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Spinning plates

Posted on September 10, 2023

I love that expression.  “Spinning plates” is an old staple of late-night TV.  I imagine a housewife or businessman from the 50’s trying to concentrate while Jack Parr or Ed Sullivan watches in amazement at their dedication to a party trick that has now given them 7.5 minutes of fame.


Yesterday was a bit of a comeback.  I have not done any solo Fort’s “car”-related events in a while.  Normally I have a cast of characters from the store willing to drive the Supra or FRS for a car show but this time time everyone was doing their own thing.

“Meat at the Dome” was happening in Pekin yesterday.  The name alludes to the once-inflated Dragon Dome, but that is now called the Avanti’s Event Center as the dome has been cutaway since it was leveled in a windstorm.  Meat refers to smoked meats and BBQ that normally happen with these events when done at another location.  I am not criticizing, only explaining the name of the event, since it was a little weird!

The organizer of the event reached out to me months ago and asked if Fort’s would sponsor.  Frankly, if it’s an automotive event IN the Pekin area… I’m going to want to be involved.  We have too few events like this in our backyard and car culture is coursing through the veins of so many people around here.  We need to tap that and make something out of it.

I arrived at 8:30 and set up right next to another booth that I was very familiar with.  Brocket Built.  Marcus Brocket does amazing work as a designer, fabricator, and welder with his customer exhausts.  We had talked over a year ago about having him do something for a Fort’s racecar.  But as our family struggles started taking me away from racing, showing and general glad-handing at anything car-culture related…  I put him on the back burner.

We caught up for the first hour.  Having Marcus there was a nice buffer to get my “water wings” off and start talking to folks.  (Eric?  Shy?  Nah, uncomfortable in the presence of a new event with lots of new faces for me.)

As I wandered the field of cars in the parking lot and watched the events.  (Smoke show, Car Limbo, etc.) I started bumping into old friends and people I hadn’t talked to in years.  So many great people out there who are still doing the “car thing”.  Talk about putting on an old shoe.  By the time I pulled out at 3, I had a nice forehead sunburn, met a lot of new folks, and made loose plans for some events for 2024.


I have shed so much responsibility over the past year.  I screwed up my scout certification… So I couldn’t help with Marigold Festival.   My time as an SCCA committee member is very lackluster this year.  Sometimes I would have bursts of downtime that I could “jump-in”.  But when it came time to race or setup for the once race in Peoria this year… Summer was at her worst.  Off-road events?  None of those in the last 18 months either.

Politics?  I won’t even get into that.  Talk about being hot and cold at the same time.

Regrets?  None.  Everyone who knows the situation has been nothing but amazing.  But, just like the fires that burn/burned at work and our home while life is neglected… These things, as inconsequential as they are in the more valuable, personal day-to-day life are threads that get caught up in the mechanizations of my ever-thinking mind.  Its always distilling down to letting people down.   Not paying attention to things and people I love.

When do you cut strings on all the little things that are interesting and focus on whats truly valuable?  How do you decide what that is?  I cant sit at home and worry about me as an occupation or a hobby.  Is that really an option in life?  Stepping away from so much let a lot of those “spinning plates” fall.

Now, a table is set up to get the plates spinning again.

Looking down at shards of porcelain… Which ones need the super glue?


Patches, stickers, and magnets.  That’s about all I have left.  Keychains are gone and pins are getting thin.

The WIX site will be up for one more month.  It costs 20 bucks a month to run the site and take credit cards.  It’s amazing and I learned a lot setting it up.  (I love setting up this kind of stuff, but it’s time-consuming and it has lots of mental gymnastics to learn all the minutia involved. That’s just my weirdness)

So, what I am saying:  1.  If you want to order something… Use the WIX site now.  2.  I am working on a WordPress shopping cart that is “FREE” but lacks all credit card processing features.  It will be clumsy and terrible, but thats OK.

https://planetstahl.wixsite.com/summer-stahl-scholar

 

 

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