Changing the Paradigm

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.”

-George Bernard Shaw

I missed a weekday on this blog after the weather left me stuck in Florida for an extra evening last Thursday. I mediated a case (unsuccessfully) in the morning, raced around midday to create a couple new business bank accounts, then drove over to Taylor County hoping to jump into the plane and fly back to Corning.

But it was not to be. Around the time I crossed the Aucilla River, a wall of dark clouds assembled a few miles to the north, running east-west as far as the eye could see. It was late afternoon, it was Florida, and it was July. The Gulf breeze sent wet air inland over 95 degree pine barrens, and like clockwork the line of thunderstorms began to form maybe twenty miles from the coast.

There was no way around them, with a second wall forming up toward Valdosta, the tallest towering to over 50,000 feet according to my aviation weather app. And more were popping up by the minute. Manifestly, I wasn't going anywhere.

So I made the best of it, hanging around the farm and embracing my utter exhaustion after a busy week. I hung P's new copper alloy Wyldswood brand out next to the front door.

Too whipped and lazy even to go feed the fish, much less drive over to the Elks Lodge to eat chicken wings in the dark, I poured a Proper Twelve and plopped down on the couch to talk with P on the cellphone until I found myself too tired even for that. By nine I was sound asleep.

Which proved a good thing, given that my plan was to wake up very, very early and try to beat the weather out of KFPY. The alarm sounded at 4:10, and almost exactly an hour later I was airborne and turning north in the dark, headed toward my first stop in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The skies were mostly empty across the South, just me and a couple Delta flights giving Jacksonville Center someone to chat with.

Sunrise at altitude is always liminal.

It seems natural to find oneself talking to God up in those vast, lonely spaces, a tiny speck of sentience a mile closer to the firmament in my little propeller plane. It's one of the last places we're unplugged, alone, and manifestly vulnerable among the forces of nature building all around.

The force of nature that complicated my arrival at KLYH was a low scud layer that had socked in most of the Carolinas with 400 foot ceilings. It had mostly broken up by the time I crossed into Virginia and arrived in the pattern, but patches remained, with some rather large hills sticking up out of the mist. And the skies around the airport were already teeming with student pilots muddling around the box. Apparently one of Liberty University's pedagogical offerings includes learning to fly, Bernoulli's Principle being a scientific principle not completely contradicted by a literal reading of the Bible. The tower controllers there manifestly can't stand the students, and the snark dripping from every other transmission was unlike anything I've ever heard in the aviation community.

They even got snarky with me. After refueling, and learning this was the only FBO I've ever encountered with no food, not even from a vending machine, with only breath mints and burned coffee as culinary offerings, I crawled back into the Columbia and picked up my IFR clearance to KELM. When I read back my IFF squawk as "4792" instead of "4772", unable to read my own handwriting on the notepad strapped to my knee, the ground controller snorted back, "Show me where I read you a '9'."

No use being a jerk about it. One day you'll be sixty yourself, little man.

Watching Lynchburg fall away behind me and vowing never to return, I climbed north into cobalt blue skies, and less than two hours later landed back at KELM.

With the remains of that Friday I worked some, waiting for P to get off work so we could drive up to the Cliff. We agreed we were both too tired for a weekend agenda of any sort, which of course didn't mean doing nothing because we're not so good at that.

Friday evening we rode to the yacht club for supper, running into our new friends there and joining them over a soupy tuna salad on iceberg lettuce washed down by a good cab.

Saturday we opted out of going to the gym, deciding instead to drive down to Naples for brunch at a highly-recommended restaurant that lived up to the hype. We ate outdoors amid vineyards on the last weekend in July. Try doing that in Florida.

Afterward we wandered down through farms and Trump flags to the southeastern corner of Canandaigua Lake, intrigued by the idea of maybe buying a little place on this secluded shore. We found a place for sale, a fixer-upper for a mere $700k, and chatted with the next-door neighbor as we stood on the rickety dock. We learned that the lake down here was so shallow it freezes and would crush anything left in the water, so all the docks are pulled at the end of the season. The shallows also are filled with grass that clogs propellers on all but the shallowest draft boats with tiltable outboards.

No, this isn't the place.

So we wandered up the eastern shore of the lake, stopping to marvel at some stunningly expensive little houses for sale on the more desirable stretches and concluding we bought our little condo just in time.

For supper we stayed home and cooked a massive steak, which we mucked down while watching The African Queen. By the end of the movie my beloved P was completely asleep, so I tucked her into bed and conked out myself. Have I mentioned that we're both pretty tired these days?

The next morning we patted ourselves on the back for getting up in time for church at 9 a.m., only to quit patting when we realized it was Morning Prayer since their priest retired last week and they are late out of the gate on lining up supply clergy and starting their search committee. Peg suggested I volunteer to the bishop to help them with their staffing issue while they look for a permanent rector, but I reminded her that I resigned and Lord knows what it would take to put that toothpaste back in the tube.

After church we drove by a couple more houses in the historic district that P bought and decorated in her head. From there we enjoyed brunch on the enclosed patio of the Rose Grill at the Lake House Hotel, watching happy families schlep coolers out to their boats for a day on the water.

We granted ourselves the grace of a nap before driving down the hill to fit nine holes of passable golf into the end of our day, leaving just enough time for P to cook a gourmet supper we enjoyed in front of the TV watching Colbert.

That's what a relaxing weekend looks like. No wonder we're exhausted.

I'm coming around to the idea that this phase of life is going to require a little more moderated stride than what came before. More time devoted to health stuff, running and lifting and billing a little less. Only taking the cases that justify my hourly rate rather than trying to help everyone who comes through the door, only to have them complain about their bill I'd already discounted. Cutting back on actual workdays as P does the same, so if she's off I am too.

It's possible to ride this profession into one's eighties: I've seen it done successfully before. Running at a manic pace isn't the way to get there, however. I figure brain and bod are subject to the same principles and limitations as any machine. If you want an old airplane to stay in the air a long time, leaving it in the hangar is the worst thing you can do; so is flying the wings off it day after day. And be careful what you're putting in the gas tank or down the oil spout. It's all about taking care of things, all about moderating.

Good advice. I wonder if we'll actually follow it.