I’ve teamed up with AJ Grasso as a contributor to ZENDO News so here is a brief intro.

I can still remember the orange step-side squarebody and silver 928 Matchbox cars that were among my favorites at a very early age. In high school I talked my way into a painter’s assistant job at a high end body shop, in this role I drove my first Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Alfa Romeo, and many others, unfortunately almost all of that driving was within the shop compound, but I was in heaven. When I was in college the same shop owner bought a local towing company with a county contract, so on holiday breaks I cruised around on-call in a wrecker. While in school I also worked in an automotive accessory store that supported many local dealers as well as individual customers.
Bed liners, alarms, and stereos were staples, but lift kits, cruise control, and cell phone integration (early – I didn’t have one yet) were other common jobs.

Then I spent 22 years traveling the globe as a U.S. Marine. Throughout this period my automotive passion never faded, but my capacity was highly limited. I am an avid consumer of both print and online automotive media, and this somewhat sustained me throughout my time in service. Since retiring I have been able to justify more automotive reading as professional development (previous professional development was headier geopolitical or Information Technology/Satellite tech related) I have had a few deep dives into the early hot rod and lake racing, and legends such as Parnelli Jones, Mickey Thompson, Alex Xydias, Ken Miles, Carrol Shelby, and I just started AJ Foyt’s biography.

So now I find myself trying to re-enter the automotive/off-road/motorsports world professionally, with a long list of enthusiast creds and some useful skills I picked up along the way.

I am most interested in endurance racing, off-road endurance racing is even better, the logistics challenges combined with the test of human and machine can’t be beat in my mind. I love the machines and want to know everything about them (how), but the humans tell the stories (why).

Project History:
1989 Ford Mustang LX 5.0 Convertible
1998 Ford Mustang Cobra
1993 Ford F-150 Lightning – 2005 NMRA Ford Spring Break Challenge Competitor
1973 Ford Bronco – “The Other Woman”
2006 Ford Mustang GT Convertible
2008 Audi TT
2007 Audi S4
2002 Subaru WRX – JDM car in Japan
1990 Chevrolet Suburban
2018 Audi S3

Motorsports participation:
2005 – NMRA Spring Break Shootout: Participant
2007 – SCORE International Baja 1000: Chase support for the Raffo Racing Class 3 Blazer
2023 – Made a couple of 1/8th mile passes in a supercharged C4 Corvette I helped get running again
2024 – SCI Motorsports Volunteer: Baja 500, Vegas to Reno, Baja 400, and Baja 1000 (Pit Marshall, Driver, etc)
2024 – Unlimited Off-Road Racing: Volunteer Checkpoint Official California 300
2025 – SCI Motorsports Volunteer: King of the Hammers (Next week)

Photo: 2024 Baja 1000 Brock Heger / SCI Motorsports / Polaris Factory Racing Pro UTV win – I’m not in the photo, I was still making my way back from my Pit Marshall duties at the furthest geographically distant pit. Heger went on to win the 2025 Dakar Rally SSV class with his SCI Teammate Max Eddy Jr. as co-driver.