I found the unobtainable roller bearing, probably pulled from a dusty back shelf in a tiny London motor factory's shop. I learned to recognize MG bits at first sight, as I painstakingly retraced the original builder's steps in sourcing brake calipers, fuel pumps and master cylinders. I scrubbed and welded and painted and disassembled and assembled. Finally, I had a rolling chassis with all the right parts in all the right places. And there, the vision faltered. Maybe it was trying to hold down a daytime job, do a full course load in architecture at a college 52 miles away, and simultaneously keep a wife and three kids fed and out of the elements that momentarily distracted me. Or maybe it was the Corvair wagon with the 140-bhp, four-carb motor. Or maybe the right-hand-drive Alfa Giulia Sprint GT. At any rate the signal got fuzzy, other priorities cropped up, and when I was transferred from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta, I lost it completely. I put an ad in the automotive section of the Fort Lauderdale paper: "For sale: D-Jaguar replicar. Many new parts. Needs finishing. Trailer included. $400 OBO." Then I left town to scope out a place to light in Atlanta, my new home. My wife, left to hold down the fort and broker the deal, had 60 calls in 2 hours. The first person appeared 30 minutes later, breathlessly, at our front door with $400 in hand. He left with the car, chortling to himself. And that's where the story should end.
But it doesn't. It will never end. Because I still have nightmares about that car. I have nightmares about the thousand hours the original builder invested, and the many hundreds more I put into restoring the chassis. And I dream about what it would have been when I finished it. Unique. Fast. The Ultimate Track Car.
Now, any time I want to get really suicidal, I just think about my lost D-Jag. And any time I want to get really pissed off, I think about the Greyhound. Then I say to myself, "Is this going to be another D-Jag? Can you really hang one more virtual albatross on your skinny little psyche without going under?" And the answers are, "Hell no" and "Can't do it" in that order.
So, to borrow another phrase from the Brits, my mentors in this Improbable Project process, there's nothing left to do but get "stuck in." "Stuck in" is when you approach the object of your affliction head down, no end in sight, just doing the task at hand until it's done, then on to the next one, then on to the next. It's the only way to avoid overwhelming yourself, losing focus and giving up. Because when you break a project down like this into its constituent parts, and consider these parts all at once you will be overwhelmed. You will be nibbled to death by all the virtual baby ducks.
So I got stuck in. But I got help, too. Sometimes it takes a fresh batch of enthusiasm to push things along. In the absence of any remaining friends I could call upon in my time of need, I resorted to hired enthusiasm. Yup. I paid to have some stuff done. It's not as if I couldn't have welded in the floor pans I laboriously constructed, but there's no telling how long that would have taken.
So I paid a wild-eyed kid to do some of the welding. You know the type. Stays up until 3:00 a.m. doing any given task and does not die a horrible, lingering death the next day. And the enthusiasm is contagious. When I procrastinated on my panel-forming job, the word would come back to me, "Waitin' on you...I got nothin' to do here until you get on the stick." And lo, I would be inspired. Youth may be wasted on the young, but it sure does come in handy sometimes.
Resurrecting the Greyhound has many upsides, not the least of which is enhancing its monetary value to the community of enthusiasts. Even a "yard-driveable" project is worth twice as much as one that sits, neglected and inoperable in the gloom of a dusty garage corner. A cursory inventory of the pieces I have "waiting for installation" indicates I have invested about $5,000 at this point. Most of the major pieces are down in the basement, and addition of a fuel cell, some sort of fire suppression system, some Aeroquip fittings and line, and various other bits should up that total by another couple of thou. If it runs as well as I suspect it will, I should be able to recover my investment on any given day.