decipher what the active chemicals are. In this case, it basically turned out that hot tank solution is more or less pure lye, which consists of sodium hydroxide and sodium bicarbonate. Anyway, then you call up an industrial supply company and buy about 50 pounds of it (about an 800 engine supply) for about 40 bucks. Turns out, they use it for food preparation(?), so anyone off the street can buy it. Then you go get a 55 gallon drum and a ni-chrome heating element which wraps around the bottom of it to heat the contents. Then you mix about a cup of the chemicals with water. It also helps if you stir it all up with your mom's broomstick handle. Then you unplug your mom's 220 volt clothes dryer so you can plug in the hot tank. Then you lower engine blocks into it with your engine hoist, and VOILA! The next day your parts are as clean as new. However your mom may be slightly pissed that her backyard has been turned into an EPA hazard zone, and that she can no longer do any laundry.

One of Nat's modeling pictures... hot stuff!

Sema 2004. Holy crap. Has it been that long? If I was a freshman back then, I would be totally graduating this year.

This one is definately a finalist. Just replace the green grass in your mind with tumble weeds and joshua trees. Love the American flag though. And the garage is BEHIND the house.

Not bad... a bit small though.

Number 3... Nice and symmetrical. Just the way I like it. Except for that huge garage which is protruding WAY far forward and looks totally weird. Just pretend thats not there.

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UNLESS... we could build a second equally large and protruding one on the right side as well. Sort of like a his and hers. Now we're talking.

Option 2... I'm not sure about the round thing on the left side of the porch. Too victorian. I'm sure there's a technical name for it. Oh wait, my opinion might be influencing the judges. I better shut up.

As some of you may know, Nat and I (mostly Nat) have designed a farmhouse that we will soon build (or hire someone to build) ... (probably that last option...) Anyway, there are five final designs that we like. Leave us your comments and vote for your favorite one!

Our '58 dual quad 350. No, not that 350. The other one. Yes, they did make a big block 350. No, I'm not wrong.

Six Deuce Baby.

The next project... ???

Halloween's coming up...

Nat's getting this costume for me.

I love photoshop.

This election is like "Predator 3" .... Whoever wins... we lose.

14 years old with my first ever "real" girlfriend. Check out that cool Metallica poster in the background. My mom dragged me to her office one day, and I was stuck there, so I took the CD booklet out of a Metallica album, and spent a couple hours at the copy machine copying it at maximum enlargement, and then copying the copies at maximum enlargement, then copying those copies, etc, etc, until I had turned the 4" x 4" CD booklet into a 5 foot by 5 foot poster. Of course I used up their 10,000 pages worth of toner in the process, but my mom hated that job anyway.

What happens when lawyers are in charge...

Directing "Generation: Lost" in '99. My gawd, has it been almost 10 years? When this picture was taken, I would have literally bet my life on the fact that I would have been directing hollywood features by now. Guess I got distracted by something else along the way. What's that saying about life not being about the destination, but rather about the journey? That's fine, but I'm like the little kid in the back seat that wants to know every 30 seconds, "are we almost there yet?"

Exterior shot. No, cool does not even begin to describe it. A little buffing and she'll look like new again.

The Dream Machine...

Aside from possibly the Charger (and it's a really close race), this is the coolest vehicle I've ever owned. The 1965 Dodge Travco motor home. Totally original interior. It's pulled over 3 times it's GVW, been off-roading (and never got stuck!), been off-roading pulling a 28 foot trailer, and still never got stuck (now THAT's amazing.) Soon I'm going to totally restore this thing and we'll take it to PA for the Chrysler nats one of these years.

Me sitting on the ledge of the edge of the grand canyon earlier this year. The rangers told us later that about 30 people a year die when the rocks they are standing on just sort of "slide off" 7000 feet down into the canyon below. My question is, why don't they tell you this when you first get there?

Here's another shot of the race car while I was doing the chassis fabrication. You can see the frame rails and the front ladder bar mounting brackets if you look closely. I cut out the entire floor from the trans crossmember back to the tail lights.

The Charger when it came back from the paint shop. Too bad it needs to go back again - Too many years of storage and dragging it from place to place have taken their toll.

The first new vehicle I ever bought. A '97 club cab Dodge dually truck with a V-10. Socked away every dollar I made for 8 months straight, and bought it once I had saved enough money. I still have the cancelled check somewhere as a memento. Even at 20 years old, I was never one for buying anything on credit. Too bad the rest of our country doesn't feel the same way.

This was shortly after I bought it, on a camping trip in Los Padres national forest in late '96. Not long after this picture was taken, I took it exploring on a fire road and and got it stuck in a ditch while trying to turn around. That's when I realized I should have got four wheel drive.

Me and my hot wife in black and white.

Time for a shave and a haircut at burning man.

Me and my buddies waxing the Charger. This couldn't have been more than a few days or a week after I got it. I must have been a week or so from turning 16. About all I knew at that point was how to open the hood. But I sure wanted to learn... and bad. I remember thinking I wanted to be able to look at a pile of parts that made up a charger and be able to put them all together into a car. Little did I know that would be the easy part. Manufactuing the parts from scratch would prove to be a bit more difficult.

A '70 Road Runner I used to own, with super cool working air grabber setup. I made friends with this guy who lived nearby and was a customer of mine, wound up dating his daughter for awhile (that's another story) and traded him a 68 Superbee I had for this 70 runner. Sold it to my friend John after a bit, and I think he still has it.

This was another mine in Randsburg, about 400 feet down. We came back a week later, and a tunnel we had been exploring when this picture was taken was totally collapsed. It was at that point I may have decided to take up a slightly safer hobby.

Going down an abandoned mineshaft in Atolia, Ca. Young, dumb and full of ... adventurous spirit.

Here's a 57 Plymouth Fury with a dual carb 318 I bought from Al Schieb (Earl Schieb's son) when I was about 17 or so. I bought this car for $600, put a $15 ad in Hemmings the next day, and sold the car a few days later for $3800. It never even came off the trailer. At the time, my friends were all working for McDonalds or Taco Bell for 5 bucks an hour. That was one of my first lessons about how the world of business works. The couple of job applications I had picked up went straight into the trash can.

My dad. I haven't seen him since I was 19 or so. This is one of the only pictures I have of him.

Standing on our (hopefully) new property, if it ever closes escrow. 20 acres (871,000 square feet) of flat as a board property out in the middle of the country but 18 minutes from the warehouse. We're keeping our fingers crossed. ...

Hmm.... how big of a "garage" can I build on there... 80,000 square feet should be a good start. "But honey, it's not even 10% of the property size." "We'll build it behind the house... you won't even notice it's there... I promise"

Timing a 512.

Nuff said.

Please make sure all seatbelts are securly fastened and all tray tables are in their upright position..

...Testing the welds of the chassis with a good 5 or 6 feet of air. The welds held, but I did break an axle at one point though.

Tweaking it

Squeezing the last bit of horsepower out of the buggy for the purpose of (see next picture...)

Our House

Our house. Our little niece and nephew call it "the white house" My cousin calls it "The plantation." I just hope real estate values go up a bit in the next couple years so we can sell it and move to the country.

Since words alone cannot adequately describe how exciting it is to race cars, I thought this picture would do a much better job. It really just captures the whole essence of it all. In fact, not just racing... make that the whole hobby in general.

The country

The house on 10 acres in Palmdale/Acton. That was such a cool property. Surrounded by mountains on all three sides except the front. And (the best part) you own the mountains! If it was just a bit closer to the building, (and didn't have the left turn of death when leaving) we probably wouldn't have sold it. I sure hope our 20 acres comes through... I sure miss living in the country.

old yeller 2

This is my 2nd Yellow 1971 dodge truck, aptly named "Old Yeller 2." Yes, the first one was just Old Yeller. Old Yeller two was a W300 (4x4) which I completely rebuilt from the frame off. Even though it looks like a $200 truck in the picture, I actually spent over 10 grand completely rebuilding every mechanical system on it. Also, the SUPER COOL feature, you'll see I welded a piece of railroad track across the front of the frame rails to replace the front bumper. Combined with a monstrous 440 and 4.88 gears with detroit lockered Dana 70's in the rear AND the front, it really came in handy during pesky LA traffic. I'm SOOOO getting another one of these.

Me and Marissa and Miriam at a bar. Somehow I got suckered into actually "dancing" that night. There must have been alcohol involved. Good thing there are no pictures of the dancing. I need to keep a little bit of dignity.

More Pony

Pony and I at the beach at SLO.

steadicam

Doing steadicam on a set in Hancock Park. That rig is hell on your back. For more tidbits of my film career, check out www.generationlost.com

The pony during Christmas time. The cuteness is just unbearable. That was at my first house in Tarzana, back in the day.

My cuz..

This is my cousin Brad. People say he reminds them of Vin Diesel. That 68 Chrysler in the background is a jewel I picked up for $300 with a good running steel crank 440. I think I paid him to pull the motor out, I hope he didn't do it with that sledgehammer.

70's finger

This is from a 1970's book I had about things that offend people. I always wondered what flipping people off in the 70's looked like. Since I had this perfect NOS copy, I just had to share it.

blues

This was sometime around 2001. I went through a period of time where practically the only clothing I owned was blue workshirts and black jeans. It made doing laundry really easy, but it left a bit to be desired in the dating department.

Just her and me in '93

Me at 16 or 17 with the Charger. White T-shirts and black jeans are like Glam rock... they'll never go out of style.

At my mom's house all dressed up. I can't remember what I was all dressed up for though. But check out the super cute Rhones in the lower left.

Here's a 906 head I ported. Port on the left is almost done, port on the right is basically stock. After doing a few dozen sets, on my second trip to the hospital (at a cost of over $1200) to remove metal shavings from within my eye, I decided a career in head porting was not where I was going to make the big bucks. In case you're wondering, yes, I wore safety goggles. However, when you're dealing with eight million tiny metal shavings, a few are going to get around the goggles. Not sure if this would be of interest to the average person, but oh well.

The good news: I have 6798 pictures on my work computer. The bad news: 6792 of them are of nothing but car parts. Here's one of the old garage back in the day. Need any heads?

Nat and I in the snow. Did you know that you can tobaggan down a hill on an old piece of cardboard should all your other methods fail...