Tell us about your non-motorsport hobbies.

Since we're all cooped up at home because of the Kung Flu, I figured some of you guys must have interesting hobbies. I know some of you are musicians now, I know a few of us are playing with model railroads. Feel free to share what you're doing now that we can't all stand around in a parking lot for 8 hours.

I'll go first.

I got back into an old hobby a few years ago. I breed freshwater tropical fish. 

Most of my fish end up in a couple of the local aquarium shops, they like what I send them and it offsets the cost of the hobby a bit.

This was my best pair of silver angelfish, lots of healthy babies from them, I lost them due to old age a couple months ago:

This is a pair of smokey angelfish raised from fry that are now laying eggs for me. The parents were a gold angel and a blue angel. I don't really like messing up bloodlines like that but they were given to me and already laying eggs.

The fry seem to be coming out at about 50/50 gold angels and smokey angels. A few of the fy have the high-fin gene so I will be trying to isolate that and see if I can get it to breed true:

Fry with the high-fin gene. Sorry about the pic, these guys are only about the size of a nickel right now and they move fast:

Some Koi Angels that I'm growing out to hopefully get at least one pair from:

Some of my gold angels from the same line as the smokey angels above. Hoping to get these to breed true gold as well:

Some two-day old fry. The eggs were laid on the 14th and became free swimming on the 22nd:

Some of the juveniles, ready to go to the pet store:

Some baby Bushynose Plecostomus (Ancistrus sp.). For scale, the snails in the picture are about twice the size of a pencil eraser.

And some juvenile Kribensis that I'm hoping to get at least one breeding pair from, there's 6 of them in the tank:

I also keep some Endler's livebearers just for fun and because they're nearly extinct in the wild, the two lakes they come from are being destroyed by pollution. Little buggers move too fast:

Ok, I've nerded out enough. It's your turn.

I collect spores, molds, and fungus.

I bite off more than I can chew, spend money I don't have on parts for projects, then let them collect dust as I run into snag after snag. 

This'll be the first july 4 since I got my license when I turned 18 that I haven't been in charge of a commercial fireworks display, getting paid, sorta, to blow stuff up into the sky. I can only hope that the outfit I shoot for survives this year. I dunno how, with no income, but I hope they manage. Then again that same can be said for lil ol' me as well.

A little bit of everything. 

Lot of reading. Scifi and fantasy for the most part.  Scalzi, Pratchett, Spider Robinson, etc

Video games, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Zelda, other open world stuff.

Gardening, lot of herbs, citrus, and peppers

3d printing

Casting metals

Photography 

I collect and race HO scale slot cars.

I build all scale models. Cars, planes, armor, Gundam, ships, if it's plastic I'll build it.

I build, paint, and play Warhammer 40,000.

I'm really into tabletop board games. Finally picked up Wingspan. We have a pretty good size collection of great games (Azul, Splendor, Photosynthesis, Karmaka, Dominion, etc)

Boom sticks.

Homebrew beer.     We've been in lockdown so long, I'm half way through a 5 gallon batch I started at the begging of this.

I work about 3000 hours a year.

Drones 

and 3d printing. 

and the 10-seat bome theater I built in my basement. 

Brand new hobby; roasting my own coffee.

I also dabble in home improvements and design.  I'm a whiz with picking color combinations that rock.  My bathroom is lavender with eucalyptus accent colors.  Sounds awful, looks like a million bucks.  My kitchen is tomato red and grasshopper green.  Master bedroom is taupe and aqua.

Karaoke master

I'm also really good at picking flavors.  My mom (amazing cook) calls me and asks what ingredients to use.  Just last week she wanted to make lemon bars that were special so I told her to add Rosemary and dust them with Sumac.  I hate lemon bars, but they were pretty darned good.  I'm one of those cooks that just keeps a ton of ingredients around.  Yesterday I got hungry for sausage and I had some 80/20 ground beef.  I think I used salt, pepper, garlic, some Ras Al Hanout, cayenne, fennel, and a wee drizzle of maple syrup.  I just grab and season to taste.  After cracking the fennel for the sausage yesterday, I purposely left some in the coffee grinder and I'm enjoying a wee bit of fennel in my coffee this morning.

I don't like to brag, but I'm gonna.  If I'm smoking anything on the Brinkmann, you definitely want to be a part of it.  Pork loins with apple butter and mustard glaze, coffee-rubbed 12-spice brisket, Filet mignon with olive, oregano, and feta tapenade, smoked vanilla and rose water homemade ice cream, smoked pecan pie... yeah.  I'll brag.  I'm good.  I have a few recipes being used at a local restaurant.  Sometimes I watch those high-end chef shows like Iron Chef or Chopped and silently think "amateurs."  They are better at the techniques, but no one picks flavors like I do.  I don't know how to Sous Vide squid so it's not chewy, but I can do better than a Michelin chef making it taste good.

I feel like Ira and Barry Shalowitz from City Slickers.  Woof.

I also build my own electronics sometimes, but that requires a recipe.

I also build my own percussion instruments for the home studio.  Built a cajon from plywood and tuned it to 64 Hz.  Assorted brake discs and drums make interesting Crotales.

Lately, sewing masks.

A bit of home improvement.  

A bit of gardening.  

Boomsticks when the mood strikes.

 Does snu-snu count as a hobby?

It was soaring until the Soaring Society of America shut down Ops nationwide.  Our club opened it up to single seaters, no students, keep 10 ft. apart.

I'm taking a break from it this season.  Since the incarceration started, I've been taking care of deferred maintenance on the house and poking at the Cadimino.  I'd like to get into hill climbing with an F-500 or something like it.  Always open to suggestions.

My #1 hobby is bicycles. It probably consumes more of my income than my car hobby.  Which is kinda crazy since I have 8 cars right now... Road bikes, mountain bikes, BMX, etc...  I ride pretty much everything.  And for some reason I won't bat an eye at spending almost $1000 on a pair of bicycle wheels, yet will debate with myself for years over spending that much on a set of 4 car wheels. 

Next would be guitars, which have been an off/on hobby for some 30+ years.  I have many guitars... 

Then I have a whole slew of "casual" hobbies that I would like to do more of, but don't have the time or space. Woodworking, skiing, boom-sticks, R/C cars, slot cars, comic books, reading, and so on... 

Bicycles, firearms, reading (mostly audiobooks lately), and more recently home improvement projects. 

I like reading when I have time.

Music. Learning drums and trumpet currently. I'd love to sign up for lessons for those and singing. 

Also I drink a lot of coke. 
 

Walking/Biking. I love going places under my own power. It's just so slow that I can rarely justify it. Lately I've been hiking a lot with my 3yo, we don't go anywhere fast and we usually end up on the same trails but it's the best. 
 

Purging. Lately I love getting rid of stuff. Not sure that counts as a hobby but I like spending time doing it. 

Sadly this whole thing made me realize I need more hobbies!

I used to have a saltwater reef tank, a lot of fun,a lot of work, and lots of money. Had to get rid of it because of a move unfortunately. 
 

I actually took week of vacation this week. Finally bought a PS4 and be playing Gran turismo. Binging some shows. Cleaning/organizing the house with the wife.

Past couple days been doing a lot of yard work. Today I'm Enlisting my youngest daughter and nephew to make new flower bed in front of our house. 

Firearms, reloading, casting for reloading, gardening smoking meats, fishing

But...I don't see this coming back anytime soon either. 

It will be a long time again before we put 8 people on a 35 ft boat keeping them all to one side of the boat at a time and then do it for 12-48 hours.  

I like off road/ overlanding, motorcycles (both dirt and superbikes), hiking, camping, survival type E36 M3, and guns. Want to learn to fly someday. 

KyAllroad (Jeremy) (Forum Supporter) said:

A bit of home improvement.  

A bit of gardening.  

Boomsticks when the mood strikes.

 Does snu-snu count as a hobby?

 

 

I like to count snu-snu as a hobby.  Shame my wife doesn’t.  

Boom-sticks

Cars and motorcycles (new to me)

Photography

Im going to get back in to music soon.  Played saxophone for years and going to pick that back up along with learning to play bass.  

Hot Wheels. In 1996 my brother found a "Treasure Hunt" at a store and gave it to me since I was into VW Buses at the time. I had always had hot wheels so I thought it would be cool to "collect them all"; I haven't really stopped since. It's time consuming and ridiculously expensive but it's kinda therapeutic as well. There are some really really cool ones out there also.

and on it goes

Geocaching, finding and hiding.  Making my own containers out of junk.