News flash: I have just finished eating a $16 bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. That’s nothing. Last night I feasted on a $25 hamburger. Neither meal was unique, memorable, or impressive in any way other than the price. I feel an analogy coming on. With the price of a single engine Cessna creeping up into […]
Common financial mistake vs. uncommon financial opportunity
While listening to the inimitable Clark Howard, a popular radio personality who offers financial advice, I learned an interesting tidbit of information. It seems auto loans are being taken out for longer and longer periods of time. The average auto loan is now in the five and a half year range, but some extend for […]
Leaders, followers, and picking your mission
Like it or not, most of us are followers. That’s not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. It’s just a thing. A description of the way things are. A stand-alone fact. Most of us follow someone else, a political office holder, an employer, a manager, a spouse. Among us there are leaders, but […]
Exit ramps, profit, and Yourtown USA
It is well known in most circles that airlines travel on highways in the sky. Admittedly, most folks don’t know those highways are called airways, but the name is logical, whether the general public knows it or not. However, few have made the obvious connection between the highway in the sky concept, and the airport […]
Brrrrr, ka-ching
If you’re connected to social media in any way, you’ve no doubt spent a good deal of time in recent weeks watching people get wet. Like flagpole sitting, goldfish swallowing, and stuffing as many college kids into a VW bug as possible, it’s something of a fad. Most commonly referred to as the “ice bucket […]
Action, reaction, over-reaction
In the political arena opinions are rampant. Facts are often scarce, and statistics are often tweaked until reduced to little more than useless gibberish designed to support an otherwise unsupportable argument. This is true in every town, every state, and every country. It’s a human trait, not a failing of the left or the right, […]
Transitions and trade-offs
Go with me on this. It’s a good story. Annie was a 15-year-old mutt who came to us through the local pound. She was past her date for euthanization when we found her. Somehow her paperwork had been lost, buying her an extra day or two. Thank goodness. When my wife and I walked into […]
Our contradictory spectacle
It was an epiphany. Not to the extent of Archimedes jumping from the tub and running through the streets naked. For one thing, I was having lunch, not a bath. For another, I was not naked at any point during this story. And as many will attest, my running days are far behind me. Still, […]
What’d you say?
Several years ago I had the great pleasure of being a restoration specialist at Tom Reilly’s Warbird Museum in Kissimmee, Florida. It was there I got to put my Airframe and Powerplant certificate to work rebuilding a B-17, maintaining a trio of B-25s, beginning the restoration of a P-40, and generally fiddling with some really […]