The Citizen, 2015-06-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2015. PAGE 5.
This is an unsolicited love letter
dedicated to the Tilley Travel Vest. You
know the one? Beige, umpteen pockets
and zippers. The vests cost an arm and a leg,
but they last forever. Don’t leave home without
one. Especially if you’re flying.
More about the Tilley Vest later. First, an
unsolicited hate letter to the Canadian air
travel industry – particularly to Air Canada
which, last September, started dinging
passengers $25 per checked-in bag.
Amazingly, travellers countered by bulking
up on their carry-on baggage. They bridled at
coughing up $25 for a service that had
previously been free. Who could have
foreseen? This of course led to apocalyptic
airport scenes of passengers trying to
shoehorn bloated dufflebags, bulging
backpacks and overstuffed satchels into the
overhead bins delaying the boarding
process and making the threat of in-flight
decapitation in an avalanche of cascading
luggage all too real.
Now the airlines have decided to
strictly enforce the carry-on luggage
restrictions. You know that aluminum
thingee that looks like a toast rack and
stands in front of the check-in counter? From
now on your carry-on better fit inside it.
Otherwise you will be busted by the check-in
attendant, your carry-on will be hauled out and
stuffed in the hold along with the checked-in
baggage. This will delay your flight even
further and you will be charged another $25.
At least.
We shouldn’t be surprised. For some time
now the airlines have been doing everything in
their power to ensure air travel is the most
unpleasant voluntary procedure you can
undergo this side of a root canal. Once
upon a time airlines gave you a complimentary
meal – sometimes even free wine! Now
you’re lucky to get a bag of oversalted,
unidentifiable crunchy bits – oh, and that’ll be
$3 please. Sorry, we don’t take cash, just credit
cards.
Taking a flight is like being mugged
in slow motion. There’s an ‘airport
improvement’ tax, fuel charges, seat selection
payola...
And what a seat. It’s been whittled down to
accommodate the body proportions of a Mbuti
pygmy. Want to alleviate your misery by
watching a movie? You’ll need to purchase
headphones for that.
Would you like a pillow? Two dollars please.
Is the stale, recirculated, bacteria-laden cabin
air too cold for you? We’d be happy to rent you
a blanket.
On the bright side, I do have a solution to the
carry-on problem: The aforementioned Tilley
Vest. Mine has seven deep and capacious
pockets including one that runs across the
small of my back which could hold a full-
grown dachshund. Whenever I am forced to fly
anywhere I load up my Tilley Vest with
everything I could possibly need – a packed
lunch, paperbacks, a CD player, kleenex,
chewing gum, a couple of magazines, a
notebook and anything else I fancy.
Granted, I weigh about 250 pounds and look
like the Michelin Man but I saunter (well,
stagger, actually) on to the plane unchallenged.
There is no Air Canada rule about being ‘over
dressed’.
But it’s only a matter of time. As Stephen
Colbert warns: “The airlines have come up
with a new fee. From now on, a scrotum will
be classified as a carry-on bag.”
And there are some items you just can’t stow
in a Tilley Vest.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Just a few years ago I was told by an old
high school teacher of mine that the
perfect way to measure where someone is
at in their life, investment-wise, is to ask them
what they would do if they won the lottery.
He said, by asking what people wanted if
they won the lottery, he could guess where
they were in life. It was kind of a party trick.
Take myself, for example. It took owning a
house for four months, but, if when he asked
me, I told him, if I had won $1 million (or
more), I would first wait a year to spend it
(don’t want those taxes surprising you) and
then probably fix my roof, pay off as much
debt as possible, complete some renovations
on my home, buy a nice, new, reasonable,
reliable car and invest the rest.
Prior to owning a home, I would’ve talked
about many of the same things (debt, new car),
and a lot of less than necessary expenditures
like a big-screen television, all the fanciest
gadgets, a brand new computer and a house
bigger than I’d know what to do with.
There wouldn’t be a lot of crazy purchases
for me, but, I find the closer and closer (and
trust me, it’s still a long-way off) I get to being
personally debt free, I find the idea of owning
knick-knacks, trinkets or other money
sinkholes to be a little distracting.
Sure, it would be nice to have some really
fancy, really high-end television and movie
props from Star Wars, Doctor Who and
superhero movies, but I would need a new
house to fit all that stuff, then, I would need to
pay more taxes and more insurance and... well,
spent money begets more spent money.
I won’t lie, I’ve never really been the
“spend-crazy” kind of person when it comes to
hypothetical situations.
In high school I had a rather embarrassing
moment where, when given a blank cheque to
plan a hypothetical trip for myself in a
geography class, I still chose the most
economic things around. While my classmates
were picking Porsches, I picked a tiny little
coupe (that had great gas mileage). Even when
imagining things like that, I still manage to
honour my Scottish tradition and keep the
sporran shut.
Looking back on situations like that, I
realize that being reasonable, even in fantasies,
kind of ruined the curve for my teacher’s idea
of using a hypothetical lottery win to guess
where a person is at in their life.
His basic idea was that if someone said
anything along the lines of a private jet, or a
yacht or anything that costs as much over a few
years to maintain as it does to buy, that person
really wasn’t ready to win the lottery.
It isn’t an age or maturity thing, really, it’s an
experience thing. If you’ve owned a home, a
vehicle, a boat or a plane and done so without
the lottery, you already know what they cost
you and, if you’re like me, you’re probably not
going to want to pay more than you need to.
I’m inclined to agree with him there.
Everyone thinks that buying their first car is
this huge financial hurdle they need to
overcome, but it really isn’t.
You have to wait a couple years but, when
you factor in the cost of every oil change,
every tire switch or rotation, every dint
hammered out, every windshield replaced,
insurance and every tank of gas that the car
itself (unless you’re driving one of the
aforementioned Porsches) isn’t the big
expense: owning and using it is.
The same can be said of pretty much any
high-end device.
If you take any phone, even one that costs
$0, and add up the monthly costs over the term
of a contract, odds are you’re going to be
paying a lot more than the price of the phone
to use it. I know that my $60-a-month cell
phone bill costs me $720 a year, at least. Over
two years, that’s $1,440 and I don’t think I’ve
owned a phone that’s worth a quarter of that,
though the cheapest new modern iPhone retails
for just under 40 per cent of that.
So my teacher said that anyone who isn’t
aware of the fact that these high-end
purchases, the houses, the cars, the jets and the
overall lifestyle of a millionaire require the
annual income of a millionaire wasn’t ready to
win the lottery and that’s why you see so many
lottery winners going bankrupt not long after
they win.
Don’t get me wrong. I would probably live it
up a bit. My car wouldn’t be of the same
quality it has been. I wouldn’t be aiming for
the lower end of the spectrum financially, but I
know that I couldn’t afford the insurance, on
an ongoing basis, of something fancier than,
say, a nice, higher-end truck from a local
dealership.
But maybe I’m the exception to the rule.
Maybe you really can guess someone’s life
experiences by asking them what they would
buy if they won the lottery.
Maybe, if someone says he would want to do
a whirlwind tour of Europe, you could guess
he hasn’t been there because, with everything
to do, you would want to take your time and
enjoy yourself.
Maybe, if someone says she wants a Ferrari,
she doesn’t own a car or doesn’t pay her own
insurance.
Maybe, if someone said he would buy a
mansion if they had the money, he doesn’t
know the pain in vacuuming one room on a
consistent basis let alone many.
(Okay, you got me, I don’t really do the
vacuuming, but I do the grass cutting, and I
know that the single lot I have is plenty big for
me and, even if I won the lottery, I wouldn’t
want it any bigger.)
So give it a shot, the next time you’re
meeting people for the first time. Ask them
what they would do if they won $100,000 (it’s
a bit more realistic and really makes people
think in my opinion) It’s a great icebreaker and
it just might let you get to know them.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Blowin’ in the wind
In talking to someone the other day about
cycling on the highways of Huron County,
the word that stuck with me was
vulnerable. It’s the perfect word to describe
how you feel out there on your own. You feel
vulnerable.
No, I didn’t have another brush with an
angry driver out on the roads, if that’s what
you’re wondering (see my column in the May
28 issue of The Citizen entitled “Sharing is
Caring”).
I’m talking more about the basics of being
out in the world on a bike. The way they make
bikes now is a lot different than how they used
to. When anything was built years ago, the
more expensive they were, the heavier they
were. More expensive = more sturdy.
Now, the sign of an expensive bike, as stated
to me over the weekend by a fellow cyclist is –
hold out your index and middle fingers and
raise them upwards – if you can pick it up like
“that”.
So when you’re hurtling towards your stated
objective on something that likely weighs less
than your average baseball bat and you have
cars flying past you to boot, I think it’s safe to
say that vulnerable is the right word.
But as I said, I don’t mean vulnerable to
getting hit by a car, I mean vulnerable to the
subtle elements many of us have had erased
out of our everyday lives for the most part.
As I have mentioned in this space before,
driving on a “hill” in a car is a much, much
different experience than taking on a hill in a
bike. When you’re on a bike, a slight incline is
suddenly redefined as a hill. When you’re
driving in a car, you likely don’t even notice
the incline.
I have found the same is true with wind.
When you’re driving, it would take a pretty
serious gust of wind for you to feel it in a car.
If you were out biking when that same
“serious” gust of wind hit, you might find
yourself on your seat – not your bike seat.
Biking into the wind, I have also
rediscovered an unpleasant Huron County
phenomenon that I first discovered a few
winters back: the cyclone wind that I believe is
native to this area.
I have often lamented at the office about
what wind has done to me when I’ve been
brushing snow off of my car. Huron County, I
would say, is the first place I’ve ever been
where I have stood on the driver’s side of the
car and had brushed snow blown back in my
face, so I travelled to the car’s passenger side,
only for the same thing to happen.
Yes, it defies the laws of nature and physics
both, but it has happened to me many times.
During my longest ride to date last week,
going up and down Orchard Line a few times,
I once again came face to face with the bizarre
both-ways Huron County wind – and, of
course, it wasn’t in the great way where I had
the wind at my back both ways.
I rode from Goderich to Bayfield River Road
during this ride twice (a total distance of about
75 kilometres thank you very much) and (if
you’re studying science, but not if you’re
riding a bike in it) rode into the wind both
ways – both times.
The very nature of wind doesn’t allow this to
happen (in order to blow one way, it can’t blow
the other), but trust me when I tell you that I
rode into the wind both while travelling
northbound and when travelling southbound.
Wish me better luck (wind-wise) this
weekend as I and the Fire Riders embark on
the Ride to Conquer Cancer. May the wind be
at our backs – both ways, because it’s totally
possible.
Other Views
Gauging worth through windfalls
Have Tilley Travel Vest, will travel
Final Thought
“Everything that irritates us about others
can lead us to an understanding of
ourselves."
– Carl Jung