I thought this would be fun, so let me be the first to tell you what else I like to do besides car projects.

First off, I enjoy spending time with family and friends. We love to travel, trail ride with our horses, bar-b-que, and joke. My wife and my kids are my world! I am very blessed and fortunate that God spared me from that wreck and showed me what life was all about!


Our Cabin at the Ranch


My Wife on a Trail


Our Boys at the Cub Scout Derby Race


Our Daughter and Her Old Horse
She is great with horses!


I also enjoy my job, meeting people, and helping people.

I get to climb around like a kid through pipe racks and on equipment.

Me at Work

This is a great new section. As for me, apart from the 'ol bird...I am a musician. I play piano, keyboards, and synthesizers.

That's pretty much what I do most of the time. Otherwise, I'm out with the bird!

What is all that pipe stuff? Is that you?

Yes, that's me. I am checking the depth of a pitted area of pipe to determine how much pipe wall thickness is left. The pipe stuff is piping inside a plant. I work as a Mechanical Integrity Inspector. I inspect piping, welds, vessels, tanks, etc...

My job is about safety in many ways. We use NDE (non-destructive examination) to exam the "remaining life", "integrity", "thickness of material", "type of material" and or "quality". We use several examination methods such as visual, ultrasonics, liquid, and magnetism. If you do a search or non-destructive examination or non-destructive testing there is a ton of info. I enjoy what I do. It is nice when you discover a problem like a pipe about to blow out before it does or discover the mystery of why a storage tank was leaking. Detecting the issue before it’s a problem mean you possibly saved someone’s life that could have been in the area when the pipe would have eventually given way. You can x-ray things as well.

I have to know a great deal about corrosion both external and internal as well as erosion. The are such things as CUI (corrosion under insulation). Hot pipes and vessels are insulated and if they do not get hot enough to burn off the moisture it starts to corrode the metal...wearing down the thickness.

It's funny how I look for and study corrosion all day long and then sand on it in the shop in the evenings... Our car is got its own corrosion and metal loss problems...

My friend actually does that kind of stuff, so some of the things you mentioned, I've recognized from her talk about work, although most of it still sounds foreign to me.