Friday, December 30, 2022

I'm Fine with Just Being A Customer. No Encouragement Necessary

There must be a phrase to describe a company talking to me like a modern day mom encouraging her 9 year old.


1. Credit union acknowledges a direct deposit with: WHOO HOOO!!! Your funds are available!
2. Lyft acknowledges my tip to a driver with: FANTASTIC OUR SUPERHERO CAN NOW GET HIS CAPE DRY-CLEANED!!


Kind of weird. I've noticed since so many commercials became just plain goofy (Geico) there's been a movement in marketing to speak to customers more and more like children. As if we deserve that big hug and praise just because we ran at our soccer game.

Winston Churchill on "Experts"

Nothing would be more fatal than for the government of States to get into the hands of the experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge: and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows only what hurts is a safer guide, than any vigorous direction of a specialised character. Why should you assume that all except doctors, engineers etc., are drones or worse? 

To manage men, to explain difficult things to simple people, to reconcile opposite interests, to weigh the evidence of disputing experts, to deal with the clamorous emergency of the hour; are not these things in themselves worth the consideration and labour of a lifetime? If the Ruler is to be an expert in anything he should be an expert in everything; and that is plainly impossible. Wherefore I say from the dominion of all specialists (particularly military specialists) good Lord deliver us.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

A Tough Christmas 2022

First, to those travelers and their families / friends inconvenienced by the recent events, I am very sorry. I recognize the difficulties of not making it to a destination on time, losing track of luggage and putting up with long lines and waiting in sometimes uncomfortable conditions.

The reasons seem to generally boil down to:

    1. Very bad weather across the country.

    2. A technology system employed by the company that was unable to handle those bad weather disruptions.

I flew home yesterday from Austin to Phoenix at 7 am. We had no passengers in the cabin other than two extra pilots and one flight attendant.

Why would this happen? There were hundreds of people with tickets waiting to travel on this route for over 40 hours. Every non-stop the day prior was canceled.

It was simple: we needed two other flight attendants on board to carry a full load of passengers. The ones scheduled to work the flight never made it to Austin the night before. 143 people in seats require 3 trained flight attendants. No others were available and the decision was made to move the aircraft back to Phoenix where it could, so to speak, stay in the fight to return the airline to normal operations.

Least bad choice in the situation.

I was on my 5th day of working what was originally a 3 day trip.

Things started to look difficult on the night of the 23rd. We were running late into Oakland. We had several passengers requesting we hold their connecting flight to Oregon. Unfortunately that flight departed before we arrived. We will often delay connecting flights but in this case I am guessing that the crew was running out of time to work. Another inflexible rule is crew rest. We are allowed to work only a certain number of hours during the day. Often a replacement crew can be assigned, but it wasn’t this time. I think the entire system was pretty well stressed at this point, 2 days before Christmas.

The next day I reported for work in the morning and waited for a while in a base lounge. There were sandwiches and donuts and Santa hats available to those of waiting out delays. No supervisors, though.

Back to the weather. It was horrendous in areas. Very cold and very windy in many states. One of my co-pilots said he saw a mechanic trying to work in those conditions the day before. Simply putting oil in an engine was very hard. He said the guy could barely get his fingers to work opening a latch.

A lot of equipment was frozen. Baggage handlers and tug drivers worked in extreme conditions. Ice slows down everything. And while we deal with this stuff every winter, the huge arctic blast of air that arrived the other day was very unusual. Not just because of the temperatures and winds but also because of the huge area it affected.

Another storm was affecting the Pacific Northwest. Freezing rain hit Seattle, Portland, and Spokane. It shut down those airports for extended times. The 737 is a fantastic machine. It handles very bad weather very well. Freezing rain is another matter. We are not allowed to takeoff or land in it when the intensity is reported greater than light. This is a rare occurrence.

More bad weather was hitting Southern California. The clouds and visibility were too low for safe landings in San Diego on the night of the 23rd. Many planes had to divert to other airports. Again, a rare occurrence in this part of the country

I can’t speak to the technology issues that let us down this time. There are some very smart people who will analyze all this going forward. I can tell you I spent about 4 hours total on phone hold with my schedulers. Changes will be made to address that.

Through all this, the passengers I saw were amazing and patient. Maybe it was the spirit of the season. I am very proud of the people who fly on us and help me earn a living doing something I love. It is a job that keeps me happy.

Except, I guess, when there’s a lot of ice, wind, storms, low clouds, sitting around airports, waiting in hotels and most heartbreaking of all: walking through the back of an empty 737 at 36,000 feet.


Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Christmas22

 


New Master Bath



Norway in August



Family at Lake Texoma




Mt. Baker



Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Ted Baze

Ted Baze 

1934-2021


My dad joined the Army three months after his 15th birthday. He had lied about his age to the recruiter and served 3 years before returning to his home in West Texas. All of his service was here in the states.

In 1955 he graduated from Lubbock High School. A classmate was Buddy Holly. Dad said they were acquaintences more than friends but Buddy (who later dropped the e from his name) signed his yearbook, calling dad a "swell guy."





My dad's great passion - after family - was television broadcasting. He worked every job from the bottom up in that business. The production booth photo could have been a professional wrestling or roller derby TV show.

When he became a manager he networked endlessly, attending conventions (meeting many celebrities), advocating for independent broadcasters and telling great stories before his colleagues.

With him through it all was my mother. And yes - any comparison to Elizabeth Taylor is appropriate.








My dad's middle age were spent raising his family and working toward his career goal: ownership of a television station.

The story is amazing and recounted  in his book: Snapshots of My Life. Too much to summarize here, it involves a famous Wall Street figure - Ivan Boesky, competing stations, other financiers, lawyers, and the government bureaucracy of the FCC. These dealings with the government would strongly shape his later views when he became a Texas city councilman.

A paragraph from his book:

One morning at home while shaving I turned to Mom and said "I've got it... I've got a plan that the bank and the film companies could not possibly turn down." It consisted of having the program suppliers give me a moratorium on the payments to them with interest accruing, while I used my cash to pay off the bank what we owe in monthly installments. I flew to Los Angeles and met with three creditors to sell them on this idea and came back with their approval each providing that they were all treated the same which they were. I also promised them that I would never take a dollar profit from the station for myself until they were completely paid.

Amazingly, along with family and this complicated business, he found time to get his private pilot's license in 1985.




Thank you for taking the time to read about my father, Ted Baze.




Here are a few more photos from his amazing life:

















































Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Alaska to Canada to Idaho by Motorcycle 2019


The Route:

Day 1: Anchorage to Tok, AK
Day 2 to Whitehorse,YK
Day 3 to Watson Lake, YK
Day 4 to Bell 2, BC
Day 5 to Prince George, BC
Day 6 to Jasper, AB
Day 7 to Cranbrook, BC
Day 8 to Grangeville, ID
Day 9 to Boise, ID

2319 miles from Anchorage to the US border at Eastport, ID in a little under 7 days. As fast as you could comfortably travel this route, I think. No real extended sightseeing stops.

This is the same distance from Phoenix to New York City.

Continuing from the border to Boise added 500 more miles.

I chose the route based on a few factors:

  1. Best scenery and motorcycle roads (curves, not much construction, light traffic).
  2. Avoiding crossing back into the US south of Vancouver which would lead to heavy traffic on the Interstate around Seattle.
  3. Recommendation of the Cassiar / Dease Highway 37 as a good motorcycle road. This turned out to be the case.

Choose to travel north or southbound. I chose south for a few reasons.

  1. I cruised on the Alaska Highway Ferry system with the bike from Bellingham, WA to Whittier (near Anchorage) Alaska. If you ride the bike north you introduce a time pressure of getting to the ferry on schedule to depart back south. 
  2. The weather in September was good but sometimes chilly with rain. I thought mentally, riding south would help keep my spirits up in the weather - thinking it would get warmer. As it turned out though, the weather and temperature stayed mostly the same until almost Boise. 

The Bike:

I rode my own 2008 BMW 1200 RT.
It had 39000 miles when I started and is an excellent cross country bike.
Mechanically it was flawless through the trip. I had a factory 36K service done with new tires before I left.
This is one of the most important considerations of the entire trip. A breakdown in the area of Bell 2 leaves you several hours from a tow and probably days to repair.

The Bike Accessories:

Garmin Zumo 550 GPS recently updated with all Alaska and Western Canada map data including services, hotels, etc.

XM radio. Though it didn’t work in Alaska or much of Canada, I got a decent signal south of Jasper, AB for the last 3 days.

Heated seats, grips, cruise control. Can’t imagine not having these.

The Weather:

Temps starting in Anchorage were in the 50’s. For nearly the entire trip into Boise, the weather was mostly cloudy and 48 to 60 degrees. There was light rain for about one third of the trip. Every once in a while moderate rain but nothing heavier. No strong winds ever to speak of.

The time of year:

I rode in mid September - late in the season. I wouldn’t begin this trip if the temperature was forecast to be less than 45 degrees during the day. The fall colors in the Yukon were often very beautiful and Alberta was pretty, too.

Traffic and road conditions and fuel:

Hardly any traffic to speak of. Between Tok and Prince George, the lightest traffic I had ever seen on good motorcycle roads. 

Overall everything is two lanes with excellent conditions. Up to Watson Lake, the road surface was smooth. Turning south on 37 near Watson Lake, the road became more narrow and a little rough but still nearly all paved. There was generally no shoulder - only a very steep drainage channel off the paved surface. I figured good for preventing an animal from charging out into the road, bad if I wandered off my intended line. In the end, there were no animal problems. And I stayed on the road.

As I traveled further south on 37 and 16 toward Prince George, the surface became steadily smoother. Center lines appeared and for a few days I rode on some of the best highway conditions I have ever seen. Just a few very short unpaved sections appeared due to construction. Overall it was many hours of fantastic motorcycle road.

My BMW has a 6 gallon tank with about a 330 mile highway range. When I saw 150 miles since my last fill up (~180 remaining) I’d search next station on my GPS and refill. Never a problem.

My USAA Credit Card worked fine for the whole trip. In order to refuel at the pump, a PIN is required with the card. I don’t have one (maybe a Canada thing?). I had to go into the cashier and leave my card or pre-pay. Then back in to finish the sale. Bottom line is - not as easy in Canada as our pay at the pump.

Clothing:

Bottoms: 
Thermal layer, hiking pants, rain shell. Waterproof boots with gaiters.

Tops:
Thermal layer plus up to 3 more layers plus a riding jacket and then a rain shell. Thin Buff neck warmer plus another fleece neck warmer. Good gloves sealed at the wrist under the rain shell. Helmet of course. I use an older HJC flip-up.

Other Considerations:

Bose Quietcomfort 20 noise cancelling ear buds for music and audio books. Essential. Like GPS, a must-have.

I understand motorcycle rentals are available out of Anchorage through Motoquest. That's all the info I have on them.

There's a good test of your motorcycle skill in the Whittier Tunnel Alaska. It's very narrow and you have to keep the bike between train rails for a few miles. Google it. If you can't control the machine well, don't attempt the roads in the Yukon.

Finally:

Overall, the ride through western Canada was one of the great a motorcycle trips I have ever taken. There are parts of Colorado as beautiful. There are road conditions just as good on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the eastern US. But for multiple days of stunning scenery, fantastic curving on quality roads and an endurance challenge, Alaska through Canada to the Idaho north border is one of a kind. A trip of a lifetime.