Other hobbies, we have two ancient Mercedes Diesels that I like working on, and want to see
how long we can keep driving them. The silver one is approaching 400k miles.
Recently rebuilt the rear suspension on one. Put new ball joints and rebuilt the AC system on the other.
Along the same vein, I have a small machine shop to fabricate anything metal.
(Bridgeport mill, Logan Lathe, Lincoln TIG machine, etc)
Nice 300TD wagons there Frank. My son Dave had one given to him with about 300K on it back around 2001 when he was at UCONN, same color, think that's called Desert Beige. He put a ton of miles on it and then gave it to a young guy that I worked with, who in turn gave it to someone else, for all I know, maybe it has made it's way around to you! Amazing cars, built like tanks!
Old hobbyist machinist's joke: "So what to you do with your lathe,Bridgeport, and drill press?" "Make spare parts for my lathe , Bridgeport, and drill press." You guys are good to have around, you can make anything for anything made out of metal.
Other hobbies here:
Fishing, especially salt water surfcasting, which course leads to collecting and restoring classic custom rods and reels, and plugs.
Carpentry and woodworking, when you have a creative wife you never lack for opportunities to exercise and improve your skills in building stuff and doing finish carpentry while re-trimming rooms, and building furniture - I hire out the heavy framing stuff but enjoy doing finish work.
All the maintaining hobbies, maintaining a lawn, maintaining and improving the landscaping, again when you have a wife that has a degree in landscape design the yard is a continuum, vs. a static thing.
Maintaining old cars as daily drivers, have favored most Volvos in that respect. when i retire in a few years, I want to get a classic project car, most likely a 67-68 Mustang to go to cruise nights with. Had a 67 289 Mustang rag top as my first car, never should have sold it (for 150 dollars no less).
We recently bought ourselves a reproduction 18th century tall case pendulum clock. Learning about the history of these mechanical marvels of their time, and trying to get the new one dialed in to keep as perfect time as possible has been a lot of fun. I currently have it holding to within a couple of seconds a week. We also have a much simpler Shaker style tall case clock with a spring wound movement, so the challenge is to get the both of them striking the hour at the same time.
Don't play any instruments except a Morse key, but appreciate and am always listening to and exploring great music, especially classic rock and blues guitarists like Clapton. JJ Cale, and Mark Knopfler. After going to Hawaii two years ago, have really gotten into Hawaiian slack-key guitar, fantastically beautiful stuff that is generally not well known outside of the islands. Sounds in many cases similar to Spanish and Mexican style guitar, because Mexican cowboys hired to work on cattle ranches in Hawaii brought their guitars and music with them. And the Portuguese hired to work in the sugar cane fields there brought their little stringed instrument called the machete, which then became the ukulele. Most of my smart phone bandwidth is used on Pandora chasing this stuff down, or rather, having it brought to me.