Merry Christmas!

Whether you celebrate it or not, I hope you all had a wonderful, joyous Christmas.  I wish for peace and prosperity for everyone now and in the coming year.

I have this...well, extended family down here in Florida.  They are not blood-relatives but about twenty years ago either I adopted them or they adopted me, I forget.  It's a long story.  In any case, I am inextricably intertwined with their lives. 

For whatever reasons, my siblings and I (two brothers and three sisters) are not close.  It's kind of sad, in a way.  But on the other hand, people sometimes just grow apart.  We all have our separate lives, and we don't socialize often.  However, after the convivial get-together we had in New York back in September on the occasion of my mother's funeral, some thought was given to regrouping again "sometime soon."  Well we missed Thanksgiving, but Christmas might work, no?  Now that I have a car that gets upwards of 40 mpg, I could get up to New York easily and cheaply.  I know that some people prefer to fly but I don't.

Well, before I could firm up my plans for New York, my Florida family announced that they'd be doing Christmas at my house.  I could have put my foot down and refused, but that would've made me the Bad Guy.  There really wasn't a good alternative for them.  I said okay and asked for a head count.  The number swelled to sixteen people.  Then two dropped out leaving us with fourteen.  Their family is scattered just like mine.  They came from different parts of Pensacola here, but also from Panama City and Atlanta, Georgia. 

In planning a turkey dinner, all of the websites suggest figuring around two pounds per person when buying a bird.  Although people usually don't that much, you have to account for the carcass, legs and other bits that people usually don't or can't eat.  That meant I needed twenty-eight pounds of turkey.  I ended up with two thirteen-pounders.  (We did have three small children attending.)

With that many people, everything has to be up-sized.  You have to make twice the usual amount of side dishes - twice the green bean casseroles, etc.  Extra drinks...extra desserts...  Not only that, but my dining room table only seats ten.  I set up a second table for six more (just in case - you never know who might pop in).  This meant that I also had to have double the number of salt/pepper shakers, gravy boats, cranberry sauces, rolls...  I realized that I do not have nearly enough serving spoons for a group that big.  I'll rectify that.

I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining.  I love feeding people - I think it's one of the best things you can do.  I consider it an honor.  I love the act of "breaking bread" (as we used to say) with others.  But it is an effort.  Thankfully, the meal was a true collaborative effort.  People pitched in and either brought stuff (like wine and desserts) or helped me cook.  The kitchen was a chaotic madhouse at times, but we all managed to stay out of each other's way, nothing got dropped or broken and amazingly, no blood was spilled.  Both turkeys came out pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.  And there wasn't all that much left over!

But being on my feet all day was kind of tough work.  Once I plunked myself down to eat, I didn't want to get back up.  My buddy Matt always kept a good bottle of wine open and my glass full.  Now there's a true friend!  He was not always a fan, but I've turned him into something of a wino.

One of my blogger friends, Bob and his family do a non-traditional, internationally-themed Christmas.  His family will pick a country (this year was India) and then use that as the basis for their Christmas dinner.  I so wanted to emulate him this year - do something different than the standard turkey-and-mashed-potatoes drill.  My buddy Terry and his girlfriend Lisa grilled steaks.  Steaks!  On Christmas!  Well...why not?  Do we have to always do turkey?  I think not.  A Chinese-takeout Christmas might have been fun.  And easier.  And possibly cheaper.  Maybe next year...

In any event, as "boring" and traditional as it was, our Christmas Dinner 2018 was a roaring success!  I hope yours was too.

Merry Christmas!

Anger Issues

People. I just don't understand them. For instance...

I'll be standing in line at the grocery store. The person in front of me will have a shopping cart that's jammed full of stuff. And they'll just be standing there like an idiot as the cashier scans all their items. Then, at the VERY END...when every last damn piece of crap is scanned, and bagged, and handed to them, the person will suddenly wake up out of their coma and realize that, oh yeah, they have to pay!  Wow, what a shock!  Only then will they pull their wallet (or invariably if it's an older person, a goddamn checkbook) and begin the payment process.  Half of them seem completely befuddled by the point-of-sale payment device.  And I'm, like, “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING AS THE CASHIER WAS RINGING YOU UP???”

It's not that I'm impatient, but I swipe my card through the credit card reader thingee as soon as the cashier has run up two or three of my items. I hit “No” when it asks if I want cash-back, and then hit “Enter” for credit. When all of my stuff is scanned, as the cashier is handing me the last bag, the register dings and prints out the receipt. Then I'm on my way. Easy-peasy.

(It must be noted that not all stores allow you to swipe your card during the scanning-of-items process. At those stores I at least have my card ready once the total pops up.)

Or how do people not know the basics of “keep right?” If two grocery carts meet head-on in an aisle, each person goes to the right. I cannot tell you the number of times I've come across people who don't seem to grasp this fairly simple concept. They should be glad I do not carry my gun into Walmart.

How's about people who go into McDonalds, and once they get up to be #1 they stare at the menu like they've never seen it before in their life. ”I'll have a....ahhhhhh....hmmm....ahhhhhh... Say, what comes with the....”

Really? YOU'VE NEVER BEEN IN A GODDAMN MCDONALDS BEFORE???”

And what's up with people who get gas at a busy station, and then once they're done they leave their car at the pumps and go inside to buy their cigarettes and beer? ”Oh, thank you very much for blocking the diesel pump while you go in to get your lottery tickets, you sonovabitch.”

Yes, I have anger issues. I'm working on them.  Progress is...inconsistent.

Our Former Ferry Service

Well as predicted, our much publicized and anticipated ferry is no more. The company that was contracted to operate the service bailed, claiming that it wouldn't...and couldn't make money. It didn't last six months. Can't say I'm surprised.

To the dismay of many tourists who come here to visit, Pensacola, Florida is a coastal city but it is not actually on the beach as you might expect.  To get to the beach you have to travel over eight miles from downtown to Santa Rosa Island, a thin strip of tenuous, fragile "land" that is mostly national seashore.

It's been a long-time dream of some to have a ferry boat service that linked downtown Pensacola with Pensacola Beach. Trouble is, those two points are not exactly close. There are two bridges that must be crossed, and one of them charges $1.00 toll.  Plus, if you look at the above map, there's a big ol' peninsula of Gulf Breeze jutting out into Pensacola Bay which provides something of a roadblock to people going from the city to the beach by both land and sea.  (The main part of the beach is where the smaller of the two bridges comes across.) 

Nevertheless, a group consisting of the Pensacola City Council, the Escambia County Commission, the Santa Rosa Island Authority, the National Park Service and the Navy conspired to initiate a ferry service. One can only imagine the LSD-infused, circle-jerk meetings in which they all convinced each other that such a thing would be a Really Good Idea. (I'm envisioning the cemetery scene from the movie, "Easy Rider.")

But a ferry service costs money. Ticket booths and waiting areas/shelters/restrooms would have to be built; docks would have to be modified with fencing and gates; boats would have to be procured and outfitted; employees would need to be hired... There would have to advertising, and government approvals. These are up-front costs that cannot be deferred until the revenue starts rolling in.

The City opined that the ferries could carry as many as 900 passengers per day. At $20 per ticket that could be $18,000 per day which, if you like to blow smoke up peoples' butts, you might (informally, not-for-publication!) extrapolate that and project a monthly gross revenue of $540,000. Not bad!

It wouldn't be that high, of course, because some of those passengers would have tickets that were discounted (e.g “frequent-flyer,” military, group, senior citizen...) And of course it would not be 900 passengers per day every day. Weekends would be busier, weekdays would be slack. The City did not say whether they thought that “900” was a weekly average or just what a busy Saturday and Sunday might generate. But it was a nice round number. Except...I'm not sure who came up with it. It's almost as if they pulled it out of their...umm, hat. Many of us were skeptical because we know that getting Americans to give up their pickup trucks is a tough sell.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010 proved to be a blessing-in-disguise for the Gulf Coast. The Pensacola area received millions in punitive damage compensation for the harm to our tourism industry. On TV, our beaches were made to look like the shoreline of Alaska after that hungover, sleeping skipper of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker let the galley hand drive the boat and run it aground.  It wasn't as bad a the media made it out to be, but the touristas did stay away for the better part of two years.

The National Park Service got $5.2 million from BP. City and County leaders prevailed on the NPS to use some of that money (maybe all of it!) to purchase two ferry boats. Once that was done they contracted with a supposedly-experienced company that ran similar ferry services in other parts of the country. The protracted process of getting this thing going! was actually making some progress.  Construction of docks and infrastructure was finally begun in 2017. After many delays, ferry service began on June 22, 2018.

Here's a route map of our ferry service.  You can see that it originates from downtown and stops both at Fort Pickens National Seashore and Pensacola Beach

By early October, things were looking grim.  Gulf Coast Maritime Services (GCMS), the company that ran the ferry reported that in the first three months of operation, 5600 passengers had been carried. Due to these less-than-expected numbers, George Aswad, owner and operator of GCMS announced that they were cutting out weekday service, adding that if ridership didn't improve he was not optimistic that the service could survive. Spoiler alert: It did not. By the end of October GCMS had called it quits. Obviously they had some sort of “early-out” termination clause in their contract.

Let's do some math! 5600 people at $20 per ticket is only $112,000...or about $37,000 per month, give or take. I'd bet that the amount of money they spent on diesel fuel was pretty close to that! Nevermind lease fees, payroll, insurance, debt service and God-knows-what-else. Hoo-boy!

Oddly, nobody was tracking where the passengers were from (e.g. Locals? Tourists?). The spokesman for the National Park Service said that “anecdotally” it appeared they were mostly locals, which would make sense. So his thinking was that if they were able to get the word out to visitors before arriving here, then the ferry ridership might improve. Thus, VisitPensacola and the local hotels were solicited to push the ferry service when people either asked about coming here or made actually made reservations. (I didn't take Marketing in college, and I'm no genius, but I'd imagine that would be one of the first  things you'd do, not the last.)  But it was a classic case of "too little/too late."

Businesses are so focused on immediate profits these days. Companies live and die by the quarterly results. And if next quarter doesn't look more promising than last quarter, CEO's are quick to cut-and-run. Shareholders aren't going to put up with this...  I mean, look at General Motors!  Who would've ever thought in a million years that they'd be basically getting out of the car business?

I'm kind of surprised that the Pensacola ferry service was set up as an unsubsidized endeavor. In addition to buying the boats, the government consortium should have set some of that BP money aside for operations – at least for the first year. Forcing GCMS to be a profit-making venture from the get-go was a bad, bad idea. It was doomed before it began. Such a service needs time to develop its market...time to get the word out and get people accustomed to using it as an alternative to driving to the beach. That doesn't happen overnight.

So now the two ferry boats sit idle, tied up at the pier in Pensacola, not preserved or even in drydock. They are deteriorating on a daily basis. They will obviously be sold – at a loss, I'm sure. Construction on the terminals has ceased. The grand scheme to have a ferry service in Pensacola appears to have failed.

And there they are, the two Pensacola ferries sitting forlornly at our almost-completed downtown terminal.  (Oh, and I couldn't help but get the Sportster in the picture.  Sorry.)

The ABCs of Naming Children

There this idiot parent from Texas who, in what must have either been a cruel joke or perhaps for misguided comedic effect named her child Abcde. The mother, Traci Redford says it is pronounced, and I kid you not, “ab-si-dee.” It turns out that the name is not entirely uncommon. According to THIS story in the Washington Post, at least 328 other idiots named their baby girls "Abcde” in 2014.  I mean, why on earth... oh never mind.

Anyway, Traci and little five-year old Abcde were on a trip, headed back home to Texas from California. They were preparing to board a Southwest Airlines flight when the mother overheard the gate agents making fun of her little darling's name.  One cannot imagine that it was her first time hearing such things.  She asked them to stop. They did, but not before taking a pic of the boarding pass and posting it on Facebook, because that is what you do, no?

The mother complained of course, and Southwest apologized, of course. But Ms. Redford said, ”...after two weeks of doing a formal complaint, Southwest hadn't done anything.”  So she brought her traumatic tale of woe to the mainstream media.  

Of course.

I'm not sure what Ms. Redford wanted SWA to do. It begs the question: What was she expecting...a refund? The article leaves us hanging.

Nowadays, people do expect something if they feel they've been wronged. If we are “injured” in the slightest way...even emotionally...then we want compensation, dammit! And it's not so much that we want it, but we think we deserve it. We're entitled!  A public apology is never enough.

It's gotten bizarre. Sometimes I think that there are people who intentionally go looking for some sort of conflict so they can “get over” on someone or some company. Parents who name their child, Abcde, for example.

Here's a curious tidbit. Apparently Ms. Redford is thirty years old. That would put her being born in 1988 or so. I was struck by the spelling of her first name, Traci. A more common spelling around that time would have been Tracey or even Tracy. Spelling it with an “i” was very rare back in the 1980's. So it must be acknowledged that Ms. Redford's parents were also somewhat, um, unconventional. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, I'd say. Moving on...

In the mid-1980's there came to prominence a porn actress by the name of Traci Lords. Don't ask me how I know this. Before Ms. Lords hit the big-time, there were few Traci's. I don't know about you, but if I were a parent of a newborn daughter, I'd be a little reluctant to name her after a well-known porn star of the day. I mean, couldn't they have called her Roberta? But no, they chose “Traci.” 

And maybe there's absolutely no connection whatsoever other than in my perverted mind.  Maybe ol' Traci's father didn't watch a lot of porn back then...I dunno.  But every time I see the name, “Traci,” I think of Traci Lords.

Time And What's It's Worth

Recently, my Uber-buddy, Terry was complaining about how little we make per-hour with Uber. We never worried about this so much when we owned taxicabs, but Uber drivers like to focus on this false metric of hourly wage. It's probably because so many conventional jobs pay on an hourly basis. But for some situations, paying by the hour is not always appropriate.

On a slow day at the airport, sometimes the taxi queue would look like a scene from The Walking Dead.  Bored, zombie-like cabdrivers saunter up and down the line, chain-smoking cigarettes, desperate for something...anything to do or talk about.  You can't leave to even go get lunch because you'd give up your position in the line.

Back when we owned taxis, sometimes Terry and I would go down to the Navy base on a weekday...and sit. Not a lot of people leave the base during the week, unless they've graduated from the NATTC (Naval Aviation Technical Training Command) and are headed to the airport and their next duty station. Classes are staggered and the course lengths vary depending on what the individual sailors and Marines are being trained for.  If a big class (like 50 or so kids) has graduated, a cabdriver might make three back-to-back $35 trips to the airport.

But if there are no graduating classes that day (the Navy does not publish a schedule), then nobody might leave the base. Frustrated cabdrivers like Terry and me might sit all day long without a single ride. It has happened. I'd make the half-hour drive from my house down to the base, get there at eight a.m., hang around until two p.m., and finally give up and go home. What was my hourly pay for that day? Zilch-o-rama.

Of course we usually make it up on the weekend. If the Navy and Marine kids have gotten paid and if the weather is warm and sunny, then you'll be working non-stop as every one of the 4,000 NATTC students wants to be off-base.  Ninety-nine percent of them don't own cars.  It was not unusual to make $200 or more in an eight-hour day. So you say to yourself, “Yay, I'm making $25 per hour!” But you'd be neglecting the day you made nothing. Or the day you worked twelve or fourteen hours and only grossed $100. I never averaged out my hourly pay as a cabdriver, but I know it wasn't much

...Just as my hourly pay with Uber is not much.  (I feel kind of badly for people who depend on Uber for their entire income.  And many do.  I think Uber always intended for it to be a "side-hustle" - something you do in addition to your full-time gig.)

On the other hand, what else do I have to do? I could stay home and play on Facebook all day. And yes, there are always things around the house that need to be done. There are tons of ways a productive person (in other words, someone who is not me) could spend their free time.  On bad-weather days I could (and should!) be practicing my guitar or working on the book I've finally decided to write.  On nice days I could (and should!) be out riding my motorcycle.  But I choose to spend my spare time sitting in a car doing crossword puzzles while waiting for the elusive ping! that means someone needs my services.

And what about the time that I spend, not in my car but at home with the Uber app on? I'm technically “working,” in that I am waiting on trips, but if you're in your own house doing nothing but “waiting for the phone to ring” so to speak, are you really working?

The sitting-around-all-day can be mentally fatiguing. It can put you into a mind-numbing stupor. You have to keep your mind occupied or it can drive you crazy. Terry and I have our own individual methods of doing that: He likes to read and write; I like to nap. (No, in all seriousness, I read and I write. And I nap.)

If I had a family, being a cabdriver would suck. Because while you can “make your own hours,” you really do have to be out there where the trips are – meaning the airport during the week and on the Navy base on weekends. You pretty much live in your cab.

With Uber I can make as much during the week as I used to in my cab on weekends. Plus, I can sit in my house and get Uber trips, something I couldn't do with the taxi. With Uber, I can come home between trips and still be "on the clock." Do I love Uber? Oh yeah! But I don't pretend that it's a high-paying job, or even that it provides a good hourly monetary return for the time invested.

Fortunately, at the moment the one thing I have a lot of is time.

Happy Thanksgiving 2018

Well it's finally here - the day I've been waiting for! Yes of course Christmas is important to many of us, but Thanksgiving is a holiday that everyone, even atheists can love. Because today we don't just 'remember' to be thankful (we should do that every day)...no, no, today we *celebrate* our gratitude! And we do that by gathering around our friends and family in a joyous feast of fellowship and love.

Back in the 1980's my parents lived in Manhattan. For a number of years my mom organized a big Thanksgiving Day dinner for the elderly and shut-ins of the parish. It was held in the basement of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church. Big crowd...multiple turkeys...side dishes galore...desserts... Even though she didn't do all the cooking, it was still a tremendous amount of work for mom. Looking back, I don't know how she did it. All of us kids pitched in. I'd drive around, scooping up those who wanted to attend but needed a ride. It instilled in me the knowledge that feeding people is one of the greatest things we humans of any belief system can do. To this day I enjoy having people over and putting on a big meal - especially now but even when it's not the holidays.

And so Thanksgiving provides me an opportunity to cook! However, sadly, the number of people at the house today will be smaller than usual - smaller than I'd hoped. And though it won't be with my actual family who are all still up in New York, it will be with people who've become my family here in Florida. And they've all generously offered to pitch in and contribute something for our meal today, greatly easing my tasks. Do not call it "workload" for it is not.

Obviously, not everyone can be a part of a big, family get-together today. Hey, I've spent plenty of Thanksgivings by myself, eating a cold-cut turkey sandwich. That has never bothered me. Life ain't always perfect. But we should recognize that we all have blessings...things to be thankful for. And I surely do! Even my friends and extended family down in Panama City, Florida where Hurricane Michael recently hit and did so much damage...even those people are having a big Thanksgiving meal. For them it is especially poignant this year. You could forgive them if they didn't feel particularly thankful that they've lost so much. But we're humans; we stay positive.

Whether or not you have people to celebrate this holiday with or maybe you're spending it on your own, I hope you do take the opportunity to celebrate your blessings and have a wonderful, warm and Happy Thanksgiving.

I wish you could be here with us.

Money Is Green, Not Black and White

Conventional wisdom says that here in Pensacola, Florida it's better to have a minivan as a taxi than a regular sedan. The thinking is that a van is better because there are so many tourists with lots of people and luggage, and the Navy kids always have a shit-ton of bunk, trunk and junk with them. Both of those things are true. And seven years ago when I bought my first taxi, it was a 2006 Ford Freestar minivan.

The Freestar was great. But the downside was that it got horrible gas mileage. As gently as I could baby it, I never got more than about 14mpg in the city, which is primarily where I drive. On the occasional highway trip it never did better than 23 mpg. But I made a lot of money with that van, and it was paid-off so its poor gas mileage didn't seem to matter.

As 2018 began, the Ford was, let's say “tired.” It had more than 210,000 miles on it. The interior and exterior were still great, but every week something else was breaking. At my local car-repair place, the guys and I were on a first-name basis. We never could get the air conditioner working right – but Lord, how they tried!

Coincidentally the taxi business here in Pensacola was dying a not-so-slow death thanks to the rise of the ride-shares. In April of this year I made the decision to switch over to Uber. The Ford van was just not suitable. This meant getting a newer, more dependable vehicle. (Here in this city Uber allows cars up to fifteen years old.) Naturally I began looking for another...well, van.

Sure enough, I found a super-clean, loaded 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan at a local dealer. It had a lot of miles on it (slightly over 100,000), but the dang thing looked, ran and drove like a brand-new car. It was in immaculate shape. Perhaps because of the mileage, or more likely the fact that it was literally the last day of the month, the salesman immediately came off their sticker price (which I already knew from my research was pretty fair). Inside, as we worked up the numbers I got him to come down even lower. They really wanted that van gone. In the end, I think I got a very good deal, which is often hard to say.

Many of my Uber passengers thought it was a brand-new van. I got many compliments on it, both verbally and, more importantly, noted on the App. I liked the “new” Dodge even more than my old Ford. (The automatic doors and built-in satellite radio helped.)

But again, the problem of gas mileage immediately made itself known. I thought it would do a little better, but my average city mileage was horrible. Over the six months I've owned the van I've averaged only 15.8mpg. Ouch. In October, my fuel cost per mile was $0.18.

So I started thinking about other cars, regular cars...more economical cars, especially hybrids. There is a reason that a lot of Uber drivers use the Toyota Prius. But I didn't want a Prius; I'd heard too many negative things about them from my passengers. Trouble is, hybrids are expensive to buy even if their operating costs are low. And there were no hybrids that I really liked.

But then I remembered the Volkswagen diesels! The VW Jetta diesel (the model is known as “TDi'”) was reported to get 40mpg on the highway and 30mpg in the city. I thought to myself that if it only got 25mpg in the city I'd be pleased as punch, as Hubert Humphrey used to say.

Volkswagen had a big scandal starting back in 2012. They got caught with a clever “cheater” program in their computer engine controls which could detect when somebody was doing an emissions test of the car. In that case, the computer would make the engine run super-duper-clean to pass the test. Once it was over and the test equipment unplugged, the car would go back to it's normal settings – which by the way were the same settings that Volkswagen used everywhere else in the world. It was only in the U.S. with our more-stringent nitrous-oxide limits that their cars would not pass (and some of them, like the 6-cylinder diesel, could not even be made to pass). And they got caught. Oopsie!

It's not that Volkswagens are unsafe, or even that they are serious polluters; they're not. The U.S. just has some crazy-ridiculous standards for diesels to keep passenger cars from running down the road smoking like an old eighteen-wheeler at full-throttle. And it's not like VW sells all that many diesels in the U.S. every year. But the feds caught them cheating and imposed some extraordinarily steep penalties. One of them was, of course, that they “fix” all of the non-compliant cars. Which they did. Another was that they no longer sell diesels in the U.S. Which they don't.

For the car buyer, Volkswagen diesels represent a hell of a bargain. They are seriously undervalued. People have heard of the scandal (it was called “Dieselgate”), and even if they don't know the details of it, they shy away from VW “TDi models” as they are known because they seem tainted.

I'll cut to the chase: I found a very nice 2012 VW Jetta Tdi at a dealer. It had the federally-mandated fix, and only had 71,000 miles. It's loaded and, again, like my Caravan it's gorgeous – it looks and drives like new. The dealer didn't want a lot of money for it either.

Needless to say, I cleaned out my van and drove home in the Jetta. On Interstate 10 on the way home the little gauge on the dash was showing 41.1 mpg. Who knows how accurate that is. (The one in my Caravan said I was getting 14mpg; in truth I did a little better than that.) In town, the display in the Jetta shows an average of 28.2mpg. I haven't put many miles on the car yet, so I haven't filled it up to calculate the actual fuel mileage (don't say “gas mileage” to a diesel driver!). But we'll see. I'm optimistic. If I can get an average of 28mpg, and with diesel being $3.00 per gallon it means that my fuel cost per mile will now be $0.11. That's about a 30% improvement!

But as usual, I didn't think this all the way through, as my friend, Terry was happy to point out. You see, 15% of my Uber revenue came from the higher-paying XL trips (more than 4 passengers) in the Caravan. So I'll be losing that money. I'll have slightly higher car and insurance payments...which is bad, but lower fuel costs per mile...which is good, but 15% less revenue...which is bad. Terry noted astutely that I'll probably just break even on the deal.

Nothing in life is ever black or white.  Certainly not money.