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<\/p>\nIt was my first day at work; my manager toured me around the office\u2019s cubicle farm and introduced me to all of the veteran employees. I was young and excited; excited to be doing adult things in the adult world. The office was brightly lit; there was a clean desk with my name tag on the wall, a cup full of pens and a large empty drawing table. The hum of computers and the clicking of keyboards were the ambient sounds. The veteran employees were busy; their desks cluttered with drawings, their coffee cups stained and empty. They welcomed me with a forced smile, offered some jibe about how young I was, and reassured me that I would eventually be the same as them, like I was being assimilated by the Borg. They were right, I did become like them, for a while. I have watched many young people start their careers and slowly lose that bright energy that they came through the door with. Distraction is key, distraction is good.<\/p>\n
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Wow, that was a depressing narrative; I bet you\u2019re happy you came here! This prologue is only meant to illustrate my reason for writing: Sanity! This is my distraction.<\/p>\n
My name is Matt, I\u2019m a 30 something year old from Edmonton. I am married and have a 3 year old daughter who\u00a0is an adorable ball of energy. I grew up in the small town of Lamont AB, which, perhaps surprisingly, is home to a lot of auto-enthusiasts. The school library maintained subscriptions to every major car\/truck magazine, and almost all of my friends were likewise enthused. To be fair there was really nothing else to do in Lamont. I currently work as a drafting technologist\/estimator\/business development person for a large steel fabricator here in Edmonton. Like you I suffer from a chronic lack of time, money and garage space to fulfil my car dreams.<\/p>\n
Speaking of cars, my wife and I own a fleet of very average automobiles, and a weird French moped. I daily drive and also rally-cross a 2005 Acura EL, which for the uninitiated is a slightly fancier Civic that was only sold in Canada. My wife drives a KIA Soul which has grown on me considerably. Our \u201csummer rig\u201d is my wife\u2019s grandfather\u2019s 1979 Chevy C20, which is mostly stock with only 57,000 original kilometres. I also have a 1973 Solex 5000 moped.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s a pretty desirable bunch of cars eh? I bet you\u2019re jealous! This could be yours if you work not so hard and spend not so much. Yeah, they are all a pretty pedestrian bunch; but that\u2019s what I love about being an auto-enthusiast. Any car you see, no matter what, has an enthusiast base. Someone loves it; to someone that car is the best thing ever. Except for the Jeep Compass, no one likes those!<\/p>\n
It is my supreme pleasure to contribute to Grand Touring Concepts; I love what these people stand for, community is what auto-enthusiasm is all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was my first day at work; my manager toured me around the office\u2019s cubicle farm and introduced me to all of the veteran employees. I was young and excited; excited to be doing adult things in the adult world. The office was brightly lit; there was a clean desk with my name tag on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[26,54,37,23],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-engine","tag-history","tag-horsepower","tag-specs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/IMG_0287.jpg?fit=2048%2C1152","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8in4L-5C","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gtconcepts.ca\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}