Fulfillment of Desires

Circumstance is Karma and desire is the driver of destiny!  

Predestined or determined,    

Tis thine use of your free will of God’s will. 

Sure,  ye can ascribe what happened by the stars alignment or by chance, fate,  destiny, chaos,  random,  planned, yet what happened,  it can’t be undone.  

Instantaneous or spread over a lifetime, what is duration of distance or karma unto the happenings of the string of past?   Small, large,  monumental, acknowledged,  the ripples of action are sometimes small impercievable with their effect,  and yet  they are tidal waves sweeping life away in an instant for another in the string of present’s creation of past.   

I’d like to share a dance of karma and the fulfillment of a desire. 

5 years ago, I was blessed to purchase a 2019 toyota tacoma.   The most expensive and nicest vehicle I’ve ever owned.   My beloved mother hated to see me breaking down in all my 3000.00 imports, that I souped up, styled out, and enjoyed thoroughly, so she helped me to acquire said truck.   This was supposed to remain stock, eyes rolled, as anyone who knows me knows this is not what I do.    

Albeit my intention,  soon there after I was invited to do a run up the back way to Crown King offroading.  Showing up to the meeting spot, I was greeted by long time friend Jon, who used to play adult cars on racetracks with me called drifting.  He now had a gen 1 long travel tacoma with compound charged setup.   Lets just say, this was not a pretty stock truck.   There were also a couple other jeeps joining us.    When I rolled up in my pretty new to me Cement grey bone stock truck,  I received some sincere concern about my attempts to join and make it through the trail.   Long story short,   After the most intense experience offroading for my first time, I made it through, dented my cab a bit, and was hooked on offroading. 

Slowly I began to acquire and modify my truck to be more capable.   Offroad tires in a bigger diameter, skid plates, rock sliders, and the icing of the cake, suspension.   We kept going on more adventures, where I would soon break more things.   As I would break, I would upgrade.   So soon the truck was fitted with tubed high clearance front and rear bumpers.   With a few more modifications, even bigger tires and new gear sets, the truck was perfect.     Mind you, this is my only vehicle.  

Well, it is now.   Through this few year span, although my ambition for playing adult cars at racetracks and driving very illegally on the streets had been fulfilled, I had quite a few cars come and go.   My son also had turned the ripe driving age, so naturally I helped him into cars.   Blinded by my drifting passion,  he didn’t have the bone stock run o the mill cars.   First, in attempts for practicality, we got a subaru impreza wagon for super cheap with rod knock,  tried to fix it together with the help of a great friend, only to find the engine was past repair.   After this, we did get a junkyard engine pulled from pick n pull one morning, came home with a fire under our bums, got it in and fired up that night.   Come to find that engine had issues, so that car was passed off to another to take on the task.   He then got a awesome slammed e46 bmw, that we set up to drift.    It was too slow compared to the computer driving  simulator cars he was used to driving.   Although I wanted him to learn proper momentum drift without power, we soon passed that one off to upgrade to a twin turbo 6mt 135i.   Lucky kid,  that I was fulfilling the desire of a high paying job at this time.   But that last car ended up satiating a desire of his as well.   To go way to fast, drive wreckless, and be saved by his guardian angel, when he flew through a tree sideways and stopped at the next at the edge of a ravine.   Needless to say, at the 70 or so mph, that car was kaput. 

All these cars, and I’m not even talking about me.   I had the same amount, if not more through that time.   Gf8 impreza wagon Sti Ra spec c, deemed the mikos mobile built by us as a first project, 99 e36 m3 hard top vert that ended up 6mt swap with a turbo on her, and a 335i 6mt set up to drift as well.   All alongside the truck, so that was the old trusty road trip, daily, and offroad machine. 

Getting more and more used to offroading with Jon, It was almost like we were at our own racetrack, but even better with no rules, jumps, burms, and obstacles.   I then had an idea for an exoskeleton tied into my sliders for the fun of building, strength, and looks.   When mentioning this to nearly anyone, especially my great friend Dj, I would nearly get laughed at.   Welp, this was a burning deep inside.   Once I get a vision, that vision burns and manifests its way into this waking existence by any means necessary. 

So my son goes off to college, and I am left with an empty house and a hole in my heart.   Thinking how great it will be to have the house to myself free of the all expansive flagrant teenage energies and cleanliness, I wasn’t prepared for the shock.   The world came crashing in on me.   No longer did I have another to live for, think for, act for, to justify actions, compromise my self, as I had for the last 15 years raising him as a single father.    That was with the help of one of the greatest blessings of this life,   a family unit of all unbound love and support, and a mother of mine who is no short of Divine.    Her selflessness, kindness, perseverance, and acceptance are just a few qualities that are so abundant, that she is no short of Godly.    Moment of gratitude’s pouring!      So in this new time space and place of self reflection, after a brief period of self destruction and succumbing to death’s lure, the mother of mine lit a new fire.  

She had always wanted to have a house on the back of a car to travel and be free.    Wait, is this not something I want?   Or at least something that will provide me a way to be mobile,  escape the societal confines of the ways of the days, and find myself for the 100th time in this life?     So, as the blessed mother does, she offers to help me out with acquiring the required hardware to equip my truck to make this possible.   After searching and searching, vomiting over consumerism, treading my way through conforming and confining a possibility into a pre made box, and nearly being scammed by a camper pop up topper company offering a mass produced bad quality product for the fraction of the price,  the old exoskeleton seed that was planted so long ago, made its sprout known!       With the intuitive tickling idea of providing me with a deck above my truck to do all the activities one could imagine,   I could integrate this exoskeleton and the deck above a soft topper.   This would satisfy all.   Creativity,  productivity, putting the years of car building to work, and letting that sapling of a hidden long past desire blossom into manifestation. 

Soft topper was then acquired, and wow, how awesome it is.   After seeing a couple examples during trips in Flagstaff visiting my fam and on a trip to Mingus mountain, I knew this was the way.   Well, not just the soft topper.   I needed this to get my measurements for this feat of a junglegym and a deck above with bike mounting all tied into the frame rails, providing structural integrity, safety, rigidity, all in an aesthetically pleasing way.  To me that is! .   It was ambitious to say the least.   

Metal was acquired.   With my math, 80 feet to start of roll cage tubing should suffice.   Wait, I don’t even have a good welder or a tubing bender.   That’s what friends are for!   So I borrow the bender and welder from my greatest friend, but I still didn’t have a die for the diameter of tubing to be used to start conforming metal to the contours of the truck.   Not wanting to rely on anyone, I was nearing the purchase of this tool, when I decided to give my long time buddy Jon a call.   He’s a fabricator, so maybe he could just bend a tube or two for me to get me rolling.    “I’ll be there tomorrow at 9:30.”  So I postpone purchasing the tool needed,  purchase metal the next day, but the it took too much time.  “I’m done for the day”.   The next day was 9:30 again, so I show up at 10 ish thinking he’s busy with customers anyway.     Welp, Jon is a man of few words.   I show up with 3 full 20’ sticks hanging way out of my little tacoma.    He has his bender there, shop open, as if waiting for me.    I showed him my napkin drawings, and after the nod and a few ideas back and forth, prefacing my main concern was to have sunset watching,  song singing,  all enjoying deck,  we were at it full fledge.   I was the customer, and thank goodness I’m also his good friend.   

The next 3 days were gun ho.  Trying to keep the pace with Jon was no small feat, but I knew having this help was a saving grace.   All my experience through the past 20 years of building, crashing, designing, and fabricating racecars allowed me a place to work fluid with his ways, tools, and somewhat at his pace.  We got the whole top deck mapped and built,   along with some other bars readied to get this 10’ deck atop the truck.   After working the next morning in preparation, we put the deck up on the truck.    Wa Wa Wa,   after accounting for what seemed like everything, we didn’t account for the bow of the roof, which was hitting the deck.   This ended our day abruptly. 

After a sleepless night,   we reconvened in the morning remaking a couple bars to raise the deck.   Working all day like a well oiled machine, we got it up on the truck and welded.    

Well, half way.   It still had 5’ out front unsupported that shook like a diving board.    This was quite nerve racking to drive my truck like this, so once I got home,   it was time for more support. 

I was going to wait for the main a pillar bars, the front supports of this unsupported 5’ deck, until Jon was available to lend me his expertise.    Not to mention I was out of metal for the second time, and a bigger mention, by this point I had realized how over my head I was with this project.   Without the help of this master fabricator, I would have been helpless and still waiting for a tool to show up in the mail in order to start!    

I used the weekend prepping the front for the main support bars by relocating the cab mount and making some scary cuts to the cab for clearance on this beautiful truck.    After this, I started to triangulare the structure due to the excessive movement.    First few bars went well, then I decided to run a bar forward to support the diving board.    It goes great until I see the front of the deck resting on the roof just behind the sunroof on one of the cross braces we had previously welded in.   This was only after having fully finish welded all the tubes.    And onto another sleepless night after a meditation wrought with glimpses and flashes of ideas and inferences of what to do.    

In the morning, knowing I had been way over working myself the previous days with keeping up with Jon, then prepping and doing all the work after in anticipation of receiving more help,  I couldn’t help myself from fixing what I thought to be wrong.    After cutting the top welds out in close proximity to the roof and windows, it finally broke free.   I braced up the front section to give it a fixed support to remedy the situation.    After welding it all back together, albeit not pretty any more, I pull the supports only to have the deck hitting the roof again.    The question of Jon came to mind,  Sag?     Yup,  it sure was and not the impatient overheating shrinking the metal as I had thought.   Welp, my wind was gone.  The rest of the day was wrought with a migraine and pure defeat!    Although,  I was able to get some metal in anticipation of a text from Jon that says 9:30 tomo. 

Shamefully,  I show up with my horrible anger welds and the diving board supported with 2x4’s jammed in there with no regard for the roof, denting, or scratching anymore.    Feeling like this project is nearly a scrap and a waste of time and money, we get to work on the final front support bars.   These are the most difficult to contour around  and through the body of the truck.   The cutting and prep I had done wasn’t enough, so I cut and clearenced as much as possibly, and finally we had some bars that would work.     Wow,   it might actually work.   There is light at the end of the tunnel, maybe?  

After bending a harness bar to clear the rear window, I’m sent on my way.   At this point, I’m way out of money and way over my budget, so I have nearly nothing to give to Jon.    Thank goodness for the support of a friend and the circumstance or Karma that allowed him the free time to give me the guidance, help, and reassurance needed.    I made it home with some light at the end of the tunnel.  This gave me a push to seal up the cab, prep all in anticipation of welding in the final a pillar bars to see if this will actually hold up the deck and be a successful idea.   Time wasn’t enough, so I was off to bed.   And after an hour, back in the garage!    

After a few hours the a pillar bars were in, welded, and the idea works!      The sigh of relied from my hidden harbored anxiety was audible at 3:00 in the morning to the world.    

The project is not 100% done yet, but near enough for that sigh of relief to be felt.    The circumstance dance of Karma,  just the way it goes,  how ever you want to label the sutra, string, of the past,     it sure happened as it was meant to happen.   As if it ever doesn’t lol.   With the acquiring of metal with an idea never been fully done before,  at least by me,   and not quite a means to make it happen,   but all the determination, will, and drive to make it so.   “None can tone me, say who would injure me?”  By my will,  do I influence the will of the great will, and the great will influences my will.   My will is the will of the great creator in this individual aspect of the great wills creation!    

In gratitude do I sit sleepless,   heart bursting, tears flowing, pranamed to you my Lord.   And   Back out to finish this project!