Managing MC risk

The following column was published in the Issaquah Press.

 

With spring weather quietly coming in “on little cat feet,” more and more motorcycles are disrupting the silence. In another month, they will be thicker than fleas on a hog’s back.

As they roar, whine or putt putt,(depending on the type) wiping out the delightful sounds of birds, frogs and crickets, a spouse or mother somewhere is arguing, usually to no avail, with a loved one about buying one of these death traps.

Rather than fight this losing battle, which will leave everyone feeling badly, why not take the risk management approach. With a little education, the risk can almost be eliminated, which is more than you can say for many other adrenaline producing sports.

Start by reading the Hurt Report. A good summary can be found on the internet: Google it. It is an old report (1976), but will serves our purpose well.

According to the report, three fourths of motorcycle accidents involve a collision with another vehicle, usually a passenger car.

The most common words out of a driver’s mouth after hitting a motorcycle are “I didn’t see it.” That means conspicuity becomes the motorcyclist’s best friend. Don’t buy a black motorcycle, black leather jacket, black chaps and a black helmet. If you want to manage this risk, go for bright colors when you chose a bike, riding clothes and a helmet.

So, a fourth of the accidents were single vehicle accident, with the motorcycle colliding with something as a result of rider error. You manage this risk by making sure the object of your affection is properly trained.

Fortunately, in this state (Washington)the best way to get licensed is to take a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course offered at many sites around the state. Most of the motorcycle riders involved in accidents are essentially without training. Ninth-two percent were self taught or learned to ride from family or friends. Just like I would not teach my own son how to drive a car, I would not teach him how to ride a motorcycle. This is best left to the professionals.

Almost half of the fatal accidents involved alcohol. How often do you see a black motorcycle, with a rider dressed in black, pull up to a bar?

Motorcycles that have been highly modified, think choppers, are overrepresented in the statistics.

The most deadly injuries were those to the chest and the head. So, make sure your loved one wears protective clothing, whether he or she likes it or not. That includes a DOT or Snell approved helmet, leather or heavy canvas riding pants (not chaps) and jacket, with proper armor built in if made of fabric, and leather boots up over the ankles. Make your loved one stand at attention before every ride, even the short ones, and repeats after you, ATGATT, all the gear all the time.

All the above applies to those cute little motor scooters and mopeds that young people love to cruise around town on. Because they appear like a toy it does not mean they are a toy, and the risk with them is just as great as it is for the grandpa on his big Harley or Goldwing.

Let’s summarize, bright colors, good gear, proper training and no alcohol and you have managed your risk so well that your chances of getting in trouble are now no greater than you neighbor walking her dog down a city sidewalk. I would encourage you to read the entire summary.

Start the bus

 

 

 

This column was written for Issaquah Press

My 14-year-old granddaughter Kait and I caught the Metro for a trip from the Highland Park and Ride to downtown Seattle to board the Seattle Great Wheel. It was my first time on a Ferris wheel and her first time on the Metro.

The Ferris wheel was fun, but being introduced to the Metro will be more useful for her as she grows up. This was my second time since moving here to ride the Metro to downtown Seattle. The first time was to take in a motorcycle show at the Washington Convention Center.

Many years ago, I used the Metro when visiting Seattle from Alaska. I could catch it at the airport and make my way around Seattle without the hassle of renting a car. I have also found mass transit the efficient way around London, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington D.C.

So, a Seattle Times headline of March 10, proclaiming “Public transit in U.S. nears 6-decade high in ridership” got my attention.

I am as much in love with the automobile as anyone growing up in my generation (born in 1942), and even more so in love with motorcycles, but there is something practical and convenient about mass transit, practical from the standpoint of fewer hassles, but also from a conservation point of view. It is a relief to go to Seattle and not have to even think about parking, to say nothing about how much gas is needed or how much traffic is jamming the freeway. Remember the old Greyhound slogan, “leave the driving to us.” Some slogans hit the mark.

The Times article said ridership on trains, buses and subways is up. It reported 10.7 million trips in 2013, the highest total since 1956.

The article said there is a fundamental shift going on with people as to options other than having a car, according to Michael Melaniphy, president and CEO of the transportation association. “This is a long term trend. This isn’t just a blip,” he said. “People want to work and live along transit lines. Businesses, universities and housing are all moving along those corridors.”

One of my brothers got caught in the recent T-Mobile lay off and landed a new job in downtown Seattle. He is now able to ride a train from his home in Edmonds to work. The only thing he has told me about his new job is how much he likes riding the train.

A recent trend that has automobile manufacturers worried is the number of young people who are not buying cars and not even bothering to get driver’s licenses.

Most of us who drive cars never sit down and add up the true cost of this convenience. To paraphrase a saying related to boats, a car is a pothole we pour money down. I do know this, if I could recover every dollar I’ve wasted on cars, my retirement could be much different. From my current perspective, mass transit looks mighty good. God bless the driver’s licenseless young people.

Sustainability means what I say

The following was a column published in the Issaquah Press

 

 

I was proofreading copy for the Issaquah Press and the word came up again: sustainability. 

It must be a regional buzz word as I have never heard it used as much as I have here, but what does it mean? It is often used with stories about building projects but seems to have other contexts as well. I think it has to do with the fact I am now living in a more environmentally sensitive culture.

I believe it was the Mad Hatter who said to Alice, a word means what I say it means. The dictionary defines a word, but personal experience forms the many possible nuances.

When I hear “sustainability” the follow experiences shape its meaning for me: I was in Switzerland while the U.S. was celebrating its bicentennial. One of the locals, curious about the celebration, asked, “What’s the big deal. The barn over the hill is more than 200 years old?”

A decade later, I was visiting with the wife of Malcolm Muggeridge in Robertsbridge, England, while he was outside being interviewed by a film crew doing a documentary on the early 1930s Soviet engineered famine in the Ukraine. Muggeridge had reported on the event from the scene.

Their home was a typical English country cottage, built of posts and beams. While looking at the ceiling timbers, I noticed a chiseled out indentation and asked about it.

She said the timbers had been brought inland from a wrecked Canadian sailing ship and the cottage was built 300 hundred years ago. Sustainability!

She then got a concerned look on her face and said, “you know, I don’t think the houses they build these days will last three hundred years at all.” While in Robertsbridge, I stayed in the newest of the three pubs in town. It was built in the late 1700s

After my visit, I continued to stay in Robertsbridge for a few days, and to pass time, I decided to take a walk to Battle, which was about six miles away. It takes its name from the famous battle between England’s would be rulers William Duke of Normandy and the Saxon King Harold in 1066. The battle of Hastings was an event so significant that it completely changed the course of English history, and I needed a history lesson. As I walked, I noticed a stone chapel across a field and detoured to see what it was about. It was a church built in the 1100s and was still in use. Sustainability!

In the early 70s, I was working for a skid row mission and built a 4,000 square foot, two-story building in Wasilla, Alaska, primarily from material salvaged from an old bakery building. Since most of the material was then already 40 years old, we could say the building is now 80 years old. The building appraised at $100,000 (1970 dollars) when it was finished, but it only cost about $24,000 to build. Sustainability!

I now live in a 17-year-old condo. I consider it a new building, yet I keep hearing that it is an old building and needs this or that renovation, or that it is too old to be considered for a reverse mortgage. Apparently it was not built to last 300 years. Sustainability?

Is sustainability just a buzzword to make us feel good in a planned obsolescence economy?  Is it a 300 year-old-house built with salvaged timbers? How about a house built with solar panels on the roof that will be torn down in 50 years to make way for something else? What is it?

Where conservatives get it wrong on Obamacare

I listen to many conservative pundits, as I tend to be part of the choir to whom they preach. However, sometimes they uniformly get something wrong. This time, it has to do with one aspect of Obamacare, which in general I am opposed too, but if one is going to oppose it, at least do so for the right reasons.

The drum they beat that I object to is the idea that the program is unfair because it depends on the young and healthy to pay higher premiums to take care of the aged and the sick. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I do believe that is the way insurance mechanisms work. You cannot have a pool of only older or already sick people and expect the program to work. This might be one of the few aspects of Obamacare that gets it right. That is why I said in an earlier blog, if you are going to have universal health care, everybody must participate in the system, and everybody must pay throughout their income producing and retirement income years.

One troublesome part of Obamacare is that the designers, to get it passed, had to accommodate every special interest, even if their demands were in conflict. So, the program which requires millions of young people to participate, says that they can stay on their parents plan until they are 26 years old. It says if they are not enrolled in a plan, they have to pay a fine, which is a lot less for most of them than a monthly premium. If in the period of time they are not covered, they incur a pre-existing condition, they have to then be sold insurance anyway. If they are not covered by a plan and have an accident or a serious illness, the emergency room must still provide them services. For a young person struggling economically, where is the incentive to rush out and buy health insurance? Just the fact that they are needed to make it work probably won’t do it.

This ill conceived plan was designed by Democrats who shut Republicans out of the process and was passed by a straight party line vote under questionable circumstances so “we could know what was in it.”

We are now finding out what is in it, it appears to be in deep trouble and the Democrats are mad at the Republicans because they don’t seem to want to help them fix it.

There is an easier way to bring about universal health care when it appears the majority of the public really wants it: expand Medicare to include everybody and tax all income to pay for it. Since the needed websites are already in place and the regulations already written, it could probably be done with a two page bill instead of a 2,000 page bill and 28,000 pages of new regulations.

Christmas in the parsonage

This appeared as a column in  the Issaquah Press on 12/18/13

 

Alyene Porter published “Papa was a Preacher” in 1944 and it has been on my reading list for years. This will be the year it gets scratched from the list, as I just ordered it from Amazon.com. Dad was a preacher, and I look forward to commiserating with Porter as I read about her life of growing up in a parsonage, especially at Christmas time.

Dad pastored small town churches in places like Roslyn, Cle Elum, and Eatonville. No single childhood Christmas memory stands out, but the ambience of the season does. Dad was a poor preacher. I don’t mean he couldn’t preach; I mean he didn’t have much money, so presents were no big deal: socks, underwear, a new pair of trousers for school; the norm for poor kids of the era.

Mom often made my brothers (there were five of us at that time, more later) and I a pair of pajamas for Christmas. She thought that was the item that separated civilized people from the boorish masses.

They got worn until the first washing and promptly abandoned, as we all returned to our boorish ways. This was a good thing, since we were all destined for the military in the 60s, which featured open bay barracks. No self-respecting soldier would lounge around in PJs.

But I digress: back to life at Christmas time in the parsonage.

The Christmas program dominated the season. (For the best description ever of Christmas programs and their preparation, read “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” by John Irving.) Who will get stuck with the embarrassment of appearing before the congregation in a bathrobe, while pretending to be a shepherd or Joseph? At least the magi got elaborate costumes.

Participants in the nativity scene escaped the torture of spoken parts. Getting tagged for a part in the Christmas play meant you prayed for short lines and few of them. If there were more girl parts than girls, and you were the preacher’s kid and your mother was the play director, it was goodbye male ego.

Christmas programs ended with treats, and at Christmas time, the parsonage became mother’s candy factory. There was fudge, something similar to Applets and Cotlets, divinity and something Mom made by dipping cornflakes, marshmallow chunks, raisins and walnuts in melted chocolate and putting them in clusters to harden. It all had to be taste tested by the preacher’s kids.

In Roslyn, the season also included a big sledding party, followed by hot chocolate and chili. To put a crown on the season, Dad rounded up all who could, and many who couldn’t, sing to walk the town singing Christmas carols for those who couldn’t get out and take in community celebrations. To this day, real caroling requires at least two feet of fresh snow.

A health care solution

 
Years ago, I resigned myself to the fact that we were going to get universal health care in the U.S., though I didn’t quite expect the debacle we are witnessing. I suspected trouble, though, when it came in the form of a 2,000 page bill which Nancy Pelosi declared had to be passed so we would know what was in it.

 

There is a simple way to set up universal health care, though it pains my libertarian brain to think about it. I will describe it, but first a discussion about the subject.

 

We need to quit talking about health insurance, because what has been proposed is not insurance at all; it is prepaid health care.

 

Insurance is something you buy when you don’t need it, so you will have it when you do need it; it is a tool for risk management. For some reason, people want to think about health insurance differently than other types of insurance.

 

If I drove up to the insurance agent’s office with the front end of my car bashed in and asked for insurance so I could get it fixed, with the insurance company paying for it, they would turn me down. It is a pre-existing condition; people would understand. It makes sense. But they don’t understand with health insurance; people think the health insurer should cover pre-existing conditions.

 

When I sold insurance and a couple would come into my office seeking health insurance and asking if it covered pregnancy, I immediately asked if the wife was pregnant. That’s when many couples begin to think about getting health insurance, and it is too late. And, even if we issued a policy, many of them would cancel it as soon as the baby was born and all related medical costs were paid.

 

The fact that much health insurance comes with the insured’s employment, exacerbates the pre-existing condition problem. When you leave your employment, you leave your group health insurance and are then in the marketplace with your medical history. This problem was largely created by government when a tax advantage was given to employers providing the benefit. Had the advantage gone to individual policy holders, people would have signed up with a carrier and staid with them for years as they moved from job to job, rather than looking for a new policy and wanting it to cover their pre-existing conditions.

 

Insurance as a risk management tool only works when more people buy it than will ever file a claim. The only reason automobile insurance or home owners insurance works is because many more people buy and maintain policies than file claims. I can’t remember ever filing a claim against my homeowners policy and rarely against my auto policy, though I’ve carried them for years with the same company.

 

What those who are pushing for universal health care want is not insurance, it is pre-paid health care. If we as a culture believe this is something we truly want, then we need to look at how to make it work. First, it must cover everybody from birth to death, and everybody must pay for it throughout their lifetime.

 

We already have Medicare in place, complete with a web site that works. The program should have simply been expanded to include everyone, with all income being taxed to cover it. That means no exemptions for businesses, unions, federal workers, or anyone else. The plan should be as basic as the current Medicare system and every doctor’s visit should have a minimal co-pay to discourage people from making frivolous trips to the doctor’s. The plan would cover all pre-existing conditions and pregnancy.

 

Insurance companies could than design supplemental plans for those who want the “Cadillac” treatment, as they now do for Medicare. If businesses, and unions want their people to be covered for all the possibilities the medical community wants to offer and that their people want, let them buy a supplement that appeals to their constituencies. And, of course the basic plan would be a single payer approach.

 

The Republicans and libertarians hate the idea of a single payer plan, as do I, but what I describe would be fairer than what Obamacare has turned out to be with all the waivers, exemptions and such. Progressives such as Obama perceived that the system as it existed was unfair, but what they have created is no more fair, and it will not really solve the problem of the many people without health care.

 

We may simply be watching a fiasco in the roll out of Obamacare, and in time it might smooth out and provide the health care desired; I doubt it.  You can bet the reason it took 2,000 pages to write the bill was to make sure every special interest got more than their share of the pie, and that everyone who needed to be bought off to get it passed, was bought off in some way. It is going to be more costly than anyone imagined. The proposed costs stated to get it passed were just the beginning of the many lies needed to make it happen.

 

One of my aphorisms states whenever the government creates a cash cow, the wrong people will come to milk it, and this one is going to get milked for all it is worth.

 

Remember, when someone else pays for your health care, they have a vested interest, and even a right, to interfere with the things you do that might create more expense. Motorcyclists, sky divers, rock climbers, pot smokers, fast food eaters, sugary soda drinkers, take a lesson from cigarette smokers: the progressives who champion this kind of universal health care will have no compunction about excessively taxing, or even prohibiting, your favorite pastime. And they will have a legitimate right to do so.

The fourth quarter

This was published as a column in the Issaquah Press. For you not familiar with the area, Poo Poo Point is a mountain on the edge of Issaquah where para-gliders  launch and STP is an annual Seattle to Portland bicycle ride.

I first encountered Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” while working on an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage. It became my fourth quarter (end of life) philosophy:

Do not go gentle into that good night,/Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

The Bible allots us “three score years and ten.” Even by my poor math abilities, that amounts to 70 years. So, at 71, I am in my bonus years. When I now hear if I follow a particular diet, take a particular pill or break a particular habit, I will live longer, I keep doing what I please, as an extended life now just means a few additional months in an assisted living facility, watching TV reruns and wishing someone would change your Depends.

I keep looking for examples of those who live my fourth quarter philosophy such as Burt Munro, whose story is told in the movie The World’s Fastest Indian (motorcycles, not native Americans).

Recently, Joy Johnson, 86, ran a marathon and died the next day. Great exit Joy!

The same week, Vernon Maynard, 100, didn’t exactly “go out with joy” but he did celebrate his birthday with his first skydive. Right on, Vernon.

On June 25, Ardys Kellerman, 81, died in a motorcycle accident. Yes, she was driving and had recently been awarded a certificate for having put a million miles on her various BMW motorcycles. Great ending, Ardys.

A few years back, I watched on TV as a 90- plus year-old fellow made his first bungee jump. Residents from his old folks home came to cheer him on. He climbed on the platform, put his dentures in the bib pocket of his coveralls and jumped. He said he’d be back the next year to do it again.

The poet Edwin Robinson depicts another alternative in Mr. Flood’s Party. Eben Flood is on a hill above Tilbury Town on a moon lit night, partying all alone with his jug. (Google it.) He is lonely, because he has outlived everybody he knew in Tilbury Town, and now his biggest concern is that he find someplace he can set his jug, so it won’t fall over and break.

If you want to avoid a fourth quarter like Mr. Flood’s, buy a motorcycle, arrange a sky dive, paraglide off Poo Poo Point, take a hike, bicycle the STP, or run a race. If you’re not the adventuresome type, then check out the volunteer opportunities published weekly in The Issaquah Press. There are people and organizations that need you. Your church needs you. There are service clubs that need you. “Don’t go gentle into that good night.”