The Mondays 004

05 August 2019

Gearhead Goes to Med School—In His 40s

If you can fix cars, you can fix anything. You just gotta do the work.

Many of us got our start as gearheads out of necessity—we couldn’t afford it, whatever it was. Years later, we found ourselves changed by the machines we spent so much time changing ourselves. In the process of figuring out how things worked, we learned why they worked. Priceless.

We’re starting this week with a story about Carl Allamby, a guy who found himself working on cars out of necessity. He turned his parking lot repair business into a proper shop and then some. And then he decided to go to college—in his 40s—to learn what he needed to take his business to the next level.

The one class he put off to the very end—biology—ended up changing his life. He rediscovered his childhood dream of being a doctor. And all the time spent triaging and performing surgery on machines set him up for new success as an emergency room doctor.

It’s not just a stupid hobby. It’s a self-directed education. What are you doing with it?

PS: Active Forum

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll.

This one came to us in a weekly newsletter email. In it, someone going by “scarlet” shares some encouragement with the other dreamers in the community—the others who see something they really want, but don’t always see through.

The last decade—in no small part, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, et al.—has seen our collective attention span eroded to the point of almost non-existence. If advertisers have been selling us on having everything we want the instant we want it, they’ve kicked it into overdrive with social media.

It’s really nice, then, to see someone share a story about how—almost six years ago—they discovered something amazing they wanted to do—and then worked hard to achieve it. Sacrifice and all. Some things are worth the time and effort.

Thank you for sharing, Scarlet!

PS: This one links to an active forum.

Gearhead Makes Good

An official shoutout to an old friend and fellow hustler.

Way, way back in 2009, around the time we were starting Gearbox Magazine, Adnan Ebrahim was started CarThrottle. Over the years, he’s hustled his ASS off, built and empowered a close-knit team of friends who might as well be called family, and blown the doors of the automotive publishing scene.

Today we’ve learned CarThrottle (and sister channel, WTF1) have been acquired by a leading, UK-based international media group—Dennis. This means CarThrottle and WTF1 now have access to additional resources. It’s like bolting a giant turbo to an already high performance machine.

We’ve considered Adnan a friend from the beginning. We’ve even had lunch in person in London.

The world is filled with exceptional gearheads. We always have time to celebrate when the good guys win. So here’s to our friend Adnan Ebrahim, and all the true hustlers at CarThrottle and WTF1 who have leveraged their automotive passions to make the world a better place for gearheads like us.

Keep going fast with class and press on regardless!