Ghost of Christmas Present

I am not sure if blogging is the cure for insomnia, but is working for me so far.
I am going to ramble a little bit more about me and where I am at in life. For any of you that have read my earlier post this may be a small review. Presently, I have three or four main areas that occupy my time.
For those that don't know, I am a microbiologist and a chemist. I sold my company and am currently restricted from working in my field until June of 2013 due to a restrictive covenant in our sellers agreement. I am pondering several avenues once this restraint is lifted. The first and most obvious question is...should I start the exact same company again and build it up from the ground up. This is definitely my field of expertise, but it will be no easy task. A lot of money needs to be invested and I have been away for a little while. Some of the customers would come back easy and some maybe never. There would also be considerable satisfaction in taking business from my former company. I did not leave on good terms. At All! In fact I can not stand several of the people that work there and I would love to cause them some sleepless nights like they have done to me! I am also considering starting a new company that would specialize in some formulas for auto care. I know this has been done to death, but I think there are some niche markets that I could capitalize on. I even have the name thought up ...Origin Car Care! Catchy huh? I am now in the process of figuring out digital marketing and nailing down some of the formulas.
The second area involves where I live. I live on about 70 acres in west Georgia. I have a lot that needs caring for out here. I own about 17 head of cattle with about 5 more on the way any day now. Maintaining the pasture, woods, fence and the livestock takes up quite a bit of time. I also have a couple of horses that basically serve as pasture ornaments. Their names are Buckshot and Cisco. I don't name the cows.

Cisco is on the left and Buckshot on the right

The third area involves a hobby of mine that has evolved into a business. I like old cars and I am very mechanically inclined. After I sold my company, I had to find something to do with my time and I started restoring some old cars. I have restored several and in the process started selling some cars as well. I have a show winning 1970 chevelle convertible and a show winning 1969 camaro. I have a couple of 1955 chevys that are in process as well as a 1941 ford. I started a used car dealership, because in Georgia you can only sell 5 cars personally before you have to get a license. Last year I sold over 100. The problem is that to maintain this operation and keep up a decent reputation, which is hard in the used car business, I have a ton of overhead and I am not sure that it is worth the trouble. I may ride this out through tax time and make a slow but steady exit. I do enjoy working on the cars as projects and seeing them through to completion.
The fourth area that gets my attention is cycling. I know I will never make a living at cycling, but as I have posted before, I love the community and lure of road cycling. This has occupied a lot of my time over the last 3 or 4 years and I am slowly getting better. I don't really have to work and I could just retire and cycle. While this seems like a viable route to some. I am not sure I can quell my entrepreneurial spirit. There is something inside of me that needs to build something, then grow it and then sell products from this. Both of these endeavors take a lot of time and I am not sure that I can do both. Building a business is not conducive to good health. My former company had me stressed out, drinking too much, overweight and just not pleasant to be around. Cycling is the complete opposite. I wonder if I could find a balance between these two?

Moultrie Car Show

Today I decided to go to the car show and swap meet in Moultrie, GA.

Got up early and headed south on I-75. My dad and son (Randy and Jason) are with me. The drive took about 4 hours minus the brief stop at Cracker Barrel.

I am not sure how many acres the swap meet and car corral actually are but this thing is huge. In years past (before I lost the weight) I brought one of those handicap scooters because I could not see everything without it. Once we got here today, we only had about 4-5 hours to cover as much ground as we could.

Jason found a complete gauge cluster for his 69 Camaro for $100. The only thing it is missing is the clock for the center. I found a Matco tool man that was liquidating all of his inventory for 50% off because he was retiring. I probably spent too much money but it was such a good deal I had to. Right?

There are a lot of cars here and we will try to see most of them tomorrow. We looked at several today and while there are not as many cars here it appears that the prices are finally coming back up. If anyone ever wants to buy a muscle car , this is a great place to start. You can find cars at any stage of completion that you desire. Rust buckets to completed show quality cars. They are here!! Do your homework before you come. Everybody here thinks they are experts and I would estimate that only about 10% of them actually are. There is a lot of knowledge to be discovered, just bring your shovel 'cause it gets deep at times.

I also used today to reconnoiter some of the waxes and polishes that are being offered. Why? I am thinking about releasing a line of car care products aimed at some of the higher end show cars and production cars that we all drool over. I saw about 5 different companies showcasing their products. They seemed to be focusing on their metal polish products. The demo of choice seems to be polishing old fire extinguishers, quarters and the bottom of soda and beer cans. Most of them looked effective. I think that I will purchase some of them tomorrow and do my own assesment. I will put the results in a future post. I suspect that the demonstration is misleading and overly exagerates the capabilities of the product. Time will tell. I only saw one car wax demonstrtation and it was just a guy waxing a hood and he was talking about the benefits and longevity of carnuaba. I will get some wax tomorrow as well and see how they perform.