sneak up on opportunities

When I was a kid, like, in my teens, I liked to work on cars. Tinkering, turning bolts, fixin' stuff... but mostly just hangin' around with other car people... There was an older guy, probably in his sixties or seventies back then, whose house we'd frequently hang out at - there were always a least a few old cars in various stages of repair lined up in his driveway.

He'd been fixin' stuff his whole life it seemed and pretty much new all the answers to our questions even if he usually tried to hold back his opinions and let us figure it out on or own. He mostly just sat around in a folding lawn chair nearby and drank. There's a certain kind of clinking sound that ice makes on those hard plastic tumbler glasses and that sound still reminds me of him. We called him Chuck. Not his real name. Not changed here for privacy, that's just what we called him.

To give you an idea of his ways, we were once trying to figure out why one particular car kept leaking oil on the ground. Chuck didn't tell us what was likely to be the source of the problem but rather suggested we just pour the oil straight on to his driveway instead of into the engine - "Avoid the middleman," he laughed and laughed...

And his advice for those tough to loosen stuck bolts, "Well, you gotta sneak up on 'em, ya see... Don't let that bolt know what you're up to until - Wham!" And, you know what, it often works.

And in that same way, we've sometimes got to sneak up on those moments in our day when we can get out and do our thing - whatever that thing might be... a run, a blog post... Things can't always be planned and scheduled. Sometimes we gotta just say, Hey, I've got a few moments here all of a sudden and - Wham! Get out there...