We think of our workshop as an opportunity to experience the tension between man and his machines. Most of what we have and do here also doesn't fit at home very well. This first shot is a typical lineup from 2007 with Dylan, our shop clown. A few years later ... Just so you don't think we never finish anything, the next two shots are of rigs we created and took on life-changing road trips: Carlson's Caddy at the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo (with my two sons, Dylan and Steve) and Road Ready, our RV firetruck, at Arches National Park in Nevada.. Next is "Despatcher," a 1928 RCMP patrol boat that we resurrected in BC Canada.It shows a crew of my wife, Roslyn, our daughter, Diane, and Roslyn's best friend, Karen, about to embark on a trip through the Gulf Islands. Three cooks and a Captain - not bad sea duty. ha ha. Stories about these and other rigs are on separate pages.

The workshop has evolved over time as projects have been conceived and completed. The narratives are in present tense as the experiences are being lived. This adds an ethereal feel to our site since you can't tell where in time you are. In reality the whole landscape is evolving in time with no particular rudder. Next is us in 09 under a fish we cought in Cabo; Then a workshop lineup from 09 with VW Thing, Studebaker pickup, MGB, Vespa, Chopper pedal trike, Baja Bug and the butt end of our completed Firetruck RV (featured in Jan 2009 Bus conversion Magazine). The lineup, of course, is constantly changing. Even the shop itself changed to a nicer building in 2011 although there are no pictures of the new digs. Maybe later. Next is a shot of Mick and me with a wooden speedboat we restored. Anyway, we've now introduced most of the players at the shop, except Darius, who bought the big house and has a nice garage at home now.

Update: At present (2014) the shop has morphed down to a one-man show again. The other players found better things to do for the most part. I still hear the beating drum and march on, wondering what the next project will be.

Skipping about 8-10 years and a shop from hell that got swept up in a development fenzy. As bottom feeders, we tend to sell if anything we buy ever floats to the surface. .....

These last couple of pics are from the latest shop. As you can see, Dylan has sort of grown up. We call him "sir" now, for obvious reasons. The last pic domonstrates that Dylan has also evolved his own concept of what a shop is good for. How about some sort of headphone-driven karaoke dance thing? I never did really understand what came down that night. No broken bones....all good.
The one compliment to the workshop that has transformed the entire experiment is Dylan's partner in adventure, Kaitlyn Reid. OMG! How the two of them connected is a story for them to tell, but let's just say that, together, they can leave Sisyphus in the dust while pushing any rock of their choosing up any hill that nature puts in their way.

Before encouraging you to browse the project folders, I'd like to mention that creating the shop and this web site motivated me to write down some of what I've learned from working on cars and boats over the years. The resulting "story" is primarily for our kids, Diane, Dylan and Steve - in hopes they might gain some appreciation for how a hobby enriches your life. Anyway, if you're interested in this story you can click on the link and receive a PDF - absolutely free. It encapsulates the first forty years or so of my tinkering on vehicles. As Dylan, the youngest, grows up, which is close to almost over, I hope he's paying better attention to the things that happen to him than I was at his age. My story of twenty-two cars and a boat contains a few holes that had to be filled in with frog DNA or some such a thing, but that's OK.

Download of a story, written between 2002 and 2007: What I've learned from working on .. 22 Cars and a Boat

Jump ahead to 2024/25

This next tiny section is completely off topic - or not. Occasionally I get inquiries about "Rex's Round House" a mid-century modern house I once owned. It was a trip, but a trip that ended some 20 years ago (2005 +-). Anyway, to learn about the attention that the Round House received in the late 90's and early 2000's you can take a peek at the first video. It shows an incomplete smattering of publications that featured the Round House. It also shows a VHS tape from an espisode of Extreme Homes (season 2 episode 12?) that featured the house. Obviously, I didn't fix this house at the workshop, but belive me when I say that I fixed a lot of shit at the Round House. I learned life skills there, like welding with a stick-welder hanging from a 30 foot ladder, and electrocuting myself trying to figure out the arcane and undocumented wiring. Stuff like that. It's also where I killed myself in a house fire (I have the scars to prove it, but that's another story. :). Before closing on this little chapter of my fix-shit journey, you might want to watch the video of Extreme Homes that featured "Rex's Round House". It's pretty cute, with some great one-liners. For someone who has slowly drifted into his own head, I was on a roll in this 11 minute clip from Extreme Homes.


Click the youtube link to the Round House on Extreme Homes, 1999:

Rex's Round House

At this point, you might think that "22 Cars" could/should be updated to include other projects like the Round House. Well, after plunging into over a half-dozen project houses (including a tree house, beach house and ski cabin), my ratio of new adventures to chronicling the past would get way out of whack for my slowing diminishing energy level. Better to focus on the future, with or without any meaningful record. As someone said, " If you've heard about one, once-in-a-lifetime, life-changing vision-quest, you've heard about 'em all." My dad would probably conclude, "And if you still feel a pull toward projects like the ones described AtTheWorkshop, go for it. What could go wrong? :)

Thanks for listening.