Back from NACAT

NACAT stands for the North American Council of Automotive Teachers, and every year it hosts a conference for its enthusiastic members.  This year’s took place on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, where yesterday yours truly presented on Plug-In Hybrids as a representative of Perfect Sky Hybrid Training.  NACAT members are increasingly curious about hybrids, including their frontier as the plug-in variety, and we managed to fill the Coronia Room with at least 30 people.  (The audience even included one of my former (and favorite) automotive teachers, Russ Ferguson of Washtenaw Community College!  We took some pictures together which I look forward to posting in another blog.) Topics ranged from basic introduction to V2G development and included technical details of the Chevy Volt concept, the CalCars’ PriusPlus conversion method, and the EV Power Systems’ Colorado pickup. 

My thanks to NACAT for supporting education on such an exciting and important technology.  I am also grateful to Jack Rosebro and Dominic Felix of Perfect Sky (pictured testing out the Coronia Room) for the opportunity to speak on their behalf. Both NACAT and Perfect Sky work for the betterment of this industry, including a higher environmental consciousness, and I look forward to continued collaboration in the future.

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You’ve Come Along Way, Baby

I spent the day installing telephone wire. It turned out quite well, actually. There’s incredible satisfaction in taming the wiry, four-headed beast of internet, phone, cable, and security system. (Whip-crack! Whip-crack!)

Enjoy it, because few aspects of starting a business conclude this nicely. As I write, in fact, our building permit remains open. I do love the City of San Francisco. I really do. And I appreciate that the bureaucracy is needed to ensure all of our safety. I just wish I hadn’t told everyone we’d be open for business a week ago.

The launch of LusciousGarage.com, and with it this entry, is a very real accomplishment worth its own recognition. Brick and mortar will touch a few thousand in due time. But the website promises a far greater reach and depth. To advocate automotive innovation, to research and document its progress (and fate), to model the educated, cutting-edge, environmentally-conscious service provider—these have been dreams of mine for some time.

We are very close to ready. The picture was taken over a month ago; the chaos is mostly mental now. Not insanity, just a crush of details. Telephone wires? Shouldn’t I delegate this? But there’s no time to find someone! (I admit, I’m an only child; I insist on doing everything myself.)

Pretty soon the details will be sorted, the sign will be up, the permit will be framed on the wall, and these anticipatory memos will be the clearest recollection I’ll have of the time when all these things weren’t taken for granted.

Carolyn! This is yourself speaking however long ago… You’ve come a long way, baby. Keep going!

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