Post pics of your hobbies (money pits?) in this thread...

Had this sitting in my garage for the last six years (have owned it for 22 years) waiting on a fuel pump, and then needed to replace the gas tank. Luckily my wife's cousin (aka The Volkswagen Whisperer) was able to do all the trouble-shooting and replaced the tank for me... and charged me for parts only ($262).



Now I'm going through and fixing other mechanical issues that are required for occasional driving, and then I plan to fix a few cosmetic blemishes (a few dings, cracked plastic grill, sagging headliner, cracked windshield, etc). I plan to register it as a "Special Interest Vehicle" this fall, which will require a one-time fee for as long as I own the car.

I'm already realizing the importance of budgeting for this project -- and I am not really even close to the point of real restoration. Paint job and engine rebuild are going to be the big whammies... at some point down the road.

What a great idea for a thread! This is actually one of my "financial weaknesses" - I tend to get involved in many things at once, and a lot of them cost money. Here are the ones I do the most often:


I keep active and enter a lot of races each summer. I've run 5K's, 10K's, half-marathons, and triathlons. The "expensive" part is the race fees, the shoes, the bike (shown above), the supplements, etc. I enter about 5-10 races per year, which is tough because I also do wedding photography (not counting that as a hobby, as it makes me money), so my weekends in the summer are pretty packed.


I make my own beer, although most of the beer I consume comes from local breweries. Still, it's fun to try and make my own. It's a simple process, but surprisingly nuanced to get it just right.


Cakemaking. I'm taking a cake decorating course, which costs a fee, plus all the supplies and tools, plus the ingredients, not to mention the time investment. Still, I'm having a lot of fun with it.



Star Wars Lego. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I love Star Wars Lego, and I've spent way more on it than I should have. The two sets above were a blast to build, but cost around $400 each. When I'm bored, I tend to surf Craigslist and Kijiji, looking for used Star Wars Lego sets I can pick up cheap (is $150 "cheap?").

Nice, Kombat -- love the Lego Star Wars stuff. My 10-y.o. son has started a small collection, so I had to get my own Darth Vader TIE Fighter (#8017). You can spend a lot of money just buying minifigs with that hobby!

Here's another one of my hobbies...





The DIY aspect of this hobby means that I have 'saved' money when you compare the cost DIY performance vs. equivalent store-bought performance, but I have spent a decent amount on audio equipment over the past 20 years (but not much in the past 5-years, since I'm satisfied with what I've got right now).

I do enjoy the tinkering aspect of this hobby (testing, measuring, listening, etc), so I will never quite be completely done with my audio collection...

Good on you! I have done triathlons for a few years now. I'm not that good but I always finish. I finally broke down and bought a nice road bike about a year ago that set me back more than I care to admit. But what a difference it made in my times and therefore my motivation. And being motivated keeps me working out which keeps me fit and healthy so I like to think that it pays for itself in the end.

What's the longest tri you've done?

I've only done Sprint Triathlons so far (500m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run), but I'm considering trying a full Olympic distance next year. I'm also thinking about doing a full marathon, just because whenever I tell people I've run half marathons, their first question is always, "Have you ever tried the full?"

I have mostly only done sprints. But I got shut out of a local race a couple of years ago because I tried to register too late. I had already been training so I started looking around for races I could travel to and found an Olympic distance race not far from me. I decided to do it just to be able to say I finished.

Well, I did, and it honestly was not that hard. I did not push myself too much but I actually didn't have any problem finishing. In some ways it was easier than a sprint because you find yourself relaxing more during the bike especially and just getting into a rhythm, at least I did.

If you do 5-10 races a year I doubt it would be a problem for you. For me, the biggest difference was that you really need to pay more attention to calorie and fluid replacement during the race than you do for a sprint. It's not as critical as it is for a long race but most people will hit a wall in the run if they don't eat during the race because your body simply can't store all the energy you expend during the race. That's not a problem with a sprint of course.

I've never done a long run because the run is the toughest part for me. But I'm thinking of doing a half marathon late this year and a half ironman tri next year. We'll see. I'd love to finish an ironman someday but that might be a pipe dream!

We don't race, but we are into bike touring. This photo is from a trip we took a couple of years ago from Toronto to Montréal (about 750 km with a few side trips):



We generally stay in B&Bs rather than camping...we sleep better at night, especially when there are thunderstorms (which has happened on every one of our tours). Our goal for these trips is to never set foot in a car: for the Toronto trip we rode our bikes from home to the train station in Montréal, put our bikes on the train to Toronto, and then rode our bikes back home. It was a blast.

Wow, what's it like to have a useful public transportation system?

Seriously though, that is awesome! I'd like to do that when I retire or otherwise have the time. But don't you worry about cars on the roads? I do ride on the roads but stay on roads with VERY wide shoulders. I'd think that would be very difficult on a long trip. I personally know several cyclists who have had encounters with cars so it's not just paranoia!

There's actually a bike route that goes all the way from Toronto to Montreal. Some of it is on roads (and in just a few short stretches on scarily busy roads), but a lot of of it is on dedicated bike paths -- there's the Waterfront Trail in Ontario and La Route Verte in Québec. The busy roads were indeed a drag, but they accounted for only a small portion of our trip. I've had a few close encounters with cars myself, and a friend of a friend was killed last year while riding on a quiet country road, hit by a 77-year-old motorist.

It's possible to find relatively long bike paths without cars:

http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/001903

Here in Québec we are very fortunate to have La Route Verte, which National Geographic rated as the best system of bike trails in the world. Some of them are on roads but we have a lot of separated bike paths too, which is great. They tend to be multi-use so you have to watch out for joggers and mothers with baby carriages, but when we're touring our goal is to enjoy the scenery and have a vacation rather than roller-skating through the Louvre or hitting some mileage goal for the day. So we generally take it easy, cycling 60-80 miles per day, sometimes less if we want to hang out somewhere for a while.

We're not doing a tour this year as I had an accident (not with a car) earlier this summer, but next year we're doing Montreal to Québec City and back in a big circle, and the year after that it's Montréal to Boston, which will require training for the serious hills (I lived in New England for 20 years and my legs still remember the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire well).

Sigh that sounds nice, I have a coworker who's buying $2000.00 bikes and touring like this....I really can't afford those types of hobbies right now.

Weight lifting would be mine at the moment.

My hobby is reading and listening music, I have developed reading as my hobby recently. I like to read more of the inspirational kinds of books and motivational books along with love stories so any body having some similar kind of reading hobby please suggest me some good books to read specifically on motivation and inspiration kind of books.