The Law of Unintended Consequences

I wrote a post a few years back which I did not publish about the saga of being fitted with a CPAP machine and its implications for my working life. I recently deleted that draft, since (as I’ve mentioned several times—and will doubtless keep mentioning) I’ve decided to start my clock to retirement, which fact makes the whole issue moot.

Or so I thought. I guess I just didn’t think hard enough.

The issue a few years back was this: I’ve been overweight my whole life, hovering around the BMI figure where in my career as an airline pilot I might be evaluated for sleep apnea. The FAA looks at BMI and neck size (not sure how they know this figure) and blood pressure and determines whether further scrutiny is warranted. So my AME (Aviation Medical Examiner) for years would tell me “You’re right on the line for needing a sleep apnea evaluation, so don’t gain any more weight! Better, yet, you ought to lose 15 pounds and you won’t have to worry about it.” I never gave the issue much thought, since I know I do not have sleep apnea. I have the most challenging sleep circumstance of anyone I know, and if I were suffering from sleep issues I’d sure as hell be the one to know it (to say nothing of the guarantee that my wife, the world’s lightest sleeper, would march my ass to the doctor the morning after she heard me gasping in my sleep). I was confident that if I were evaluated for sleep apnea I’d be cleared.

But that’s not how the game works.

Well, my old AME that I had used for 15 plus years ended up dying from COVID. (That’s another post—he had fallen down some rancid Alex Jones rathole and had decided that, despite having several big risk factors and despite formal training in virology and infection, he would eschew traditional medical practices and “protect” himself with a magic key fob around his neck that emitted some kind of magic Jesus Wave that warded off the evil viral spirits. And Darwin came calling.) So I found a new AME. And that guy, unbeknownst to me, was actually a pulmonologist in real life. So if anything were to happen to me medically in my job that warranted any kind of investigation, this guy would have ho place to hide. He would not be able to say (as the last guy, a retired dermatologist, might have done) “Yeah, I looked at him but he assured me he was fine.” The FAA would call it dereliction of duty that a pulmonologist didn’t report a fat guy for a sleep apnea evaluation.

And so the certified letter from the FAA duly came, and after 28 years of flying without incident I found myself headed to a sleep clinic. This seems bad enough, though it’s a fair question to ask whether some scrutiny is not warranted and when that line might be crossed. But I wasn’t unduly worried, as I knew I had no sleep issues.

But strangely enough, nobody ever asked me about my sleep issues and habits. What I thought or wanted, and what my experiences were, was of no interest to anybody. I was given two separate evaluations and found to have no obstruction, no diminution of my blood oxygen. So, good, right? Well, only if the results of the tests actually mattered. But no, they prescribed a CPAP machine regardless, despite my vocal protests that such a therapy would be EXTREMELY intrusive in my line of work. My objections were met with stiffer and stiffer resistance, eventually bordering on abuse. I had the distinct impression that the staff were used to fielding objections and had ready responses to them. (As the controversy escalated, I contacted our pilots’ union for advice and was told “Oh yeah, if you are evaluated for sleep apnea then you’re getting a CPAP machine. The results of the test don’t matter.” It would have been nice to know this information beforehand.)

In all, I was out of work for five and a half months while this all got sorted (the diagnosis of sleep apnea caused me to lose my medical until such time as the FAA granted a “special issuance” medical with the condition listed) so I had the summer of 2023 off for literally no practical reason, though it did let me take retirement for a test-drive. (We do have loss of license insurance, so I was able to pay my bills, but the leave of absence was nonetheless a pretty substantial pay hit.)

Fast forward to today. I was able to get my special issuance medical (there are loads of CPAP machines among airline pilots) and I returned to work about 10 months ago and have been steaming along since. In the back of my mind, I’ve been looking forward to the escape valve of retirement when I can jettison the unneeded and unwanted CPAP machine—along with freedom from all the other bits of intrusive scrutiny the job entails. But I hadn’t properly considered what this might look like going forward. If I intend to do ANY flying in retirement—even recreationally, to say nothing of potential side work—then I’m going to need to qualify for a medical. And now I have a historical diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea on my record (despite my pointedly NOT having Obstructive Sleep Apnea). To procure that medical (of whatever class) I’m going to have to present documentation that I’ve been using the CPAP machine for the entire preceding year. It’s not something I can fudge; the machine itself tracks its usage and reports it via its own cellular connection to my medical facility, which then provides the documentation to the FAA. It’s VERY big brother.

I’m not a medical skeptic, though I certainly believe that big pharma needs regulating just as big business and free markets absolutely do. But this little CPAP wormhole seems like a scam, an iron-clad way for the clinic and supporting structures to get their cut of a $1000 machine and yearly visits (I am contacted every six months and solicited to take my box of insurance-approved replacement supplies—hoses and masks and filters—all at no cost to me! Thus the medical supply company pockets another $600). 

I do this or I stop flying. Those are my options.

I decided that playing along was the easiest option for my last year or two, but a part of me would like to do my part in dismantling the whole rotten enterprise. Don’t get me wrong, I know sleep apnea IS a thing, and if one has it then I understand this technology can be life-changing. But the bar seems to be set very low, and the hooks are very deep. They put me in charge of a $200 million machine but I’m not allowed to assess my own sleep life.

For now I'm content to stay out of the cockpit. If I decide I'd like to fly again, I *may* be able to hold a third class medical without reference to the sleep apnea. But I wouldn't be able to be paid to fly. So maybe I can find a sleep doctor who will play ball with me and get my diagnosis expunged. Or maybe I start using the damned machine again. But I doubt it.

The Spice of Life

I started playing the drums in the school band in fourth or fifth grade. Mrs. Franklin (I think) was the band teacher at Nisswa elementary school, and I remember announcing to her on a whim that I was maybe interested in playing in the band. “Maybe? Or you’re interested?” she asked. So I had to commit. And when she began suggesting instruments I picked drums without hesitation. A couple years later, in 7th Grade, I made a friend on the first day of Mr. Aarestad’s band class who had much jazzier “moves” than I had ever heard, and I was immediately smitten, dying to learn what he knew. That started a lifelong friendship that involved exploration of contemporary drummers, as well as listening to all kinds of music. (Music featuring drums was the gateway drug, but we quickly moved into more classical realms, a shift that has stayed with me, the tail that wagged the dog become almost nothing but tail—tho I retain an appreciation for drums and drumming.)

Any focus on drums, especially with any kind of a jazz bent, leads inevitably to the great Buddy Rich, still considered probably the greatest drummer ever. But we listened to other people as well: Peter Erskine with Maynard Ferguson, Sonny Payne with Count Basie, Ed Thigpen with Oscar Peterson—as well as Nigel Olsson with Elton John and Liberty DiVitto with Billy Joel, anything with Steve Gadd, many others. Despite my big band orientation, one group I didn’t listen much to was Glenn Miller—maybe because my focus was so centered on drumming, and Miller was a more horn-oriented group. But along the way I ended up with a couple Glenn Miller recordings, both from the late 50s with bandleader (and drummer) Ray McKinley. I loved the more upbeat songs, and I especially remember loving a particular version of Miller’s longtime hit Kalamazoo.

Like all good obsessions, my fascination for the 1959 recording of Kalamazoo waxed and waned, but I remember listening carefully to it years ago and the appreciation of that study has stayed with me. 45 years later, I find myself zoomed in on it again. In addition to an updated arrangement (updated from his original '40s hit recording), and the letter-perfect execution by the band, I’m realizing that I’ve underestimated the drumming in the song—more than that, I'm thinking I've spent years missing a very different approach to drumming with a big band.

I remember reading that Buddy Rich himself expressed admiration for how Ray McKinley “drove” his big band, tho McKinley's approach is different and less ostentatious than anything I’ve heard Buddy attempt. Having said that, and before I discuss how I think this is so, it’s worth noting that the existing video clips of Ray McKinley at the drums make him seem much more circus showman and “entertainer” than Buddy’s more serious, all-business approach. McKinley raises his hands theatrically and does little wiggling flourishes (a '40s equivalent to a modern rock drummer twirling his sticks) and throws his arms out to the sides to no earthly purpose except to *look cool* to audiences of the time. It’s a showier version of what you might see on Lawrence Welk. So his approach to the drums was evidently NOT about avoiding ostentation. But—and I’m using Kalamazoo as my Exhibit A—his actual drumming is much more in a supporting role than Buddy’s. And his silly moves on video do not erase a really stellar performance on vinyl. 

There are stylistic things. His drums sound fairly low-pitch and are not loud, sounding like the calfskin heads and gut snare wires of 30 years previous. (Pictures show McKinley sitting at the kit with a steeply angled snare between his knees, very Chick Webb.) Where modern drums are individually miked, McKinley's kit seems just to be captured by the mikes set up for the other instruments. This contributes to the sense of his drums as a supporting, background role. He drives the band not with his ride cymbal but with a strong hi-hat swing, the cymbals held fairly loose by the foot and manipulated with the left hand while the right hand plays the rhythm. This technique harks back to the earlier era from which the Miller band came—again, like Chick Webb or Gene Krupa with Benny Goodman. By contrast, most drummers of the early ‘60s had shifted more to ride cymbal patterns as a foundation—and you hear that with any modern version today of the old songs: nobody drives a band with the hi-hat. His bass drum, instead of marking each quarter note quietly seems almost absent until needed for an emphasis. And this makes its use much more striking (it could be that without individual mikes you only hear the bass accents). Backbeats on the 2 & 4 are reserved only for climaxes, and then just for a bar or two. Emphasis.

I’m trying to decipher how or if these elements contribute to the success of the recording. Chicken or egg, there’s a clear sense that this driving and time-keeping is for the band’s benefit, enabling THEM to do the swinging. I think that’s the whole banana: his drumming is almost entirely focused on facilitating THE BAND swinging hard, whereas Buddy’s playing and drive are overwhelmingly front-and-center. Whereas one finishes a Buddy Rich song (let’s use the Sammy Nestico tune Ya Gotta Try from his “Class of ’77” album) with a breathless awareness of how hard Buddy has driven the band, you finish Kalamazoo with an awareness of how hard the band has swung the tune. You just naturally want to dance to it, where with Buddy you just stare in amazement.

Drums are an ostentatious instrument. Especially in modern times, the drummer is often center stage, encased in a large, imposing kit that makes a high proportion of the band’s noise. I think many aspiring drummers are drawn specifically to that noise and ostentation, and our own playing reflects this (like the high school girl who wants to sound like Mariah Carey—yes, I’m showing my age—by putting too much sugar on everything she sings, until it’s all sugar and no substance). I think I’ve always had a tendency to overplay, and I’m naturally drawn to the Buddy Riches and the Dave Weckls rather than the Elvin Jones or Art Blakey types. And maybe as I get older I begin to see the error in this thinking. While I don’t think anyone would consider the drums absent from McKinley’s 1959 Kalamazoo, he plays a more obviously supporting role than what Buddy Rich would have provided, and I think the song benefits from this. His playing is exquisitely musical, his time keeping deliciously metered, and the drums are used almost entirely to keep the band together and to accent. He steps up as needed—much like the trumpet section hits very specific notes at very specific times. And where I want to accent *everything* the band is doing, he lets THEM do the work and he accents either 1) what will help them hit their marks, or 2) points where the brass punches need a little extra for maximum effect. I’m used to Buddy emphasizing or underpinning everything, such that it’s almost like his band is supporting HIM. Which, as the named artist and the one people buy tickets to see, maybe they are.

All this calls into question my own approach to the instrument as being a constant, driving presence in any song, whereas McKinley seems to see the drums as a spice, an instrument intended to speak occasionally for emphasis. Is this an actual tectonic shift in how jazz was conceived or played? Or is it just the difference between the drummer as sideman versus the drummer as headliner? Ed Thigpen as part of the Oscar Peterson Trio is present at just about every moment, he and Ray Brown and Oscar sharing the microphone like the Andrews Sisters. He’s neither retiring nor just present for emphasis. Yet he’s not the star of anything either. I guess I struggle with how to place Ray McKinley who is doing (very competently) what drummers-as-sidemen always do, but driving from the very back seat in the bus, as it were. (And the whole discussion kind of sidesteps the different roles of the jazz drummer and the rock drummer.)

For decades I’ve read interviews with drummers talking about what the music needs and about playing what’s appropriate for the song, and I mostly dismissed that as lip service (tho guys like Steve Gadd or the late Jeff Porcaro have in fact played on recordings covering a huge range of styles). But nowhere have I heard someone drive a big band as skillfully as Ray McKinley without drawing any attention to his playing (at least not sonic attention). (Maybe it’s because he’s also the band’s singer, and that makes for attention enough. Fair question.) But I find myself asking why the song hits its marks so well, and how it does so when it avoids all the drumming conventions I instinctively favor? And that makes me ask what makes any song successful, and of course there's not one answer. But finding a different answer than what I'm used to seems like opening a door into a new room.

(This video does not very effectively support my thesis. The drums are at least as prominent here as any other instrument, and there's a strong emphasis on flash. But it does show Ray McKinley's style and musicianship.)

 

The End Of Something

Shenzhen, the J.W. Marriott. We arrived on a jumpseat from Anchorage about 18 hours ago, and we depart for Singapore about three hours from now. What exists on paper as a 24 hour layover is in reality about 20 hours, and getting some activity and some food and decent rest is the order of the day. And because we’re on almost the exact opposite side of the globe from where we were 36 hours ago, our body clocks are out of alignment with the sun. However we manage it, the body clock will begin to shift, working its way (at about an hour per day) toward alignment with the local day-night cycle. I got to the hotel about 3:30AM, and waited around until 6:30 to head out for a walk (with a little nap in the interim). It’s hot and humid here, so my 8 mile walk nearly did me in—partly because by my body clock I’m starting a long walk at 7:PM. By the time I’m back in the hotel (after a McDonald’s breakfast of scrambled eggs and a slice of cheese on a hamburger bun with a squirt of ketchup, yet another regional variant—simple and tasty) it’s about 10:30 local, and my body is saying it’s bedtime. This is why it’s so important to have decent blackout curtains, as getting good sleep in bright sunshine doesn’t work for most of us, and doing this job without being rested is difficult and hazardous. This time I was successful, dropping off in my darkened room about noon and waking up around 8:30 PM, just as all the restaurants out my window are shutting down for the night.

My intent was to write about some of these experiences at career’s end, a series of snapshots from a life’s work. This is my last trip as an airline pilot, capping off 31 years in the profession, just over 24 years of that time with UPS. And circadian management is a big part of what doing this job entails—apart from the regulations and company rules and arcane bits of FAA and airplane knowledge that every airline pilot navigates. I find I’m scrutinizing each little activity on my last couple trips in heightened fashion, as in so many respects I likely won’t pass this way again. I have mixed feelings, of course; nostalgia for all the really extraordinary parts of the job, but also a sense of relief that I won’t have to live under the microscope of scrutiny that goes with it—the medicals and simulator training and recurrent study and regulation reviews and check rides and paperwork audits. I’ve accepted years ago—in a kicking-and-screaming kind of way—this high-scrutiny aspect as a necessary element of the career. But I’ve always hated it and I’m eager to be out from under it.

The payoff from making peace with this scrutiny has been the world at my doorstep. Before UPS I hadn’t done a whole lot of traveling, and virtually all of that was domestic (I made two brief trips to Europe in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and we saw some Bahamian islands when I was a kid). After moving to the magnificent MD-11 in 2009, I began regularly to circle the globe. Literally. We used to take off and head East or West and keep flying until we were back in Kentucky. This was an entirely new experience for me, and I gained a little familiarity with so many places: Cologne and London, Warsaw and Budapest, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Almaty, Sydney, Dubai, parts of Canada, Mexico City. 50 places, virtually all of them places I’d not seen before—and, from the perspective of this last trip, places I’ll almost certainly never see again.

It’s been a dual experience: on the one hand, it’s exposure to how people live in other parts of the world (at least in the big cities), with the food and music and strange currencies and odd brands of automobiles and modes of dress and languages odd to my ear, and, a favorite of mine, the regional modes of transportation. Subways in China, Jeepneys in Clark, the train in Dubai, the street cars and the Star Ferry in Hong Kong. Most of the world has a different experience and outlook on life from our own, and visiting these places is the surest way to drive home this point. And on the other hand, one quickly realizes that these places are just places, like the places where we live. There are lovely little coffee shops everywhere in the world, but they’re not vastly different from the lovely little coffee shops in Appleton, Wisconsin. On the home stretch of my career I find I’m more aware of the scrutiny I’ll no longer be subject to than of the coffee shop I won’t see again. But what a privilege to have seen enough that a coffee shop in Vienna seems a bit mundane.

And for all of this I’ve been well-paid, quite beyond my expectations. It’s gauche to talk about money, but the pay of the industry is kind of the elephant in the room. It’s the thing that accords the job some status, and that in turn gives me a patina of accomplishment in the larger world—a status that, had I kept driving a city bus, I would not have been given. I don’t think of myself as caring much for that, but I’m aware that I hold that blasé disinterest from the comfort zone of everyone else thinking I’m accomplished in life—even though I know perfectly well that I’m just an ape and this is just my job. Particularly in my work setting, the uniform and four stripes puts me on the top of this particular food chain, with people deflecting to this status as a matter of course. In some concrete way, I move through life as the embodiment of a status that society attaches to the profession. 30 years into it, I’m lying if I say this is of zero account. 

For many of my coworkers, this status is expected and proper. Particularly from a background of military flying, many guys are accustomed to being at the top of the food chain. By this yardstick, of course they’d be well paid and at the top of the ladder. But my background is driving a city bus after floundering through nine years of college (for my four-year degree!). The money is not an expected thing for me. I’m not a money guy, and never have been. I’ve always been adept at spending it, but I find investing boring and the prospect of amassing wealth just supremely uninteresting (thankfully, the corollary of this disinterest is that gambling holds zero interest. The lure of the big payoff just isn’t there for me). So where many of my coworkers hold the attainment of wealth a key personal goal, I’m content just to have not screwed up. (It would be so unsurprising to find myself a slave to credit card debt, having several mortgages, a big payment on an airplane, a huge car payment, lavish vacations. I’ve flirted at the edges of some of these, but have managed to avoid the trap that ensnares so many of us—think of the number of pro football players or lottery winners who march straight to bankruptcy.) My wife deserves much more credit for this than I, but I’ll take credit for an awareness early on that her control of our finances would benefit me. And so it has been.

So many weirdnesses with the job: the strict regulation of everything, being locked down to a by-the-minute schedule, the tight choreography with 30 other people of the airplane coming and going from its parking spot, the life in hotels and the private cars shuttling us around, the extreme routinization of operating a transport jet. One of the weirdnesses is how little I understand of how the jet works mechanically. I have zero ability or expertise about keeping it running: I cannot fuel it nor put oil in it, I cannot load it nor tighten a loose panel, I’m not qualified to brush snow off the wing surfaces. I’m not even allowed to replace a burnt-out lightbulb. I’m the guy who is brought in to sit in THIS seat and manipulate THESE switches—and by way of this rarified routine we take 50 tons of stuff 7 miles up at 500 mph to a destination 3000 miles away. My world is this tiny room, and none of the zillion other employees at this huge company has the first clue what to do in this room—though their jobs are 100% reliant on mine. And that’s where the money comes from. Weirdness.

And the jet itself. I’m never far from an awareness that I’m being given the keys to a 220 million dollar machine, a machine that even today still seems absolutely magical and improbable. And that machine is responsible for all the other things that attach to the profession: the destinations and cultural experiences, the money, the food chain on which we all sit, the schedule, the home-and-gone personal life, the living half my life in hotels. To this day I’m a little giddy to do my walk-around before each flight, marveling at what a pinnacle of human ingenuity a transport jet is. The crazy amount of power needed for takeoff; the hushed inner sanctum of the dark cockpit at night; the systems that let us navigate thunder storms or fly through snow and rain. All of it. Because the actual job duties take place in the tiny room of the cockpit—where the 180 foot-long, 200 ton machine kind of disappears—the walk-around lets us connect the miraculous machine to the minute switch-throwing that makes it go. I ply my trade sitting in this seat, but when I do the walk-around—or when I stand behind the jet and watch other jets taking off and landing next to me—I’m able to connect these arcane cockpit tasks to the astounding reality of airline flight.

But time passes and things come to an end. All of the stuff that was remarkable or other-worldly 30 years ago is solidly routine now—even as I still tip my hat to its magic.  Hong Kong is magnificent, but less so on my 40th visit than on the early times. Indeed, I kind of need to look back to the photos of my earlier visits to tap into that early wonder if I am to fully appreciate it today. 

And that looking back is what I expect my retirement to be. The airline and these jets and these many workers and all these places will continue apace without me, but I’ve been fortunate to have dipped my toe in the water during my time. I’m forever grateful for this, but I’m also ready for the next adventure.

My Electrifying Life

 Here’s another for my collection of automotive / machinery geek posts.

I have a post from a decade or more ago listing all the cars I’ve owned in my lifetime—which list is getting rather lengthy. I have another couple vehicles to append to that list, and it’s my current daily driver that is the focus of this post.

Many of my 40+ vehicles over the years have been pickup trucks—off the top of my head, at least 5 Toyotas, a couple Fords, and a Ram. (While I like what everyone else likes about full size pickups, I additionally use the truck to carry stuff to and from our lake house, such that I don’t know if we could actually get by with a more traditional SUV / station wagon.) The Ram was the last gas vehicle I owned, traded off now in 2023 for the subject of this post, a 2023 Ford F150 Lightning. 

The Lightning is an all-electric truck, I believe the first such truck from a mainstream manufacturer on the market (The Rivian R1T came on the scene around the same time). I’ve always been interested in EV tech, but my long drive to work from WI to KY seemed a heavy lift for existing models. But after a couple years’ encouragement from my EV-driving brother, I took a test drive and was hooked. And I have to say of all the vehicles I’ve owned, I have a keener interest in and love for this one—bordering on mania—than for any other. My concerns about regular long cross country drives were not misplaced (more on that later), but I find my enthusiasm for this tech easily trumps my concerns for its penalties. (And there are some penalties.)

When perusing old posts on this blog, I ran across a post about the steam locomotive and the railroad industry’s transition from the crude miracle of steam power to diesel-electric power. Whatever else one may say about the technology and the industry’s upheaval at its hands, the superiority of the diesel tech was so overwhelming—fuel cost, ease of maintenance, dispatch reliability, the prospect of easy redundancy—that its adoption was rapid and overwhelming, inevitable. I recall reading that the maintenance staff needed to run a fleet of steam locomotives could be reduced by some 90% by transitioning to diesel-electric motive power. Bad for careers on an individual scale, but a figure too overwhelming to ignore industry-wide. (This reality must have held sway for nautical propulsion as well, and there's surely an analog in the aviation industry's shift from piston power to turbine / turbojets.)

The world’s present move to electric automotive power is another of those moments, I'd wager. The forces resisting the change seem mostly coming from or funded by industries trying to hang onto their huge share of public spending, but I feel pretty confident these forces will not stop the transformation (tho they could sure slow it up and screw up the details of its adoption). This tech is just so superior to internal combustion that the shift is inevitable (I suspect our use of millions of little thermo-dynamic plants powered by tanks of liquid explosive to move our cars around will shortly seem quaint and antique.)

What won me over initially, apart from the fascination of a truck that looks like every other F150 on the road (and Ford sells 700,000 of them a year, virtually all of them gas-powered) but under the skin is *completely different,* is the driving experience. The truck is so quiet and so stupidly fast, the acceleration so free of fuss and so enthusiastic and so instantaneous, that any normal ICE car can only dream of such performance. Even a fast car requires a wind-up and a series of downshifts to get its engine up into the proper range to accelerate sportily. Not so the EV: just put your foot down and with a silent whoosh you’re doing 90 mph. (My wife, who doesn’t love driving anything this big, is always complaining that she’s regularly driving about 30 mph above where she thinks she is. There’s just no audible cue.) Electric propulsion features “instant torque,” and electric motors produce their maximum torque from a dead stop, so getting started from a stoplight can be instantaneous and a little shocking. But even at highway speeds the truck can accelerate to pass with seemingly no effort whatsoever.

Some of this is the inherent way electric motors make their power, and some of it is the lack of mechanical complexity between that motor and the driven wheels. The EV has no transmission, no transfer case, no locking hubs, no turbochargers, no cylinder deactivation, no variable valve timing, no fuel injection, none of the literally thousands of parts needed to make a modern gas engine work. The electric motors themselves are basically a big rotor with a couple bearings (tho of course they need to run thru a differential and half-shafts and CV joints, etc.--but the ICE vehicles have all that stuff as well). Anyway, the proof is in the pudding: my Lightning just drives like a dream, super-quiet and quick and utterly without fuss or drama.

Everything else in the truck is the same as / similar to the analogous equipment in the regular gas F150: the radio, the heated seats, the sunroof, all that stuff. So it feels in a general sense like any other truck—at least until you push the “start” button and… nothing happens. The truck has to beep at you and swipe the wipers to let you know it’s turned on. But for the climate system blowing some air and the screens coming to life, you have no cues that the truck is running (Tesla goes a step further and there’s not even an on / off switch! The car is ON when you approach and open the door, and it’s OFF when you walk away.) But as an old-ish guy, I must say that this familiarity is part of the Lightning’s charm. While I might relish something utterly space-age after 43 cars or so (think CyberTruck), I can see that a familiar F150 with an otherwise-invisible powertrain upgrade is a smart move from Ford. And a gutsy one: the F150 is the best selling single vehicle in the US, and has been for a couple decades; how to you make big changes when that legacy is at stake? Answer: you do both; you keep the regular F150 line moving forward, and you do the Lightning as a small separate project.

Small, maybe, in terms of sales. But the engineering commitment from Ford must have been eye-watering, and it must still be. My understanding is that the Lightning (despite its high cost—more on that in a bit) does not make money for Ford, and the prospect of them recouping their billions in development costs must be doubtful, at least in the short term. But they can clearly see what is the thesis of my little review here: the shift to EVs is coming and is inevitable, and the engineering work is going to have to be done. Kudos to them for getting a head start on it, while GM and especially Fiat-Chrysler are behind to various degrees. VW, Kia, Volvo, Audi, and a host of Chinese manufacturers are all moving smartly towards EVs, and joining the bold newcomers—Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, these latter are EV-ONLY—and I believe we’re seeing the lead-up to a sink-or-swim moment for the industry that is going to see some big players fall.

Once I took my test drive I was hooked. Well, more or less. It was obvious to me that this was the future of the automobile, and I was eager to jump into the stream. But there was the matter of cost-vs-value. The 2019 Ram 1500 I was driving at the time was a $60,000 truck and it had been to that point the nicest and best vehicle I had ever owned: zippy enough and well-sorted, beautifully-made and with the nicest interior materials I had ever seen in a mainstream product. Glorious V-8 hemi noises. At the time of my Lightning test drive I had put 100,000 miles on the Ram, virtually trouble-free. The Lightning I test drove was a similar mid-upper trim level, but the initial sticker on the Lightning was just shy of $90,000. In the four years since I’d bought my Ram, prices had risen, so my $60,000 truck was probably close to $70,000 at this point, and maybe even a bit more. But that still meant a good $20,000 premium to buy the electric. There was a strong likelihood that the operating costs for the Lightning would be substantially less than the gas truck, but for me that $20K was just more than I was willing to spring for. Another few years, I thought, and the market would equalize a bit.

But of course three days after my test drive the sales guy called and said “Ford just dropped all their Lightnings by $10,000!” Bastard. My collapse was rapid and complete.

As far as operating costs go, my suppositions were mostly correct. We have very reasonable electricity costs in Wisconsin (about .10 per kWh), and I’d guess I drive my Lightning locally for about 1/4 of what I was paying for gasoline in the previous truck. I installed a high-power charger at my house (the charger came with the truck with its extended range battery, though I had to pay a pretty penny to have an electrician install it—my local utility happy pitched in to help with the install costs, so that helped a little), and I put in a charger at the cottage, so I’m able to drive around WI without using any public charging infrastructure at all—or very nearly so. I still occasionally use a public charger if I’ve strayed from my usual routine. But day-to-day, I love leaving my house with a “full tank” every time, and I haven’t had to go anywhere to get a fill-up in forever. Having to take Susan’s jeep out to get gas seems like a mild inconvenience, and will doubtless seem more and more so. However, when driving cross-country, the electricity costs very closely parallel what I would have paid for gas for the same distance. (Most high-speed DC chargers seem to run .35-.50 per kWh, so about four times my costs at home).

So that’s one downside vs gasoline: the truck is less convenient to drive long distances, and there’s little cost savings to offset the inconvenience. The “fuel tank” in the EV is about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a gas vehicle, and it takes about three or four times as long to fill up, so it’s a double-whammy. This isn’t a factor of course when you’re filling up at home while you sleep, but driving cross country you need to be thinking always about your energy state and plan accordingly. There are far fewer EV chargers than there are gas stations, and each stop takes you 20-40 minutes versus 7 minutes for a gas fill up. Now, as an old man, I make more stops than I used to, and by the time I pee and get a snack, I’m really only inconvenienced by a few minutes—call it a penalty of 60-90 minutes on my 8 hour drive to KY. But that’s a hassle. Realistically, I’m driving about two hours between charges, maybe closer to three hours in summer. And that increase in total trip time—which I anticipated and which gave me pause before moving to an EV—is a real factor and one which has made me drive this commute less than I have done for the last 24 years. I either bid trips now that begin with a commercial flight to where the trip begins, or sometimes I just buy myself an airline ticket to KY. It’s more expensive than the electricity would be, but not stupidly so. And I just don’t have to do it very often. So there’s a compromise. 

Additionally, the experience of public charging is quite variable. Chargers come in a wide range of strengths, and not all chargers are suitable for all vehicles (there are different plugs involved). With a battery as big as my Lightning’s, you need a high-power charger when on the road to avoid making a 4 hour stop for your recharge. But even among high-powered chargers, there’s quite a variance. Each EV has a maximum charging current it can accept, and you pick your charging stops according to this limitation. But it’s not uncommon for a charger to be out of service or to fail to deliver its rated power. This all means that planning your cross-country drives involves more thought: you need specific chargers, which are fewer in number, and you must plan for chargers that don’t behave properly. There are a bunch of EV-specific apps to help with this, which are a godsend. The overall public charging situation is improving over time, but it’s definitely a factor that must be considered (tho, again, only for public charging. 90% of my driving is within WI, and these things just don’t come into play. Charging at home is quick and painless and easy and cheap.)

And though I never tow anything, the EV is really not suitable for towing except in very narrow circumstances. It’s not a power thing: the Lightning can pull just about anything. It’s a total energy thing. The truck will easily pull your 10,000 lb. boat, but you’ll need to recharge about every 100 miles. So towing a big load cross country is pretty inconvenient (tho I’ve watched several videos on YouTube where the Lightning owner did exactly that and they got by fine; you just have to plan accordingly). This isn’t a factor for me, but it IS a limitation of EV ownership that must be acknowledged.

(As an aside, I’m always amazed at how well-versed people are by our MSM about all the reasons they’re supposed to HATE the technology, despite knowing virtually nothing about EVs and not ever having driven them or talked to someone who actually owns one. YOU CAN’T TOW, says the guy who never tows. Or they decry The Rapaciousness of LITHIUM MINING, as they celebrate ROLLING COAL and “drill, baby, drill” in the Arctic National Wilderness.  I guess this is what corporate ownership of the media gets us: Sell The Controversy.)

Another downside, and one where I think improvement can be made, is information about your energy state. Whereas your ICE car has a gas gauge and you pretty quickly learn its quirks—whether the last half of the tank goes more quickly, how much time you have from E to a dead car, etc.—the EV is a different kettle of fish.  In place of a gas gauge is of course a battery gauge showing charge remaining, typically displayed as a percentage. Second, there’s a corollary display showing miles of available range before you’re out of charge. This is what most people naturally fixate on: how long can I go before I need a recharge? But unlike an ICE car, this figure is a moving target and not terribly reliable, both because energy usage is more variable in an EV based on load and temperature, and because the size of the “tank” is so much smaller. So a small variation can deprive you of some miles you think you may need. The third thing we look at is the miles per kilowatt-hour, kind of the analog to an MPG gauge in your ICE car. If, for example, I’m showing current usage as 2 miles per kWh, and I have a 131kWh battery, that would translate to 262 miles of range.

In practice, you kind of need to juggle these three figures, maybe supplemented with some seat-of-the-pants intuition based on past experiences, to know where you are, battery-wise (and then figure in where the chargers are on your present journey and of what strength and reliability). This is kind of a pain in the ass compared to your ICE car and its gas gauge—especially with a gas station every 15 feet and the refueling experience being almost completely uniform.

My last word on this topic is a story from my rich trove of firsthand EV lore: A year ago I was driving home from the cottage to Appleton with a friend and Susan and the three dogs and a truckload of cottage stuff—this was before I installed my charger at the cottage—and I needed to stop in Green Bay for a quick top-up. Well, I cut it to the very last second and then MISSED MY EXIT on the freeway to the charger (I was blabbing and not paying attention). I had to go about 4 miles down the freeway to get to a turn-around, and I did not have 8 miles of energy left. The truck took a second before telling me (with alarm-colored messages and chimes) “You ain’t got the energy needed to get to an available charger” and began to slow down. Within a minute or two I was driving 30 mph on the freeway shoulder with my flashers on as the truck continued to slow. I managed to make it to the exit and to turn off into a residential section before I came to a mandated stop.

Luckily, the truck came with free roadside assistance, and a flatbed truck was shortly dispatched to my location (I assume in the future it will be a battery truck for a quick 15 minutes of charge). Interestingly, when the flatbed arrived, the Lightning had found enough juice to drive up onto the truck, and again to back off the truck and into my garage when we got home. So, no harm done (except to my ego).

Thus did I learn that zero is ZERO, and at least for highway driving there is NO RESERVE. My display of miles-to-empty was, I found out, quite accurate. And I don’t expect to ever see this situation again, but the lesson needed to be learned.

I’ll finish with a rant. America at this moment is in a crisis, entirely self-inflicted and by the same people and the same mentality that put us in civil war 150 years ago. Many books will be written about this moment and our response to it, and nobody needs my two cents’ worth. But from the perspective of this little blog post, I’m concerned about the administration’s childish hostility to anything they deem “environmental,” which includes an angry defunding of anything related to EVs and the country’s response to a changing world. Indeed, they’ve vowed to return to BIG COAL (we'd all chuckle if it were an SNL skit; but these very unserious people think they're serious). All moneys for green energy are withdrawn. My dog can see the ludicrous folly in this. This hostility will mean no public dollars to improve public charging infrastructure or to strengthen the grid, no assistance to American automakers for the very daunting and expensive transformation they must undergo (a transformation which, as I said previously, I'd wager they don't all survive--and maybe none of them will), no dollars for energy research at the moment that battery technology is undergoing intense engineering initiatives—indeed, our universities are under attack and funds are being cut if they dare to enroll women or nonwhites. Other nations—China primarily, but also Europe—are not under the yoke of such mandated stupidity, and they will forge ahead on the path that we OBVIOUSLY must tread, only we will be left in the coal dust. And while this falling-down incompetence won’t greatly affect me personally—as Republicans like to say, “I’ve got mine!”—it will discourage people who are sitting on the fence, and that serves nobody (or none of US).

So tho I really adore my Lightning, the future looks pretty hazy. Ford has made only small changes to the Lightning in the last four years, and Ford CEO Jim Farley has said publicly that the future of Ford’s EV programs cannot rest on trucks and big SUVs as they maybe initially intended. Lightnings are selling, but not at the numbers needed to transform Ford, let alone the world. From the moment I bought the truck I’ve said that if it gets ripped off I’d take the insurance check out and buy another exactly the same STAT. And that remains true. Whatever happens at Ford, I fully expect my next vehicle will be another EV. I’m a convert. But exactly what shape that will take remains to be seen. For the moment, there are no changes in the Lightning to warrant making an upgrade (though the addition of a heat pump to improve winter range is certainly welcome and a good idea), and all indications are that my truck should last for years. (Whether it’s wise to have an old EV, especially if Ford distances itself from this program in the future, remains an open question.)

***

ADDENDUM, 12/29/25

So Ford announced a couple weeks ago that they're canceling the Lightning. Production was stopped a couple months ago after a fire at one of their aluminum suppliers; they needed to route the material to models that were making money--which was not the Lightning. With Ford having moved its EV focus to a new, smaller, less expensive platform (due in the next year or so), and Lightning sales slow and not profitable, it just made sense to let it die. So production is not to restart. With the orchestrated stupidity of the current administration injecting doubt and uncertainty into the EV world, sales have slowed and carmakers are pulling back all round. American car makers, anyway (see above). Worryingly, Ford also pulled back from their research on batteries, which is concerning for their future. The Lightning, we are told, will be reborn with a range-extending combustion engine where the fabulous frunk currently is, which will enable 600+ mile range while still retaining the virtues of electric propulsion.

This is not the future, I'd wager, but it might be the immediate future--at least until battery tech catches up. That would be more likely with government grants and encouragement to our colleges and universities and technical institutes. All of which have been targeted for elimination. 

I'm currently at about 45,000 miles on my Lightning, and I've had only two recalls which were handled with a laptop in my driveway. A cracked windshield and a nail in one of my tires, and that's the whole service banana. Sandy Munro's Lightning teardown videos convince me that the truck is engineered for 300,000 miles or more, so I think I'll just keep driving it for the foreseeable future. When something better comes out--which means when a foreign manufacturer makes an electric pickup--I'll probably make the move.

On Utility

The Mighty DC-8s at retirement. Roswell, NM.

Wasting time online the other day, I got sucked down a rabbit hole of aircraft boneyards. As an airplane ends its time of usefulness, it is typically flown to the desert where it might be mothballed for a period of time, slated for possible reactivation. Eventually, when it becomes clear (or the decision is in any case made) that a particular jet's flying days are done, the airplane may become a parts mule, cannibalized to keep similar machines of the fleet going, and / or it eventually gets chewed up into a pile of raw materials to be melted down and made into something else.

Unlike your old car, which likely will make its way to a junkyard by a flatbed truck, virtually every airplane that goes to the boneyard is flown there. A final flight. When it makes that final trip it is fully functional and could presumably be called back into active service the very next day. Some process has determined it to be used up, but in many cases there is no hard and fast line for an airplane between a utile existence and a death sentence. Some kind of spreadsheet is used and a line is crossed. Such a momentous thing--the end of a very expensive piece of equipment--that in fact is arbitrary and inscrutable. An olympic runner sprinting a four minute mile to the gallows. That is something maybe unique to this industry.

Like the equipment, so too the people.

I have been present in my career for two final flights. I acted as copilot on a captain's final flight on the DC-8, and again a few years later on a different captain's flight on the MD-11. There are circumstances where a pilot may arrange for his / her final flight to be with a specific crew, but in these cases I was just assigned to the flights by the usual bidding or reserve call-out processes, a random assignment to assist someone else making the final entry in the logbook of their life's work. In neither case were the pilots in any way verklempt about the momentousness of the occasion, though on the MD-11 flight I believe we were met in Louisville at our parking spot by a chief pilot and the retiring captain's family--the one time non-pilots might be allowed up into the cockpit to see how he made his living all these years.

But I couldn't help being a little verklempt myself, as I was nowhere near retirement at the time and the idea of the career's end seemed momentous. At the end of the process, once hands are shaken and cake is eaten (and maybe after the water cannon salute through which some guys taxi on their final trip to the gate), the pilot's ID and associated company materials are quietly confiscated, and the departing employee is kindly escorted thru security and off the property, never again to be allowed access to this rarified world.

If one is ready to retire, as both these gentlemen were, there is probably only the prospect of sunny skies ahead. But just like an airplane's final flight to the boneyard, our newly-retired pilot arrives at the finish line in complete possession of all the arcane skills and knowledge needed for the job, fully capable and current to execute these complex tasks. Like the airplane, he could be called the next day (or the next week or month) to come back in for emergency fill-in. Some folks do this, opting to take another flying job in retirement.

As my own finish line comes into view, I find it's the scrutiny that I seek relief from; the medicals and recurrent training and check rides, the regulatory burdens of almost every aspect of the job. These are simply an integral part of this career, but I'll be glad to see the backside of this part of it. But there's plenty else I'll miss. I'm aware on layovers and for airport operations that each instance may be the last time I see X place or do X job, and my love for the machine itself, the magic inner sanctum of the cockpit, remains undiminished all these years later. And though I'm current when I turn in my ID, I'm aware that these skills will fade with each passing month until one day I realize I'm quite out of the game. 

Thus does the world pass us all by eventually.

Dubai

Here’s another post from some years back that I never hit the ‘publish’ button on. I actually had a Dubai layover about a month back (we were caught on our way out by historic rainfall and flooding and were very lucky to have gotten out without a days-long delay. But reading this October, 2019 draft reminded me that I still agree with what I wrote then.

***

Dubai.

This is my first time back to this place in at least three years—since I left the MD-11 and went to the 767 as a copilot. And I’d forgotten how intrigued I am by it.

But I’ve always been taken by it. I’m trying to figure out why.

I think there are a couple of reasons. First, it’s a long way from home. If one likes to travel—and I think I’m really taken with the romantic aspects of my job to a degree unusual among my coworkers—you feel *very definitely* not in Kansas anymore. But not in a bad way. Flying from the East, we cross the Indian Ocean and make landfall on the Eastern shore of the Arabian Peninsula below the Straits of Hormuz. It’s not very far across this spit of land (maybe 80 miles), and the entire body is desert. And not Western-US-style desert, but Great Dune Sea desert. Because of the heat, even on a cloudless day it’s hard to see detail from above through the haze. Everything appears to be exactly the same color, as though all structures are made from the same native sand.

But as we descend into DXB things become clearer. The sand is shaped in literal waves, like an ocean—though a stationary one. And roadways are cut through these dunes like a child scratching a stick along the beach. I remember even seeing remote areas which had clearly been maintained with a plow, the waves drifting onto the roads and having to be removed. Out in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere, there appear to be habitations. The roads to them are really just tracks across the desert, and every place is surrounded by a cement wall. Are these for security? To keep sand from drifting? To keep critters out? There are no plants to be seen anywhere. Until one reaches the city where plants become a kind of status symbol, it seems—clearly some wealth is required to acquire and plant them and to keep them watered. It’s just the occasional tree or modest landscaping at the margins, but becomes bigger, grass-covered estates with big groves of trees as one moves into the city. These are conspicuous because there’s nothing like them for miles in any direction.

All this is because the climate is shocking, at least to our sensibilities. As we descend to the airport, one begins to feel the heat seep through the skin of the airplane. And when we open the door upon landing the heat hits you like a fist. It’s shockingly, laughably hot. And especially with the midday sun, which feels like a physical assault. It’s a cliche, but 90 desert degrees when the sun is not out is really quite pleasant. It’s the sun coming up that makes it scary hot.

And in that setting, the lavish plantings around big hotels and fancy condo complexes seem a little frightening. The landscaping only survives with elaborate watering (one can see the vast network of tubes in the sand in many locations where construction is going on / is abandoned or where a building has fallen into disrepair. And the land is surrounded by salt water, so having this fresh water for landscaping seems beyond ostentation. It’s literally trying to beat back a violent and deadly nature, like being underwater in a tinfoil bubble. So there’s this violence and danger underpinning everything. I can imagine how folks from a warm climate look on a Minnesota winter in exactly the same way: All our houses, our cars, our pets, our food; everything has to accommodate a climate which would kill surely and quickly if not countered. But I’m used to the cold; the desert heat is something new to me. (The temps when we arrived yesterday were only in the low 100s, which is not especially hot for the region, nor for the deserts of the Western US. So I wonder how much of my impressions rest on my being a Northerner.)

Then there are the people. Even more so than NYC, Dubai seems completely multicultural and multiethnic. The native Emiratis are seen only in public places, mostly in leisure. One does encounter well-dressed natives working in the airport, say, but even then I don’t know that these workers are not imported from elsewhere. Certainly, most of the people we deal with—the airplane load / unload crews, the mechanics, the security people, the hotel staffs, most any worker in the gigantic malls—are not natives. They come from all over the region: India and Pakistan, numerous places in Africa, some Europeans, people from China and other parts of Asia.

There’s a favorite chestnut observation about personal hygiene with men from the Middle East, but there’s certainly a kernel of truth in it. Some of it is just different standards of what constitutes “clean.” Having an odor is of course a completely natural state of affairs. And there are degrees, a scale that might have “odor-free” on one end, and pass thru varying degrees of fragrance to arrive at “rancid.” Most all Americans seek to live on one end of this spectrum, but I actually find a bit of masculine odor a not unpleasant thing. Riding the Dubai train is more fragrant than anything in normal American life. But I can see how up to a point this can be a cultural thing. Of course, for those having to work out doors in this intense heat living odor-free is out of the question. Some of the guys who come in and out of the airplane as we go about our preflight are conspicuous. But they’ve likely sweated out more in their 8 hour shift than I sweat in a week. And I’m a sweater.

Of course, this mix of people of a zillion nationalities and languages only adds to the international mystique. The scene in any restaurant in Dubai is utterly, fundamentally different from what you might experience in Dubuque (though not necessarily in NYC). Again, this contributes to the sense that you’re *traveling,* as does the prevalence of Muslim culture.

Several aspects of Islamic culture are quite captivating to me. I find I love the call to prayer, which crackles over loudspeakers several times per day. It’s a chant, rather like Gregorian chant, but with a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor, typically sung by (I assume) an Imam. I wonder if it’s always live and if the chants are known, or if there’s a degree of improvisation. I’m also very taken with the dress. The coverings for women threaten to distress—especially in rare cases where a woman is so fully covered that she cannot even see and must be led around by (presumably) her husband—but I try to just observe without needing to attach a judgment. I know so very little about customs, and in very many cases the women are not much more covered than the men accompanying them. Many men walking in the mall or coming in and out of our swanky hotel wear the traditional white robes (called, I believe, a Thawb) with sandals and a head covering. This seems very utile clothing for the desert, and they’re really magnificent to look at. I’ve never seen someone dressed this way who was not absolutely clean, and most men wear a cologne--subtle, but expensive-seeming--such that walking behind them is very evocative. There’s something in that smell that is absolutely characteristic, and some similar kind of perfuming of the air is in play in many public places. It just seems that people of this region are in a much different scent world than ours—and that very much informs one’s experience.

I also enjoy (perversely?) that as Americans we’re not *particularly* welcome. No one has been overtly rude to me, and in places of business I’m treated with deference and courtesy. But there’s a sense that one is an outsider and there’s certainly a vein of anti-American sentiment. I mostly sense this, or I think I do, in glances from people on the train or when I’m walking through neighborhoods. Not hostility, really, but notice. I’m a foreigner. (I do remember one instance a few years ago where a bunch of men smoking outside a bodega stopped talking and stared at me when I rounded a corner. Another time some guy in a car pulled over as I was walking along a back street and asked me out of the blue if I were American. “Canadian!” I said. “Ah. Montreal or Toronto?” he asked. I made something up and he drove off. I always had an uneasy feeling about that encounter. But that’s twice in a decade.) This hint at unfriendliness serves to make the place feel more real somehow. It’s not a Disney creation designed to bamboozle ME. It’s a place that exists very much apart from me; I’m no part of what they’re aiming for, so I really observe as an outsider.

All of this makes the desert memorable. When I bid a schedule that has a Dubai layover I’m always a little thrilled. The hotel (we stay at the Fairmont) is as nice as any property at which I’ve stayed, and the airplane catering is actually to be anticipated. That’s not something you say every day.

Japan

This was written a couple years ago—9/25/22 and not posted. Having just finished a nice walk thru Osaka, I guess I’ll post it now.

***

I'm on a weekend layover in Osaka.

(Every single person on their phone--one woman working 2 phones!)

During my years on the MD-11, we never visited Japan except to make an hour-long fuel stop on our way to Anchorage.  When I moved to the Boeing 767 six years ago I began to have layovers both here in Osaka and outside Tokyo at Narita. But I never managed a layover of any substance before Covid confined us to our hotel rooms. So this business of free time in Japan and approval to use public transportation is something still relatively new for me. Yesterday I took the train into central Osaka and spent a couple hours on the hoof.

I feel so privileged that I'm able to regularly visit these far flung places, but I'm not very food adventurous and I don't sit around a bar and talk to the bartender. So I never really get the inside scoop on any of the places I visit. I feel lucky to see all these things that are outside my comfort zone, and surely impressions seep in. But it's kind of standard practice to find myself struggling to integrate my observations of these places with my larger view of the world. This is especially true when the US is in such a tumultuous, dysfunctional state and when I hold such strong opinions as to the causes of it. Our meltdown colors everything I see elsewhere, I fear. And perhaps I'm a bit too eager to make my observations fit into a template that filters so much of the rest of my life's experiences.

That caveat aside, from my wanderings around Osaka here are a couple thoughts. 

1. The subway system is pretty extensive, and it seems heavily used by young and old alike. And maybe unlike any train system I've been on this one is clean and completely graffiti-free. They even have fabric-covered padded seats. Imagine that on the trains in NYC or Chicago! In Osaka, nobody has scratched their mark in the glass or defaced the advertising inside with a marker or tagged the outside of the trains with spray paint--let alone urinated in a corner nor taken a dump on the floor nor left their fast food wrappers strewn about. And the sense is that the folks riding the train would find that behavior insulting and infuriating--and self-immolating! They're riding the train to get around! Harming the train is like trying to hobble the horse pulling your cart in the middle of your trip. It's almost like the adults are actually in control here. (In America trains and buses are often trashed.) There are security / police in many stations, but they are not heavily armed (let alone carrying riot gear)--there to keep order and assist with directions.

2. People are almost invariably quiet and non-disruptive. Even noisy children are rare. In several hours of train rides and walking around I saw nary a cross moment nor heard a raised voice. That is such a HUGE contrast with, say, New York or Chicago or L.A., where so many people act like they're engaged in a public performance. American airports are noisy and chaotic. Many Americans are loud and crass, and those who aren't are used to those who are. This is "rugged individualism" I guess. 

From a visitor's perspective, Japan feels like a much more functional place than the US. People seem responsible and civic-minded and not cripplingly stupid or addled by propaganda. That's as it looks from my distant perch. Not everybody has a big house or a nice car, but they're all scrupulously clean and everybody has their cell phone and nice clothes.

I intended to go to a baseball game over the weekend--both major teams here in Osaka are playing (the Hanshin Tigers and the Orix Buffaloes)--but decided that with Covid on the rise it may be inadvisable. But I watched a bit of last night's game on TV (where I understood nothing!) and did some reading about the differences between American and Japanese baseball. And those differences seem to slot into my burgeoning sense of the larger country. The teams are much more important to the sport than the individuals on the team, and nobody makes much money--because it would be selfish and greedy to look out for yourself when it's the team that matters. That seems maybe a metaphor for the whole country: it's the team that matters, and the individual's job is to support and assist the team. It's the Common Good in the entertainment sphere. 

And that seems what's conspicuously missing in America. I'm reminded of an Atlantic article I read a year or two ago by political theorist George Packer talking about how America has splintered into four distinct groups (which notion deserves its own post--indeed, the article was a condensation of a larger book on the subject which I bought and haven't had the stomach to actually read). But for our purposes, the takeaway is that NONE of the four groups holds their responsibilities as CITIZENS as primary--indeed, the whole notion seems to have fallen from our collective consciousness. We've stopped caring about each other, and have let our antipathy take the place of civic duty or any kind of social contract. (What does not align with my preconceptions is that most teams are named after a major company in the region--even if the team is the darling of a community. The local Hanshin Tigers are named after the electric utility company of this region. Also, one naturally wonders if the teams generate anything like the same money an American team generates, and where that money goes.)

Maybe the America of Leave It To Beaver was always an illusion. Certainly it was a racist, misogynist place where "good behavior" was a thin layer of cheap paint hiding the ugly mechanism. But we don't even have the pretense of that now. Republicans are hell-bent on harm and obstruction and grievance, and Democrats are consumed with damage control. Maybe this kind of stuff is hard at work here in Japan as well, but I certainly don't see it. As I walked around the city, and fully aware of all that I do not understand, I couldn't help thinking that this would be a fine place to live. The people I see appear to be living fulfilling, rewarding lives as community members and citizens of a vibrant, functional place.

I wonder if anything I learn going forward will support or weaken this impression?

This trip with its swirl of observations coincided with my listening to the audiobook of Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness, a true crime book about a British woman in Tokyo 20 years ago who went missing and was found murdered. The investigation and the workings of the police and legal systems were all put under a microscope, which details added to my embryonic sense of the country. Serious crime--even petty crime--is really quite rare in Japan. It's one of the safest countries on the planet. But we're all still human beings after all, and the Japanese are not immune to bigotry and racism and misogyny and greed and strife--like all of us.

But from my vantage point it seems a more functional place than present-day America.

To Retire or Not to Retire

OK, it's not really the question. 

Retirement is coming within the next three years no matter what. But sooner if I choose. (As an aside, It's hard to imagine that I first posted on this platform nearly 20 years ago. In what seems the blink of an eye I have spanned the whole of a career. I had been at this job for about four years when I made my first post, and now I'm contemplating the job's end. Of course, it helps that I've done virtually nothing here for half that time. That certainly speeds things along. But still.) 

I'm currently on layover in Osaka at the start of a two week trip (a trip which, for technical reasons related to how our schedules are constructed, will really mean three weeks away from home). And I find increasingly when I'm away from home I chew on what life after the cockpit will look like. I had about five months off last year while the FAA fiddled with getting me certified to fly with a CPAP machine in tow. (This is another post, as I'm verified not to have sleep apnea and so the CPAP machine--which is quite instrusive--is something I neither need nor want.) But that delay was a retirement test drive. Prior to this I hadn't really spent any time thinking about retirement, but during my leave of absence if they had called and said "you're done" (which can certainly happen; we're dealing with a pretty inscrutable government bureaucracy) I realized I'd have been totally fine with that. THAT was a wakeup call. (Assuming my retirement accounts were sufficiently in order.) 

Prior to this, if Susan asked me "Would you keep working if you didn't have to?" I invariably answered "Yeah, I think I would." And now I'm starting to think "Well, not if I didn't HAVE to." I'm coming up on 62 years, and my health remains pretty good. So I think retiring now when I'm still fully present and able to travel, etc. seems a good thing. 

AND YET. This morning I caught a train into downtown Osaka and walked thru the city looking for a cup of coffee. And these little moments are something I will miss when I'm permanently barred from the cockpit. I don't really DO anything on my layovers except walk around listening to music or an audiobook and soaking in the surroundings, but I've done that now for 30 years (23 at this company, the last 15 almost entirely international). This is how I interface with the world. And while I'm aware that I don't really know much substantial about any of these places, I've gained a comfortable, easy familarity with so many of them. I ride the trains, I have favorite restaurants or coffee places, I have favorite walking paths, I know where the cash machines are, I have several local favorite laundry vendors or shopping malls, all of this in far-flung places: Japan, China, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, Dubai, Australia, many places in Europe. In the space of a single year it's amazing to retrace how many places the job takes us to. 

And it's not just the job itself--though the business of flying the 767 is far from old. I'll never NOT find it thrilling and a little magic, no matter how often I've done it. But there's also the independence of work life away from the airplane. From the time we step off the jet until we meet in the hotel lobby 15 or 24 or 50 or 80 hours later, I answer to nobody and get to do exactly what I want according to whatever whim. I've seen great pianists in Cologne, had breakfast on the poop deck of the QE2 in Dubai Harbor, ridden the MagLev train in Shanghai (after viewing the world from the Oriental Pearl), ridden the Star Ferry in Hong Kong. So many, many things, most of which I'll never do again when the airline music stops. While I have never felt the slightest resentment about accommodating my schedule to my wife's work or desires (quite the contrary), it is nonetheless a lovely feature of my job that I am able to follow my own star entirely for these layovers. In retirement, this independence will be harder to come by. 

And there's the question of usefulness and purpose. I have never been motivated by a desire to change the world, and I don't think any question of status among my friends and acquaintances has ever really entered my mind (though perhaps it's because I feel like the job I kind of stumbled into checks that box without any additional effort or attention from me?). But will these things continue not to matter when I'm no longer working? Will becoming an absolute nobody after my working life is done be OK? 

After a couple weeks at home now, I find I'm quite willing to head back to work--sometimes I'm even eager to do so. But increasingly I am aware that if the company called and removed me from my trip with pay (something they occasionally do when a particular trip is needed for training purposes) I would dance a little jig at being able to just stay at home. The nature of this kind of work is hard on one's circadian rhythm. We fly daytime and nighttime in continually shifting time zones, and fatigue--sometimes quite deep fatigue--is part of the job. As I get older I find this more challenging. When I'm over the North Atlantic, dog tired after a long day, I increasingly think to myself "I could just be done." But then there are days like today, walking around Osaka. 

I suppose it's both inevitable and good that I spend lots of time hashing these things over in my mind before making any decisions (and my little CPAP adventure reminds me that my career can very likely end on a timing not of my choosing). From here we head off to places South, including a couple of favoite layovers which I've not experienced for 8 years (since I was on the MD-11): Hong Kong and Sydney. 

So let's not retire just yet.