“I’ve always loved cars.

I remember being two or three years old, just sitting in my car, naming all the cars I’d see outside the window. What really got me into the mechanical, hands-on aspect of cars, was watching all these YouTube videos about engineering.

I work on cars unofficially. My dad is friends with this guy who ran a collision repair center. They would take crashed cars and fix them up. I didn’t really do much mechanical work, but I got to see that process happen. We would go out for parts runs – I’ve gone to a large warehouse that stored all kinds of car parts and other times to scrap yards for other parts.

All my experience is at home in my garage. I’ve done most basic maintenance like changing brake pads, changing oil and replacing suspension parts. I just love getting my hands dirty and feeling the grease between my fingers. I love getting to see what’s happening with the car, which parts do what and gaining that understanding as I work with it.

There are these shows such as Coffee and Cars where there is a whole parking lot full of cars. Car enthusiasts show everything from self-made projects they built just from a complete shell of a car to these amazing super cars. They are truly rare vehicles. It’s such an amazing site, because you get to see all kinds of people who love cars. Some people can afford insane hyper cars and just want to come and show them off, and then there are others who really like to get hands-on with what they have and just build incredible things.

Right now, I am trying to build a Go-Kart by collecting individual parts and putting them all together. I’m picking up welding on the way, which is fun because I get to use power tools and such. It’s a little childish, but power tools just feel magical. It’s a large step up from a simple tool box which just allows you to assemble and disassemble things. Power tools let you create.

I think building the Go-Kart is going to be very important to my actual hobbies, which are going to involve actually building cars. I’m in for a lot more than I ever realized with this project – I thought it would be like building furniture, but I’m here for the full ride.

I just love looking under a car and getting to know how it all works. Just by looking, you can see, ‘Oh, this does that, and that does this.’ It’s so cool to learn.”