Driving to Miami on the batbike was lively, as this is the first long trip without the pod since I returned. That 330 pounds makes the bike more stable but without the extra weight, it seems to zip right up to 70 mph without effort. I don’t do that regularly, as the engine is old and has a sweet spot around 55 mph. No speeding on my beloved sidecar. Before I left, I threw the rebuilt carburetor onto the scooter only to find it still will not start. That is a problem, as I can’t afford to use the batbike for everyday commutes.
The day was perfect, but wait, there's a bit more good news. Back home, I got one of my dearest friends on the blower. I lost track after my heart attack. She is still in the area I last saw her, this is the gal that I used to travel to Oregon with. We visited Idaho, she had her own place up country. She is about to retire but under much different circumstances than me. She’s as elegant as ever and miles ahead of most in the ‘lerts department. Sad to say, it was me that ceased communication back at turn of the century. The fact is, I was so ill and in such deplorable shape, I didn’t want anyone to even see me.
We talked for and hour and a half. If I’d had better timing, I would have met her at a stretch she worked for the credit union and solved all the problems I am having today with those people. Welcome back, John. For those who have read back far enough, you know how closely I calculated out my pension twenty-five years earlier than most people considered it necessary. Who’s laughing now? John reports that the amount I’m getting compares very well with those who worked the standard 35 years.
I can’t say how happy I am to find John again. She is a rare find, someone who gives everyone a fair shake and never imposes on others. I guess I’m glad she never married, but I can’t even say the same thing about myself. How wonderful it is to talk to someone with perfect grammar again. My own habits have fallen from living in the south too long, I’ve learned to do things wrong in order to communicate with the locals.
Next, I’m going to detail something that has nothing to do with John directly, as she is my friend because she is a genuinely nice person. The phone company has the highest concentration of single females I’ve ever seen other than on campus (but there are still never enough to go around). The company pays well, but not enough to splurge and the travel industry, even the “single’s” trips are still to this day idiotically based on double-occupancy. Thus, a lot of single women in the phone place found they could not really go anywhere without finding a date. It quickly became known I was a good date on that basis.
Between us, two phone employees could afford the best of everything. Guys, you be careful here, this is not the place to mess around. Friends only. I won’t elaborate. As friends only, John and I got to fantastic places that others only talked about. We drove the west coast, breakfast at Tiffany’s, we used to drive all the way to Whistler resort for morning coffee. My Cadillac or her Buick? Don’t matter. We knew about each other’s lovers and sidestepped the issue.
Last, I see after my trip, my readership has fallen back to normal levels. I can’t afford the excitement that was keeping them coming back. This blog still contains a lot of learning so I have my core readership and I welcome them all. But I am reconsidering advertising. No, not the annoying kind you find in almost every other blog. I mean external advertising. I put an ad in the newspaper advising people this blog is a desirable read. We may shortly see how that goes.
ADDENDUM
John and I worked for the phone company. Detractors? I had ‘em at the phone place and a large part of that was the way I was “mining the company”. Yes, I read the rule book and did what I could to maximize my position and minimize my responsibilities. Don’t read that wrong, I regularly and often (I said regularly and often) single-handedly outperformed the remaining sixteen people in my department. But at the same time, the quiet moments were what I considered “the profit on hourly paid work”. I did not sweep the floor when it wasn’t busy. That’s called suck-holing. And that is generally how I viewed my detractors. That’s how I met John, she being a union advocate who fully respected how I went about obeying the rules.
What incensed many was that I was doing fine without having to be pretend friends with the department. If I didn’t like you, there was little you could do except mend your ways. There is a reason we have closed-shop unions and it is largely so that suck-holing doesn’t work. We can’t stop people from doing it, but we can minimize the impact. That is also the place where I calculated my pension 30 years in advance down to within a few pennies accuracy. I wonder what my critics, who are just reaching retirement age today, have to say about that now?
I got tens of thousands off the company course reimbursement scheme, essentially training myself for the day the layoffs and firings began. They did so in 2003. So I guessed wrong by 48 months, but it isn’t as if I spent that time twiddling my thumbs. If it were not so funny, it would be ironic how many of the insipid morons over there are just now paying top dollar to outside accountants to conduct the same calculations on their own pensions—and coming up with a lot of woe. Most of them, with an average of 33 years in the company, will be getting less than I do.
Worse, the company brought in a leveraging option. Allow me explain lightly how that works. Keep in mind that I retired early, so that by the time I reach normal retirement age years from now, I will have already collected more than each of them can expect to get unless they live to 85. Follow along here. Normally a retirement is a fixed amount per month, not the smartest idea, but better than nothing. Thus, when you “hit 65”, you get a boost when your government or social pensions kick in.
It is an easy matter to run a spreadsheet and figure out how to increase your pension now, so that when your retirement age arises, your private pension falls to the point where the other pensions bring it back up to equal the former amount. The overall monthly amount is several hundred dollars higher than a static pension. The incentive is that you could retire now instead of then.
Unfortunately, this type of thinking has some inherent flaws. Like, it involves trusting the government to be there for you. And the government to keep inflation under wraps. And your pension fund to not buy stocks at Enron. These happen to be the sort of concerns that people who hate thinking ahead have no difficulty ignoring until it happens to them. At that point, you can open the newspaper every day and hear them squeal about what a bad deal they’ve got. No such word has ever uttered from me.
I wonder why that is?
