Hahaha, Griff, I also learned vehicle repair & maintenance in my teens. Started riding motorcycles when I was 14 & got my bike license before my car license. I was taught to drive a manual, provided I would replace the clutch kit & the exhaust system (it just so happened to need to be replaced, too). It was a little Chevy S10 & I was 16. We didn't have a lift, so we drove the front end up those little ramps they have & used 2
two 2-ton hydraulic jacks. We dropped the little trans onto our chests & had to shimmy out from the truck, trying not to drink too much residual trans fluid, LOL! That was my father for ya'.
I'm 34. When I was in my early 20s, I moved to FL, my Mom called me every day. I waitressed, tended bar & went to Massage Therapy school. Got engaged. Got a job at the Ritz-Carlton, Naples...the Ritz that aaallll the other Ritz employees around the world are jealous of. My fiancé joined the Army: Airborne Infantry...because he couldn't hold a regular job. I xrove back & forth from Southwest FL to Ft Benning & then from FL to Ft Bragg near Fayetteville, NC every weekend (bout 12 hr drive 1 way) until he all but threatened to cheat on me if I didn't move up there (which he probably already had). See, he was living in the barracks. If I moved there, they would put him in off-post housing, because on-post housing was full...and he'd get to ride my bike again. I had a brand new 04 GSXR750. So, in my naivety, I left the job of a lifetime, the people who had become my family, the 20 minute-away beach (from home) my job was ON the beach, a dog beach that my dog Shadow had made friends at, a climate to die for, Publix subs, I could go on forever. I lasted a year in North Cackalacki. We lived out in the sticks in Raeford. I worked 5 jobs because nothing was full-time. I didn't know how I'd handle the divorce, so I went back up north to Mom's. That was 05. I've moved out a few times, but you can't make money here. Bike got repoed, SUV too. Bought a car, had a freak seizure from some medicine Drs should've known not to combine, totalled that SUV. Buoght an old Buick car, got run off the road into this poor guy's pristine quad cab 4x4 chevy pick-up. So, here I am...34 years old trying to leave home again, LOL! It's a good thing Mom & I get along. But I've always been more of the nomad type & she likes the safety of putting down roots & we just can't seem to get on the same page with that. She worries. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. :-)
