Q: "How does a project get to be a year late?"
A: "One day at a time!"
If you're the least bit interested in engineering you should track down a copy of the book and give it a read, but the point of this joke is that there are an endless list of minor set-backs that delay every project - a key employee has the flu, a part is delayed in shipping, a manager asks for a demonstration, the system fails in some unexpected way and requires rework - and all those tiny, impossible to predict delays simply add up.
Thats how my Datsun 260Z managed to sit unmoving in my garage for most of the last 15 years, often trapped by boxes of household junk. Every now and then I'd get it started and drive it to work or to a car show or something, but it was always a bit of an ordeal. The car didn't run well or drive well and it rattled and smelled bad inside.
The project had started out well. I had done all the research, spent weekends driving 100s of miles to track down a solid S30, bought the parts I needed, and had a plan to put together exactly the car I wanted. And then a dozen little setbacks happened that killed the initial enthusiasm and knocked the train off the tracks. Despite having a notarized Ohio title, Pennsylvania DOT wanted a hand written bill of sale to issue a title, then they wanted to see stock wheel covers on the car to issue the antique plate (they've now eliminated that requirement), then I found some minor rust holes under the seats that I waited for a friend to patch. Winter made working in the garage unthinkable from November through February, in the summer yard work and home fix-it projects would suck up free time. I changed jobs and put in some long hours learning the ropes. Before I knew it, months and months had passed and I had kids heading off to college, and suddenly I was driving them back and forth across the state every few weekends. My parents had health problems and I started spending more and more weekends at their place to help out. I changed jobs again.
Individually all of those things were small, but taken all together they became crushing. Once that rut is dug, it becomes hard to climb out. A few years ago as a birthday present my wife had a shop haul my Z off to flush the fluids and replace a leaky clutch slave cylinder and un-stick the brakes and get it running again, but its aging bushings and the muffler fitted by the previous owner made it drive and sound too much like an old pickup to make me want to take it out cruising.
And then one morning I started shaving and saw my father's chin staring back from the mirror. I was having a proper mid-life crisis, and I started clearing year's of accumulated junk out of the garage so I had room to swing a wrench. I know its not terribly original, but I'm going to use this blog to keep track of the project, scratch my itch to write like Peter Egan, and hopefully motivate a few other couch potatoes to get started on their own moldering project cars.
Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment