Live from "The garage" Trying to get to INDY Baby!

[Jim Blankenship]

69cobra THANK YOU for your service
see you at the races soon jim

[Jimi B]

BTW like everyone said, thanks for your service 69cobra, and the facebook add. I often times feel guilty that I have not served.. All though I have done design work and built up armored vehicles for our govt and some other institutions. But I guess if we werent free to spend all of our time and money on these cars then there wouldnt be anything worth fighting for.


#*#*# UPDATE#*#*#* Should of went with my instinct and did things the right way, but I thought I would see if after indexing the plugs that would give me enough. On the one chamber that was small it did. The miniscus was right there.. But im going to be on the safe side and make sure I have a few tenths of a cc to work with. I have plenty of margin on the valves. No big deal, only a few hours behind now.

[69Cobra]

Thanks for the well wishes everyone. I'm not an enlisted soldier, but a contractor. I'm an electrician by trade and was with in a week of signing up for the Marine Corp. right out of high school. At the time you and a buddy could go through basic training together and a couple friends of mine signed up. That same week I got a job offer from the IBEW 212 Electrical Union here in Cincinnati and after looking at what they were offering I took that route instead. But, like Jimi I've always felt a little guilty for not serving.

When I was a second year apprentice (1999) I started with a company and worked my way up to Project Manager/Estimator. A year ago I was pretty much running the Cincinnati branch you could say. I was bidding the jobs, managing the jobs and guys and everything else that takes place in the office. I had a company vehicle, gas card, phone and decent pay.

One day I was talking with a friend of mine and he said that he signed up to go to work in Afghanistan to help out. At the time between Iraq and Afghanistan we had lost hundreds of soldiers do to electrical shock from faulty wiring. Be it taking showers, cooking diner or doing laundry we have lost a couple hundred soldier in the last ten years. That really him me and I knew that for once I could go and do my part to service God and country so after being with a company for 12 years I decided to quit my job and go live in a tent in southern Afghanistan and jump from base to base to help out.

I'm 34 years old and married my high school sweetheart. I have an awesome son Gage who just started the second grade and is getting ready to turn 7 on Sept. 18th and my wife is 4 months pregnant right now. This has been a very awesome experience and I know that I've made a difference for our men and women in uniform. Now before everybody says yeah but look at all that money you're making. Well, what would you think if I told you that I took an hourly pay cut to come over here.

Jimi, I didn't mean to hi-jack your thread just wanted to explain myself.

Now get that motor finished up!

Peace Out!

[Casey Miles]

Years past, I've worked on the car up until the time to leave for Indy, I'd be doing the same thing now but the job wouldn't allow me to go. I have the funding, the time in the vacation bank, but since the down sizing of the man power, there's no one to watch this group of 11 hospitals. I'm an onsite tech for the phone systems. It's like the march of the virgins, one's sick the other doesn't want to walk alone.
Even though I know that I couldn't quailify, I'd take my junk there just to be there and vacation. I enjoy being there with all the other racers and friends, all two of them. It's funny, one year, I actually got into the top 128 by my competitor breaking in the class run off. I was one of the slowest car on the grounds against the index. Maybe next year I'll take my car and maybe it will be more competitive (Don't count on the competitive part though).

Casey Miles
248H Stock?