About the Last Two Weeks
The last two weeks have been absolutely brutal. Well, frankly the last year and a half has been. I'll save the full story for my still-underway Redpants Unzipped website but here's a summary of what's happened just this month with a focus on the last two weeks.
As many of you are now aware, I've moved to Japan. Just to be clear, Redpants will continue to run the same way it has for the last year and a half and orders are being fulfilled by the same people that have been doing it. The only difference is that I'm physically in a different location and time zone.
Anyway, I'd been trying to move to Japan for a year and a half and was living week-to-week wondering when I'd be allowed in, which makes it awfully hard to make any real plans or living arrangements and it was a seriously difficult time managing the situation (more on that later). Fast forward to one month ago and my visa finally arrived.
I hopped on the first flight I could and finally made it to Japan to be with my wife, where I stayed for.... 10 days.
I've had multiple projects in the works over the last couple years and several of them were included with the major overhaul of my car that I've mentioned a number of times (more on that later). They were supposed to line up one at a time so I could take care of each of them, document them, make videos, etc etc etc, but of course that didn't go according to plan. Rather, many of them all happened at once.
So I flew back from Japan after only having been there a week and a half so I could put my car together (more on that later), then drive it cross-country to a big Aston Martin Owners Club event that I attend each year (more on that later). A huge part of my car project involved a new race engine (more on that later). The engine was supposed to arrive on Thursday and I'd arrive on Saturday, and we'd have a full week to install it, shake the car down, and prep it for the nearly-3000 mile drive I'd be doing the following week.
DHL didn't deliver the engine. I arrived and spent most of my time the first few days just trying to get DHL to deliver the engine that so much was depending on. They finally gave it to another delivery company who eventually delivered it the following Thursday, a full week late. That meant the week I'd have to install the engine and sort the car was whittled down to a single day.
Thanks, DHL.
Friday morning the engine was sitting next to my car. Friday night, I drove it away (more on that later). I did what I could to break in the engine on Saturday and then did the first oil change on Sunday. It wasn't as much of a break-in as I should have done but I did what I could. We also did an alignment and I slapped in Aston Installations' new HD Screen upgrade (more on that later) and off I went Sunday afternoon to start my cross-country drive. I picked Luanna up on Wednesday evening at Newark Liberty where she'd flown in from Japan, and from there we finished our trek to Lenox, MA.
This year was the 50th anniversary of the "AMOC at Lime Rock" event, though it was supposed to be held a couple years ago. It's the one event each year that I refuse to miss. I started attending when I lived in northern Virginia, which was a 7-ish hour drive each way. When I moved to Florida, I flew up for the event. This year, I did both - I flew from Japan to Idaho and then drove from Idaho (more on that later).
The bottom line, since this is already way longer than I intended, despite being a very brief version of what transpired, is that this would be my last time for the foreseeable future that I'd be able to attend with my car as I'd be shipping my car to Japan later this year. A lot has happened over the last few years and I knew a few of my customers would be there that wanted to "try before they buy" some of the things I'd done with my car. I wanted to showcase those products so having my car at the event was a huge deal. It was also a huge deal for me personally.
After everything I'd been through during the last couple years, I saw this event as my "victory lap" of sorts, and as my exit, as we'd be flying back to Japan immediately after weekend was over. This event was incredibly special to me, and as it'd be my wife's first time in attendance, I wanted it to be special for her as well (more on that later).
So anyway, I participated in every event which meant the day after completing my cross-country drive on my barely-broken-in engine, I did a track day at Lime Rock (more on that later), and a short road tour the next day, a concours the next day (patina ftw), and then drove to NYC (fuck that place) the next day, and then to New Jersey the next day... Yeah... the car got put through its paces.
During all this I was also reuniting with friends I hadn't seen in three years, meeting customers that introduced themselves and shared their experiences with me, and hoping that Luanna was okay because English is her third language and she'd just been thrown into the social deep end. I did not envy her in that situation.
The end result was more than I could have expected. Luanna had a fantastic time, I loved every exhausting moment of the event, my car got 1st Place in the concours for the 2006-18 V8/V12 Vantage category, I (my car?) got 3rd fastest at Lime Rock (more on that later), I rightly received the award for furthest traveled for the event, and I was also given the Vanquish Award (also known as the "Spirit of Aston" award) - a rather sizeable thing that is a traveling trophy, which means I have to haul it off to Japan, engrave my name on it, and then lug the sucker back next year so it can be passed along to its next recipient. Luanna and I were also given a gift - an AMOC Japan badge that had been given to AMOC-NA by a Japanese member.
More on all of that later... obviously.
After a brief but unpleasant stopover in NYC, we dropped my car off with a friend who was handling its shipment back to Idaho, and we flew back to Japan.
As long as this is, it really is the super-abridged version. There's a lot more involved and, obviously, I'll go into it later (more on that lat- ... you get it).
Now I'm back in Japan to continue getting settled in and try to catch up on everything I've missed the last two weeks (sorry!). By the time I catch up, I'll be back in Idaho for my brother's wedding. That trip's a short one and won't be nearly as hectic, so there shouldn't be much of a delay with me getting back to everyone that emails me.
As I mentioned previously in another blog post, or something or other online, May and June are absolute chaos with everything going on. We're halfway through it and hopefully the second half leaves me feeling as warm and fuzzy as the first half did. To everyone I met at the AMOC event - thanks so much for introducing yourselves and talking with me. I'm still blown away at all the support I got from everyone, and the awards, and the unbelievable reception of my wife and I, and I can't thank everyone enough.
I really do appreciate being able to meet so many of you and getting the wonderful feedback that I was given. It’s that kind of encouragement and support that keeps me going, and I can’t say enough how grateful I am for it.
I’ll be honest, I was way way too busy and consequently too exhausted to get to many emails during the last two weeks. Saying I was too exhausted isn’t hyperbole - I did actually crash from it at one point. I’m catching up on emails while also continuing with what I have to do as a new resident in Japan (bureaucracy is [insert expletive(s) of your choice here]. I do sincerely apologize to anyone that feels neglected or ignored, that’s definitely not my intention.
I’ll also be sharing a lot more information about all those “more on that later” things, so stay tuned for that. Until then, another of the things I’ll need to adjust is my own scheduled. I had it down really nicely in Idaho - I’d wake up and start handling things in Europe then England, and then get a shower over the Atlantic, and carry on with the US east coast and keep moving west. Now that I’m in Japan, even starting work at 6am makes me miss Europe and it’s already the afternoon or early evening in the US… It’s going to be tricky getting this right.
Oh well, it’s another thing to add to the list of challenges of becoming an expat.
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