A Morning Ritual

A lot of people believe in using their morning to “center themselves” in some way; many enjoy some type of ritual, whether its meditation or watching the news or even just that first cup of coffee. I’m no different; I like to wake up over an hour before I have to leave the house for work in order to have some “me time” to prepare for the stress of the work day ahead.

I’ve had many different morning rituals throughout my life since I go through phases, as I’m sure most people do. Ever since late last year before X-mas I began to develop a new way to “center myself” with my own type of meditation: a type made in zaps of DC power and quick little passes of brightly colored vintage plastic and steel.

The mornings are my time with The Road Crew! I like to go down to the part of my man cave called The Toy Room where I keep my die-cast collection and work bench. This is the room that holds the “HO Highway”, the Tyco track built on the site that was once Drag City Mk I and Mk II. I race on the big track on weekends and some weeknights, but I spend weekday mornings in the smaller room with the old cars. I usually have anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes-depending on how many times I hit “snooze” that morning-to run some of these older, slower cars around the track, drifting through the turns and enjoying the focus it takes to keep them on the track; there’s comfort in being in the moment.

The “HO Highway” has no timer, no lap counter, nothing fancy; its just a basic track where 2 cars can race side by side, like a throwback to the early days of hot-rodding where there were no rules. It reminds me of the earliest days of my rediscovery of this hobby, which, though not even 2 and a half years ago, seems like a lot longer considering the hell that we’ve all been through since early 2020. As the Davos crowd continues to inflict their “Great Reset” on us all, the world seems to have changed an awful lot since then, and I can’t think of a single way in which those changes are for the better. That makes it all the more important to find the time to develop an inner peace in order to deal with everything that’s going on now, and everything that’s probably coming, because, dear readers, in the short team at least, I fear its just going to continue to get worse.

Filmed on 2 consecutive days last week when a spat of wintry weather allowed me the luxury of working from home, here’s a quick look at how I use my Aurora “originals” to de-stress before facing the day.