[1sicklx]

Fast Forward to ‘05

Get sick, take a lot of pills – get better but not well -- get sick all over again, (cough, cough) is pretty much (cough, cough) how my '05 (cough, cough) was going (cough). None the less I gutted it through and never missing a day of work keeping up my typical 60 -70+ hour work week at the shop and track.


I will say though, that by mid-summer I noticed that I was slowing down and was gradually getting sicker. It's about then we started having serious discussions of me taking some time off to try and get well once and for all. But Wait! I was just wrapping up six months of intensive track testing for the imminent release of my new products for the 2005 Mustangs, I've got customer cars, '05 Mustangs in the shop to be built and SEMA is just around the corner. Time off be damned - Full speed ahead. After all isn't that what a true hard-core car guy manly man would do? (Pay attention, there are some serious lessons to be learned here.) So I did, working at 95%, then 90% then 85% and so on, I was on a mission so I kept digging deeper. (Cari thinks it was more like 50%, then 45%, then 40%.)


As fall and SEMA approached I made all my commitment to my '05 customers and delivered some really hot cars. (click through to '05 Mustangs) The SEMA car though was another story. I was really feeling bad and had dug almost to the bottom on energy and effort. I was actually thinking of maybe, just maybe taking a little time off after SEMA to try to get better.

Knowing that the “Pirates of SEMA” make the Pirates of the Caribbean look like rank armatures, I chose to hold back my newest top of the line really trick suspension. You see I didn't want to take some time off only to see cheap copies of my best stuff popping up in magazines and on the internet within weeks of SEMA. Hence the SEMA car only had common components, but did feature drop-dead-gorgeous retro-looking CSR-69 prototype bodywork. ( click through to CSR-69 @ SEMA)


Fortunately, while I was busy cranking out some pretty hot '05 Mustangs and putting the finishing touches on the SEMA car, Cari and some of my key advisors were quietly conspiring, working on potential scenarios to get me out of the business for a while to tend to more important matters -- like my health. The problem was that I was the primary resource of information and so in trenched in daily operations and dealing with customers to insure top quality, it was hard to come up with a plan to pull me out of the equation and still maintain the high Kenny Brown standards. They decided the only way to keep me from going to work every day, was if there were no work to go to. That was the reality but it didn't represent a viable option, at the time. (Little did they know.)


October came and off to SEMA the car and I went, dragging my ass all the way. To give you an idea of how sick I was, I attended SEMA by day. By night, when I usually enjoy some of the major prerequisite cocktail parties where the food and booze flow freely, I could only manage two beers (premium beers mind you*) in two days and never finished either one, plus I left SEMA a day early. Now that should tell you something!

*By the way did I ever tell you why American beer to me is like sex in a row boat? Because they're both f**king near water.