A warrior lives his passions and never compromises
following the path towards his dreams.
Create Things
Creating things and molding the world around you are essential parts of the human psyche
There is something fundamentally rewarding about creating things with your own hands. In sad that in this day and age pounding a hammer is looked down upon while generating new types financial products is somehow deemed as creating value. For myself I look at the trades as an artform and not as low skilled to be considered to ‘beneath’ a successful person. Every person should have some sort of creative outlet. For me it is utilizing my engineering background and manufacturing expertise to take abstract concepts and create a finished product seemingly out of thin air.
One needs to have a balance of both being Humble yet Confident to maximize your ability to create. Let’s talk about being humble first. Many people lack the ability to be humble enough to create something truly significant. It’s much easier to think you smart enough to not need to dig into the details that you only need to understand some of the overall concepts. It’s different than simply assembling something without the instructions. This I have not issues with as that is not truly ‘creation’. If you are going to truly create something you need to be humble enough to realize you don’t know everything. You need to research, you need to ask for input, you need to conceptualize multiple variations, and you need to be humble. Being humble like this allows you to drive yourself to the needed knowledge to create something of value.
Confidence is the counterbalance to the being Humble. You must be confident in your abilities to learn what you will need to learn and be successful. You need to be confident enough to throw yourself headfirst into a task or move beyond the ‘paralysis by analysis’ that may creep in from being humble. An example of this is when I wanted to learn to remodel. Having never remodeled before I cut the top of your house off one July. I didn’t have all the knowledge or skills yet, but I was confident I would dig in and learn the details of framing, plumbing, electrical, and finish work to add another level to our home.
Without the balance of these two things the process of creation is often hampered. Confidence is a pretty straightforward manly trait. However being Humble is a manly trait as well. People that are incapable of being humble are simply weak and the inability to be humble is to cover up their own deep seated issues with their ego.
Below is a list of the some of my projects that I created as I have continued to try and refine and improve on those traits listed above.
ROCK RACE/CRAWLING BUGGY
I began learning fabrication and concepts of offroad and vehicle design with my jeep. With each advance in my knowledge it involved ripping it apart and rebuilding. After several iterations my skills had and knowledge and developed to where I decided the only way to create what I wanted was to build a vehicle from scratch. Starting with the raw steel I decided to build a vehicle inspired to withstand one of (if not the most) demanding offroad races. It’s held once a year and called “King of the Hammers”. It’s a race for series champions of Baja Racing, Rock Racing, and Rock Crawling to battle it out in a grueling race that featured all these events and destroyed many of the competitor’s vehicles.
There are so many unique one off things in this build it’s a little difficult to not go off the deep end here explaining it. Everything is built from scratch including forming the tubing. Axles were imported from Europe off a unimog which I then preceded to strip down and cut up. Machining my own braking system, central tire inflation, hydraulic 4 wheel steering…just to name a few things. This vehicle is being built to compete at the highest levels and have some unique combination of performance characteristics not on any other vehicle
Link to Sponsor (Warn Ind) write up on their Blog:
Dream into Reality - King of the Hammers Buggy Build
And a full detailed buildup is documented here. Last time I checked it had some 40,000+ views I believe. Unfortunately due to other constraints this project hasn’t moved much in the last couple years. But will be ramping up again shortly!
Link To:
Full Detailed Rock Buggy Build
BUILD PRIOR PLANNING CURRENT
ELITE PERFORMANCE CENTER
And then of course the gym I that came from my basement, then my garage, to now a 4000+ sqft Strength Training Facility. Elite Performance Center is THE premier Strength Training Center in Oregon and simply the most Hardcore Athletic Training Center in the Northwest. Nearly every piece of equipment in this facility has been designed and fabricated to meet the needs of our athletes. It is a unique one of a kind place that builds World Class Athletes.
Elite Performance Center
SUPER-LIFT
This is my most involved piece of exercise equipment and definitely one of a kind. It all started several years ago when I was notified several weeks prior to a competition they were not going to be able to do a full meet as they did not have the Monolift Squatting device. This wasn’t going to stop me so I downloaded some pictures of them and in a couple spare evenings fabricated one up in my driveway. I took it to the meet so that I could compete as planned. In the end after several modifications and tweaks the final product is now a Multi-Purpose piece of equipment that can replace ANY and ALL Barbell racks, benches, etc. This one device will do anything related to barbell excercises. There are three located at my gym, and one each and friend’s gyms in WA and CA.
THE TOW RIG
For the most part I can’t stand a lot of the vehicles driving the road today. Tricked out Honda car’s with giant wings and big muffler’s to large Diesel trucks jacked up with tons of Graphics and a set of Stacks sticking out of the bed. Usually all done so that whoever the owner is looks cool in whatever crowd it is as the vehicle is nothing more than a flamboyant accessory.
But I guess I can’t get on the soap box about this topic to long as I happen to drive a giant jacked up over accessorized truck myself. A little bit of a difference is that I built it with my own to hands (no bolt on kits either) so it comes with the pride of accomplishment. The second point being that my truck is a tool for a purpose and gets used as such. In fact Portland is one of the Greenest cities, and is certainly the most bicycle friendly city in the US, making my choice in vehicles the opposite of being popular as I bomb around town. All that said it is probably still nothing more than a flamboyant accessory. In the end the only thing that matters is that I like it and I’m proud of it. I could care less how anyone else feels about and that means I’ve probably built it for the right reasons.
Out of the buggy project I learned a lot about suspension and steering design. Unable to find ANY aftermarket suspension built with the proper geometry I decided to be confident and create a self-imposed deadlines and anxiety. Two weeks prior to a week long road vacation with my wife and our 6 month old I pulled it into the driveway and took a torch to it literally removing the suspension with no way of putting it back together. My logic was I needed new tires for the road trip and couldn’t buy another set of stock ones of course. In the end it ended up with a Race Inspired suspension capable of handling 3 foot deep ruts at speed, with ride characteristics actually IMPROVED over the stock dodge performance. This was accomplished by corrected some of the roll axis issues in the stock suspension. I also built fabricated the rack as well. It is of course outfitted with Warn goodies and has a massive Air Compressor and reservoir where the stock spare tire would go. The rack is also interesting as it has a drop in piece in the rear making it full functioning Lumber/Steel Rack. This is quite important of course with my habit of designing new things.