Probably a lot of things happened in 2018, but I can only remember from about July onward.  That was the day that, like Dudley Moore in the movie ’10’ waking up to the sound of Mexican trumpets blaring outside his window, I had an epiphany.  This plan of buying a pied-à-terre downtown was all wrong.  My head leaped up three feet and much to Donna’s surprise I said:

“I’m ready.  I’m ready to sell this house.”

“Wha?”

“I’m ready to sell the house.”

“Okay, give me a minute.”

We had just been furniture shopping for our eventual property addition of a condo downtown.  I think the prospect of adding more furniture to our list of possessions got me to thinking seriously about what we were signing up for.

My original reason for moving to Tualatin had to do with trying to get into a top school district.  Problem is, my youngest graduated 12 years ago.  I no longer have kids going to school in the district.  That reason no longer holds.

There were other reasons to stay.  Great neighbors.  The house was an excellent place to host functions which we did with some frequency.   Tualatin has great parks.  The downside is it’s a long ways to downtown for work and we have a few years left — at least.

So I won’t bore you with all of the details of the move but here’s the summary.

• Three house transaction.  Donna’s rental, my house + new house
• Of course we found the home we really wanted before either of our houses had sold.  In fact, it took several weeks before my house was presentable enough to even be up for sale.
• Donna’s house closed in September
• Our new home closed in October
• My house closed at the end of November

It worked out almost perfectly, but not without some drama along the way.  Our realtor, normally a cool, calm and collected character once asserted “You guys are risk takers!”   In retrospect, he had a good point.  Regrets?  Nope.  This time the chips fell our way.

In a move this size everyone has a role.  Mine was head sherpa.  Donna’s was head box packer and painter.  By the end of October we were two exhausted souls.   We had some very timely help from my children who always seemed to come lend a hand at the perfect time.  And these were not easy assignments.   Really heavy stuff being packed out of the attic and basement.

For that help we are very, very grateful.  Thank-you kids and grandkids, one and all.

Our new (to us) place is a 1950’s ranch style home but it has a basement.   The previous owners did a great job of keeping the upstairs updated (the master shower is luxurious) but the garage and downstairs, not so much.  We’ve come up with the term “our 25% fixer-upper.”   In addition, it was a downsize move for us.  Not by a lot, but still.  Several truckloads to the Salvation Army.

After we moved in we realized 3 of the 4 doors to the house didn’t work.  However, they had installed an extremely high-tech chicken coop with solar panels in the back that worked perfectly.  Go figure.  Priorities I guess.

The house sits on close to .5 acres and is ideal for someone who is into gardening (hint, not me).  We’ve had our hands full getting some of the new projects going but it’s progressing along and we’re moving forward and not looking back.  Donna loves her new commute.  15 minutes into work.   We’re also two blocks from Lewis and Clark College so we get a lot of hipsters skate-boarding by the house in ski caps.

The place often reminds me of my younger years.  I always had wood stoves back then and this place has one so I find myself grabbing the old axe and making a trip out to the woodpile to fetch some firewood.  The garage remodel alone will keep me busy for 6 months.  At the moment I’m tearing out brown paneling, green carpet, baseboard heaters and having garage doors installed (not one, but two — front and back).

Oh, and we have leaves and fruit trees.  But lots and lots of leaves.

I would be extremely remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful news that we are about to welcome not one, but TWO new family members in 2019.  In fact, within a week of each other I learned that Emily and Ari are both expecting.  I believe the due-dates are in the May/June timeframe.

This will double the grandchild count and boy are we looking forward to that!  We have a swing set out back and grandpa’s going to have a tractor so come on over and play on the farm.

I am reminded that we were very privileged to host two final gatherings at the Meier Drive house.  The first was a Fritts/Hellier family reunion in July which was so memorable mainly because people who hadn’t seen each other in decades got a chance to connect.  I met all of Donna’s relatives who could make it and some are now my most frequent “like”ers on my non-stop barrage of #resist political posts.  We see eye-to-eye, me and these #NeverTrumpers.  Oh and we had music on display.  There is music in the family bloodline that is for certain.

Finally, we had one last hurrah at Meier drive with my side of the family when we hosted my sister Donna’s retirement party.  Donna got to retire!  We were so happy we wanted to shout it from the mountaintop — and I think she was too.  It was fun to see the smile on her face connecting with old friends and family.  A very special day indeed.

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of stuff but as I mentioned at the start, the rest of the year is a complete blur.

Let the new chapter begin.  Both of us are all-in and ready for it.

B&D

My first professional job that didn’t involve cleaning restrooms was at Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. I started in June of 1980, at the tail end of the 757/767 programs. I worked in Everett, Washington initially, and got to participate in the rollout of the very first 767, as well as first flight. Those two events in particular were very memorable.

At the time, for safety reasons there were strict rules about the routes that twin-engine aircraft could fly over.  The 767, being a twin engine aircraft, was not certified to fly to Hawaii for example. The 747 could because it has 4 engines. The 747 can actually lose 3 engines and still takeoff, land, and fly thousands of miles just fine.

I’ve been out of the game for over 2 decades so I’m not current on avionics capability, but I do know that each ‘system’ on commercial aircraft is either dual or triple redundant, meaning, if a system fails, there’s one right behind it to take over including full hydraulics.

Critical systems like the avionics that control the flap/slat electronic unit (FSEU) are triple redundant because the airplane cannot takeoff or land without it.  Less critical systems like the stabilizer/trim unit are dual redundant because a total failure of both systems, while inconvenient for the pilot, would not necessarily translate into a catastrophic event.

A recent trip to Hawaii on a twin-engine 737 is what brought me down this memory lane.  I have to admit feeling a little uneasy about a 6 hour flight, mostly across the Pacific Ocean on a twin engine aircraft.

Before I left Boeing in 1992, they had certified several twin-engine aircraft for trips over ocean waters to places like Europe and Hawaii via a program called Extended Operations, or ETOPS.   If you read the article, ETOPS has to do with extreme safety around the all aspects of the engine.

Internally, Boeing employees referred to ETOPS as “Engines Turn or Passengers Swim.”  Apparently the acronym caught on because I saw reference to it in the Wikipedia article.

I’ve been inside many 747’s but never gotten to take a flight on one and was hoping that maybe the trip to Hawaii would afford me my first exposure to that.  No such luck.  Instead, they created the 737-800 with ETOPS certified engines.  The 737 is not my favorite aircraft to take a trip on.  The seats are tightly spaced, there’s only one aisle and one lav for a large coach section.   I guess I’ll have to book a flight to Singapore or something to get that privilege.

This blog post is actually about counseling.  In no way am I an expert, but after 12 years as a client, I feel somewhat qualified to make a few  comments on the subject.

I don’t intend to go into my personal life or the personal lives of family members, but I think I can share a few nuggets of wisdom that I learned along the way.

In retrospect I see my divorce in 2008 as a win-win.  She’s met someone who I like a lot and I think is a perfect match for her.  I’ve done the same.  It was really tough but after 27 years we had to face it.  It wasn’t working.  We got married too young.  We are different people at the core.  We’re human and humans make mistakes.  We consider ourselves lucky in that this one turned out pretty good for everyone.

15 years into the marriage we entered counseling.  In the process I feel a little bit like the blind man who had surgery and was suddenly able to see.  There were a few aha moments that changed my life for the better.  For that, I have very grateful.

One of them had to do with people connections.  Not just acquaintances, real people connections.  One day you’re thinking that you’ve got it all going pretty smooth.  Shoot you’re the Vice President of Little League Baseball.  You’re a manager at a high tech company.   Everyone knows you.   Next you realize your life consists of mostly acquaintances where you’re not really connected on a deep level in any way at home or at work.  That one was hard.  Very hard.  Life changing.

Another one was humility.  She was just so gentle with the message too.  I don’t even recall what I was talking about at the time but she interrupted me and asked “Where’s the humility in that?”  In the moment I was taken aback.  I couldn’t answer.  It didn’t make any sense.  I was brought up to see the value in humility and if anything, my parents’ capabilities and intelligence were understated.  Where did I go wrong?  I think I know the answer and it’s not really important to this blog post, but be that as it may, I learned a dose of humility goes a long way and have tried to be a different person ever since.

When someone figures you out at a deep level like this, I think there’s a danger of elevating their words to a level that’s not healthy.  They are just humans too.  They make mistakes.  But somewhere along the way I became more of a disciple than a client.   And in her own way she recognized this and corrected that line of thinking too.

Basically what she said was, “Don’t give me that power.   I don’t know everything.  You don’t need me anymore.  You can do this yourself.  It’s all in here.” And then she put her fist over her heart.

Truth be told, I think I wanted the dependency at the time.  But she was spot on.  It is in there.  We don’t need to give up our power to other people who are the experts.  They are just people.  Sometimes (not always) what we need to do is to dig deep.

Counseling is a tricky business.  I’ve talked to several.  Only 1 or 2 have made a difference so it can be hit and miss.  It’s one of those things where you really have to go with your gut.  I can attest to life changing moments that were worth every penny.  I can also attest to at least a dozen appointments that were a complete waste of time and money.

I can also say that there’s something to be said for just manning up and owning your own stuff and not looking outside for guidance.  You can’t buy your way out of it.  How do I know this?  Because I learned the hard way.

My takeaways?  You can’t take it with you.  People don’t care what titles you hold.  Live in the moment as much as possible.  Enjoy your friends and family while you can.  And don’t get too big of a head on your shoulders.  When we reveal our humanness with our flaws and all, people are actually drawn to that more.

My $.0.2

As the story went, in the 1980’s my cousin Mike, after years of laboring in the So. Cal job market and recently graduating from SDSU put together a resume where he listed his Job Objective: “To obtain the type of position where I don’t have to take a shower when I get home.”

A good writer will make a bold move like that to get the attention of the reader.

As a young technical worker at Boeing Commercial Airplane Company in the early 1980’s, I had landed one of those jobs and felt lucky to have it.  Sit at a desk all day long and do paperwork.  It was about the most boring thing you could possibly imagine, tracing airplane wire bundle drawings against the system level drawings for accuracy.

One other young colleague of mine joked about the sedentary nature of the job “Yeah, watch out for the Boeing spread.”  If I put 2 and 2 together, it meant sitting in a chair for 40 years is likely to yield a hefty backside, so be mindful of that.

A couple of years of chair sitting wasn’t working very well for me.  I felt like I needed to get moving.  Somehow, someway.   One of the guys in my group, Don Cobane, was a 20 year Boeing veteran who was very physically fit and a runner, so I was talking to him about the options.

Come to find out, about 5 years prior, he weighed in about 100 pounds heavier and had this moment where he slid his chair around his desk and got his stomach caught on the pull out drawer.  He was so mad and embarrassed at the time that he slammed the drawer back in the desk and said “That’s it.  I’m going to do something about this.”  I’ve since wondered if I’d ever have my “Don Cobane” moment where you just get sick of not taking care of your physical self well enough.

At the time, about 20,000 people worked at the Boeing plant in Everett, Wa.  The building, all 4 assembly lines connected, holds the Guinness World Record as the largest building in the world with a volume of 472,000,000 cubic feet (13.3 million cubic meters).

There were no gym facilities anywhere to be found at the site in the factory or its adjacent office buildings.  In talking with Cobane I found out about this underground tunnel that people run in when the weather is bad, so I figured it might be worth a look.

Turns out there are 2.33 miles of underground pedestrian tunnels running below the assembly lines pictured above.

So sometime in about 1982 I started a lunch-time exercise routine that began with “running in the tunnel.’   There’s nothing sexy about running in the tunnel.  Dark, dingy, not very well-lit.  Poorly ventilated. The smell of crusty pipes. This particular tunnel had columns in the middle so that it was set up kind of like a swim lane.  The tunnel was 1/3 of a mile long, so if you wanted to run 2 miles, that’s 6 lengths, or up and back 3 times.  I actually found a picture of the real deal on the inter-webs.  It’s exactly how I remembered it.

Most groups at Boeing, even the engineering groups had fairly strict rules with respect to the amount of time you could take for your lunch hour.  Officially it was 40 minutes.  Heading out to the tunnel, dressing down in a very crowded seriously smelly locker room a couple of stories above the tunnel, doing the actual run, shower and get back to work took the full 40 minutes and then some.

People say that running around the track is boring.  Try a tunnel.  But I managed to get myself down there a few times a week and get a routine started, and I felt better and stronger almost right away.

When the weather warms up, it’s really hard to justify heading down to the tunnel, but the problem was, there weren’t that many good routes to run outside the plant.  But there were a few and as human nature dictates, if you’re stuck in a crummy situation, you start  to look for something better.

A few months in my times were getting a little bit faster and I’d met some guys who were determined to do the outdoor routes when the sun came out.  If we really hustled, we could get 3 miles in and get back to work without being too tardy.  This was much more enjoyable.

A few years later I got transferred to a building that wasn’t inside the main complex, but about 1/2 mile from the main plant.  And it had its own little locker room.  This is where my running started to take off a bit.  The next thing I knew I was doing 4 miles at lunch.  And then 6.   I was getting hooked.  Almost every day I’d head out with a group of guys and taking 4-6 miles at lunch with a ‘long’ one on the weekends of closer to 10.

Summer came around and I was with the family on a 4 day weekend at Seaside, Oregon.  I was 30 at the time.  The house we stayed in was a small 2 bedroom house but we used to pack 10 or more people in there on any given weekend.  What this mostly meant was that the bathroom (singular) was backed up most of the morning so I might as well go for a good long run.

The day before, in town I ran across a pamphlet for the Portland Marathon.  I grabbed it with the idea I’d learn about it later.  On my Saturday run, all I could think about was the Portland Marathon and how I was in the best position to give it a go right now, and if I don’t do it this year, I probably never will.  That particular day I ran up to Gearhart and back and put in about 11 miles.

By the time I got home I made the decision to go for it.  I read that pamphlet 100 times by my bedside.  The marathon date was at the end of September and it was about the end of June now.  I had 3 months to get my miles up from the 30 mile range to 50, with long runs of 20+ in there somewhere.  I put together a very detailed plan.  At that point I was almost obsessed with the idea.  I knew what time I wanted to average, what time I wanted to achieve and constantly strategized on how to best train for this event.

Along the way I ran my first 10k and in early September I entered a half marathon.  Enjoyed both of those but the idea of doing a full still seemed pretty daunting.

The big day arrived and I was excited and ready.  The weather was perfect for the 7am start.  I ripped off the first 10 miles at about 8 min/mile pace and felt really good.  I think I started slowing down a bit around 15 miles, but pressed on.  At 23 I was pretty dehydrated and decided to actually stop at the water table and get some water, but walk fast while drinking it.  After about 100 yards I decided to get back in running form again and everything stiffened up.  That was a scary moment but I got past it.  I’m guessing my last 3 miles were at closer to 10 min/mile pace.  Pretty slow but I was so happy because at that point there was no doubt I was going to make it.  And I did.  3:43 and change. Pretty much exactly the time I was striving for.  Anything under 3:45 was going to be considered a win for me.

What brings me down memory lane this evening is the thought patterns I have as I hop on the treadmill in the morning at age 58.  I’m way overdue for some exercise.  Way overdue.  To be completely honest, I think I’m on the verge of a Don Cobane moment.

I can’t even come close to the times I used to put in.  Even on the treadmill now I’ve got more of a walk/run routine going, so it’s not really even running yet.  But what keeps me going some days (like this morning), is just the thought that “It all starts in the tunnel.”

The tunnel was only 2 miles and at a slow pace at first.  But the point is I started somewhere and didn’t just sit in that chair resigning myself to the Boeing spread.

I believe most people have instincts that drive us to compete against ourselves.  If I did 2 miles yesterday, maybe I’ll do 2.25 next week because 2 miles is getting boring.  And while I’m at it, I might try to improve my time by 10 seconds too.  It’s just human nature.  But in order for human nature to have a chance to succeed, you gotta get down to that tunnel and get going on something.