Looking back at 2021

Happy New Year to my family and friends out there on planet Earth! I hope you had a fun and safe New Year's celebration, whether it was at home or at a party with friends.

For this week, I thought I'd take a look back at 2021 kind of review some of my memorable moments in the past twelve months. I'm going to start with some of the things I talked about a year ago, my hopes for 2021!

Family: In spite of still being in the middle of a pandemic, Renee and I tried to make it out and continue our exploration of our great state. One particularly fun visit this year was to an old mining town of Sunrise, Wyoming. For this trip, we took our grandson Isaac, as we thought he might get a blast of exploring the site. It was a fun day! 

This year our grandson Isaac lived with Renee and I for most of the calendar year. It was quite an exciting year having him around. We learned so much about pop culture that would have escaped us otherwise. I now know all of the Paw Patrol pups' names; never thought I'd know what the Paw Patrol was, let alone able to name all of them! 

it was exciting to be there for his first day of Kindergarten, a moment that marks the start of his education. I am happy to report that at the first teacher conference, his teachers said that he was doing well.

Health: The first goal I set for myself on my "Here's what I hope 2021 has ahead for me!" blog post from January 10, 2021 was getting healthier. Unfortunately the first goal, weight loss, kind of hit a block wall in 2021. At this moment I haven't changed my weight: I haven't loss but I haven't gained weight. I've managed to maintain my current weight. I'm going to reevaluate my progress and formulate a new plan to get to my goal weight, which is about 70 lbs away. 

Another health related goal was to compete in my first multisport event in 2021, but with the pandemic laboring on, I was just not comfortable doing a mass start event. I was fully vaccinated by the first of April, but I just didn't feel like participating with a large group in a race was good for me. I am going to keep this goal for 2022 though, and adjust as we progress through the pandemic. 

Fun stuff: Last year I spoke with excitement of the concert I was hoping to attend in October, the Unity Tour featuring two of my all time favorite music groups: Pet Shop Boys and New Order. Once again, the pandemic put the brakes on this event and postponed it until 2022. I elected to hold on to my tickets and I hope I can see these two great groups in October! 

My garage: this was one area that I can excitedly share success in 2021! There were so many great things that happened in 2021 related to my VW hobby. The big one was the fact that my brother and I were able to get my Bug running! I wasn't able to make it to the car show at WTPSHS in June (thanks to a bad fuel pump the night before), but a week later I was able to get her to start! The first time she had ran since about 2010. 

It was so great to drive her again! On her first voyage, I took her down to the nearest gas station and topped off the tank with non-ethanol gasoline and took some photos of the maiden Wyoming voyage. This photo was from that trip, taken in the parking of the University of Wyoming's War Memorial Stadium. I can't put into words how elated with joy I was that day! 

In other garage news, thanks to a failed transmission and transfer case in the Flex back in March, I was not able to make it out to California to clear out my storage and bring the Imp back. She's still locked up in storage, patiently waiting to see Wyoming. My wife and I are planning on moving everything this year, so we can finally be moved out of California. 

Talking about VW related stuff, I have some good news to share. The local VW club I'm trying to build had some ups and downs this last summer. We had some buddies drive over from Cheyenne to attend our meets, and my brother brought out his Lotus White '67 Bug for a Laramie car show, representing the Thin Air Dub Club. It is always a great time to hang out with fellow VW folks!

I also revived an old project: my web site dedicated to the VW/Porsche Type 4 engine. The web site, titled "Type 4: Secrets Revealed", was a project I started in the late '90s in an effort to squash the abundant misinformation about this engine. I was starting to see much of the same misinformation floating around social media about the Type 4, so I felt it was time to re-do the web site and bring it up to date. I secured a top level domain for it, type4secrets.com and am using the Google Sites to host it, as it makes it easier to update and manage the site. 

The web site's reemergence led me to another exciting summer event. I was invited to be the guest on a popular podcast within the VW community: Let's Talk Dubs with Bill T. Bill T. and I discussed my web site, how our paths crossed many moons ago thanks to it, and talked about Type 4 engines. We discussed on the merits of doing the conversion and what it can do for a Bug/Bus/KG/etc. It was so much fun to do, though I will admit I was quite nervous! 

I decided that before we recorded the podcast, I needed to have a web site for all of VW hobby interests. Once again I went with Google Sites to create and host the web site. I also registered a new top level domain to make finding the site easier: thevdubgeek.com.

The only bummer event in the garage this year was our March trip to California to move my step-daughter back to Laramie. Lost transmission and power take off unit. 

Photography: With my reluctance to go out, thanks to the ongoing pandemic, I am sad to report that I didn't get to do much with my photography hobby. One project did come to my mind, a project that I hope to develop in the coming years. I want to do a pictorial documentary of the abandoned car and trucks that I find during our drives around Wyoming. There are so many cars and trucks that have left to rot in side yards and farm land around here. I did an initial day with this project, taking photos of a few sites around Laramie. I hope to continue this project into this year and make it an ongoing project.