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Midlife Crisis and RC?

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The other thing that gives it away is the members birthday announcements on the TC homepage - apart from the odd person who comes up about 1000 years old I would say that 95% of the members fall within a ten year age bracket of circa 38 - 48 give or take a year either side. I may havemade these statistics up but todays birthday list sort of rings true.

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All I know is, about three years ago I casually, idly, googled ‘tamiya’ whilst in a ‘remember that Hornet thingy?’ discussion with my dad. Totally random conversation, could well never have happened.... Until then, I’d literally never thought about Tamiya from age 15 to 39 years old. 

Now I have an obscene amount of money spent on kits and additional parts.... absolutely love it, living the nostalgia dream, this is some sort of realisation of the love affair developed as a 9 year old with a Hornet and a Tamiya guidebook (ooooh, lovely lusty pages....) .

That one google search sort of opened a window to my younger self and I realised how fundamental the Tamiya kits of youth had been to me and had shaped my early self, even if I hadn’t realised it  

So three years ago It started with buying a Hotshot re-re within two weeks of the google search; I was always mesmerised by that car. This was purely a fun, one off luxury purchase, I said to myself... or so I thought.

 Now I have XX number of cars, and yet to be built kits...... 

Am I midlife? Definitely. Is it a crisis? Probably. do I love it? Yes. Am I forty plus? Tick. Do I have enough time? Way no! Do I like tinkering? Totally. Do I dread/love the Sunday night Tamico offer of the week refresh? You bet.  Does the missus approve ? “Move into the shed with your cars” ........Tick..?

Do I resort to orchestrating clandestine delivery and postal methodologies to facilitate the discrete infiltration of kits and parts into the house without full disclosure and knowledge of incoming delivery activities with the cohabitants of said domicile, leveraging secretive and creative uses of localised storage opportunities to minimise perceived traffic of inbound delivery transactions, whilst simultaneously having developed affable, amicable and generally pally personal relations with the local parcel delivery operatives/specialist workforce in order to instigate discretionary delivery windows and engendering a zero tolerance awareness programme, thus supporting  invisible postal activity agendas? Check.

:)

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Real life car guy, owner of a rather unreasonable number of 1:1 classic cars. Over 40 now, working the perfect car job, owning the perfect car house (lots of garages), married to the perfect woman. 

But at some point beyond 40 pulling real-life transmissions and rebuilding real-life engines and restoring real-life classics just isn't as easy and fun as it used to be.

Of course after almost 25 years of doing absolutely nothing but serious car stuff, you're not just simply going to walk away from that life and take up sheep farming or cheese-making I guess, but at some point you've got to wonder if there are no easier, simpler car-related projects out there, which is especially complicated if you're a "built, not bought" or originality hardliner type of person who believes only in first owner, matching numbers, original paint type of cars. 

For me, it was a construction site across the street that first set off Tamiya memories after two and a half decades of absence, a few years ago - all that dirt, all those puddles, it's where I would have run my Blackfoot back when I was ten years old. 

Never actually had a Blackfoot, but now there's the internet and eBay, and maybe I can find a decend NIB example and just have a little RC fun like I used to, finally fulfill that Blackfoot dream? Ought to be affordable at 40+, you'd think. 

Re-Re never occurred to me. I went online to find a NIB Blackfoot, and my mind got Re-Re blown. 

I bought a Blackfoot that day and a Monster Beetle, and found that a fulltransmission overhaul is a 30 minute thing instead of three days in the shop, and serious performance motors are about as expensive as a full tank of gas in the real world, and a full RC build takes no more than three days if you take your time, and you still get to use tools, collect cars, race, and have fun. Been buying a new kit every time I finished building one ever since. 

Mixing 1:1 with a serious dose of 1:10 turned out to be a perfect work-life balance thing, and I'm still only building cars all the time. 

So now I'm a real life hardcore originality car collector guy openly enjoying the ease, simplicity and open-mindedness of the Re-Re RC lifestyle, and boy does that calm me down. I get what the original release NIB guys are going thru, and I'm staying away from that. For now. 

Haven't had so much fun in years. And you know, when your wife is used to you buying 1:1 cars on impulse, she won't even lift an eyebrow over the the three 1:10 kits you brought home today. 

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I am not clicking on no more likes here,

because they all deserve a "LIKE" Click.

OK it's a Heart you click, but a "Like" it states:lol:

can you feel the Love, now Happy Valentines! 

this is been getting better and better...............................................................

the stories are great and have well meaning, i believe we all have a great passion for this craft.

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30 minutes ago, ACCEL said:

I am not clicking on no more likes here,

because they all deserve a "LIKE" Click.

OK it's a Heart you click, but a "Like" it states:lol:

can you feel the Love, now Happy Valentines! 

this is been getting better and better...............................................................

the stories are great and have well meaning, i believe we all have a great passion for this craft.

I liked your post :wub: ;)

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On 2/12/2019 at 8:53 PM, Superluminal said:

The other thing that gives it away is the members birthday announcements on the TC homepage - apart from the odd person who comes up about 1000 years old I would say that 95% of the members fall within a ten year age bracket of circa 38 - 48 give or take a year either side. I may havemade these statistics up but todays birthday list sort of rings true.

Facebook gives you an insight, here's the info from a page I assist admin on, 

2019-02-14_10-41-16

And one someone else posted there's from another RC page, so , yes, totally agree!! 

2019-02-14_10-41-26

Funny , how everyone (none RC) think it's for children, I stopped by a local race meet when out shopping with the family, and the wife comment how it was all grown men!! 🙄😂

 

I think I bit of mid life, cheaper prices (I know they still seem expensive today, but sooooo much cheaper than the 80's!!), and ,for me anyway, wanting to pull the kids away from ipads and tinker.

 

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Mid life crisis starts when you’ve got enough money to have one, and finishes when you either run out of money or your heart stops. 

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