For nearly 10 years I’ve coached youth sports and somewhere along the way I picked up the nickname Coach Big K. At 6 feet, 5 inches tall and a biscuit over 300 pounds, it’s clearly not the most creative name the kids could have come up with, yet I’ve learned to embrace it and I actually enjoy being called Big K for short.

Do you know what else is big? Like, really, really big? The SEMA Show that kicks off November 1! Last year the new West Hall opened and added more than 1 million square feet of new available exhibit space to the SEMA Show, and believe me, my sore feet noticed–not that I’m complaining.

For those who haven’t heard of the SEMA Show, where have you been? Just kidding (sort of). If you’ve somehow managed to make it through life never learning what SEMA is, I’ll do my best to sum it up for you. The SEMA Show is the aftermarket industry’s annual trade show in Las Vegas that is held at the massive Las Vegas Convention Center and is produced by the Specialty Equipment Market Association. It’s actually kind of hard to describe if you haven’t attended, but for auto enthusiasts–and that especially includes diesel truck fanatics–it’s what Christmas morning…at Disney World feels like to a 6-year-old.

Colton Wilinski from Spencer, Iowa, isn’t the type of person content with a 9 to 5 job making $12.50 an hour. The idea of working for someone else and not being his own boss has never sat quite right with him. So when he graduated from Spencer High School in 2020, he went on to college at Iowa Central in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and received his carpenter’s degree in 2021. Since then, he has started his own landscaping and carpentry business, doing the same type of work he could do for someone else, but making a lot more money doing it on his own.

As an example of how dedicated Colton is to the principles that make self-employment work involves his early love of baseball. Colton grew up playing baseball practically from the time he could walk. When he played high school ball, he got a couple of offers to play college ball, but decided to give up that dream. Why? Because he decided he’d rather pursue the American Dream—running his own business, living off the sweat of his own brow, and having some “toys”–if that’s what you call a 7,000-pound 2013 Laramie Longhorn 3500 Mega Cab.

While he loves running his own business, what Colton really enjoys is spending free time in the shop, working on other pickups as well as his own truck.

Lindsay Rivera is undeniably a vehicle junkie through and through! Her greatest hobby is working on cars and trucks, particularly her ’97 F250 7.3L Power Stroke. She particularly loves restoring older vehicles to their former glory and turning them into testaments of time past. But she really considers herself to be an artist. Owning her own business as a cosmetologist, she prides herself on having an eye for detail and making anything she touches beautiful, whether it’s through her job or working on a vehicle.

In addition to her Ford, Lindsay also owns two Porsches. And when she bought her 2000 Porsche Boxster S, it was a manual transmission. She didn’t know how to drive stick at the time, but she bought the car anyway. She would drive the Porsche up and down her neighborhood for hours, and she would stall at least three times at intersections, which she says is the fastest way to learn because of how embarrassing it was.

“I even bought those stupid magnets for the back saying that I’m learning stick!” Lindsay detailed.

When it comes to outrageously ridiculous but completely necessary chaotic automotive ingenuity, there’s no one better than Hoonigan in Compton, Calif. And apparently, they didn’t think building their “Hoonicorn” was enough—a 1,400hp twin turbo supercharged Mustang that completely dusted the actual twin turbo McLaren Senna hypercar from Forza Horizon 4’s cover in the quarter-mile while intentionally giving the McLaren a complete triple-car-length lead on the start, but that also beat Ken Block’s 4,000hp NHRA Corvette C6 in a 1,000-foot drag. But no, they didn’t decide to stop the craziness there. So what was their next good idea?

They decided to put a 6.6L LBZ Duramax engine into a fifth-gen 2011 Camaro with the intention of building a 1,000hp diesel muscle car capable of going 200mph in a standing mile.