Ugh.

Since my dad cheated and wrote about American Idol, and because I'm sick today and feeling particularly sorry for myself, here is my contribution to the Commuter Week posts:

I commute between Chicago, the city in which I live, to Las Vegas, the city in which I work, each Monday and Friday. I am spending about 7.5 hours in a plane each week. Add to that number the 45 minutes between Midway and my apartment (once on Monday, once on Friday), and the 30 minutes between McCarran and the client site (once on Monday, once on Friday), plus the 20 minutes between my hotel and the client (my daily commute…eight times per week), and you have a total weekly commute time of 12 hours and 40 minutes. Over the last seven months, I have spent approximately 355 hours commuting, roughly equivalent to two full weeks of my life.

In the same time period, my father has spent just over a day and a half commuting to and from work.

If I had been working in the office during this time, I would have had to face a 30 minute door-to-desk commute twice per day. That adds up to just under 6 days of commute time. I would like 8 days of my life back, please.

If my math is wrong, please forgive me and look the other way. I'm trying to type this quickly since I'm at work right now and should be working, not blogging. My employer can subtract five minutes from the 8 days I am requesting be refunded to my life. That is all.

Commute Week, Part III

The judges commuted the sentence last week, so this week 2 of the remaining 7 American Idol contestants are headed for the discard pile. Yes, I have used a cheap trick to tie in American Idol with the commuting theme of this week, but really, what's more important? I get cranky if I cannot be snide and smug once a week about the sing for your supper gang.

So let's get on with it: it's disco week. Lots of stuff is gonna happen here to rip on, for sure.

Lead off singer was Lil Rounds, singing I'm Every Woman. Poor Lil, she works like crazy to please and seems to be a really nice person. She just doesn't have the charisma to get over the top. There was no excuse about being out of her genre this week. Randy made uncomfortable faces, Kara made noncommital comments and Simon says she gone. I think Paula had left to go to the ladies room.

Kris with a K Allen appears on my television holding an acoustic guitar and dressed in a t-shirt and jeans to do an interpretation of She Works Hard for the Money. I bet this is gonna suck big time! Boy, was I wrong. Accompanied by calypso-street-rock percussion, he blows everyone away with a unique interpretation. I have nothing bad to say, and neither did the judges. Hold on for a moment. Kris keeps doing this annoying "omygawd" grin with his eyes closed. , FINALLY, YES! Something to criticize!

Next was Danny, singing September. It was a fun performance. Another guy that I wanted to rip, and again I'm left with nothing. This night is not working for me.

The little red-haired girl comes next singing Hot Stuff. She reinvented a tired song, and visually this kid made an awesome impression again. You had to see it, if you didn't, go watch the video. Simon said it was "a briliant performance". Since I like the little red-haired girl, I am not disappointed that she did well.

Adam, the chalk in this race, is next. Donna Summer's If I Can't Have You is his choice. Another worn out, crappy song. The big dog reinvents it and hits another home run. The judges appear stunned, in a good way. Paula is on the verge of tears. Simon can't say enough good things. I'm thinking this lad may become a latter generation Freddie Mercury. Our 3:2 wager looks stronger every time this guy performs.
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Matt in the goddamn Hat does Stayin' Alive. He looks dopey thanks to the hat, works hard and comes up blechhhh. Seems like a nice fellow, Mat in the Hat. I bet he'd be a monster talent at the local clubs.,sans hat. He'll be gone, too bad, lad. So will his hat, thank heaven.
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Anoop finishes the show, and probably his run as a contestant, performing Turn on the Lights. This song sucked when it was new, and Anoop puts some weird spins on it, making it the kind of video that they'll use in a couple of years to tease him. The judges are kind (except Simon, thank heaven sometimes for Simon), but they won't save Anoop.
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My bet is that the two who get voted off the island will be Matt with his dopey Hat and Anoop. Top 3, can we bet on Top 3: Big Dog, Red Haired Girl and the other guy.

Commute Week, Part II

More effective than my car crusher at reducing commuting hassle is the state of the economy. According to the N.Y. Times, 30% of travel is commute related. Fewer people working means fewer people traveling on a daily basis.

In New York, ridership on trains is down from last year. Cars passing through toll booths are 5%-6% fewer in number than a year ago. The people who track these numbers say the numbers were down as they are now twice previously: after the 1987 market crash and the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in NYC.

New Yorkers have the longest average commute to work, Chicagoans are next (that damned 2nd city thing again!).

Here, from the US Census Bureau (motto: it makes perfect Census to us, hahaha!) is a summary of commute times:

Ranking of large cities (populations of 250,000 or more):

• New York (38.3 minutes);
• Chicago (33.2 minutes);
• Newark, N.J. (31.5 minutes);
• Riverside, Calif. (31.2 minutes);
• Philadelphia (29.4 minutes);
• Los Angeles (29.0 minutes)

New York and Baltimore lay claim to having the highest percentage of people with “extreme” commutes; 5.6 percent of their commuters spent 90 or more minutes getting to work. People with extreme commutes were also heavily concentrated in Newark, N.J. (5.2 percent); Riverside, Calif. (5.0 percent); Los Angeles (3.0 percent); Philadelphia (2.9 percent); and Chicago (2.5 percent).

If you have ever been part of the communal parking lots that Los Angeles calls freeways, you are forgiven for questioning the veracity of the data. It is, by the way, data from 2005. The Census folks have been working on updates but are having trouble finding the time. It's the darn traffic...maybe they should try bicycles. Here's 2008 data for the top 5 cities for cycling to work:

• 3.47% Portland, OR
• 2.42% Minneapolis, MN
• 2.31% Seattle, WA
• 2.24% Tucson, AZ
• 1.85% San Francisco, CA

How did Minneapolis get in there?

If we sidestep home officing for the moment, the next best commute is walking. Here's where the walk to work people live:

• 12.55% Boston, MA
• 9.97% Washington, D.C.
• 9.59% San Francisco, CA
• 9.44% New York, NY
• 8.05% Philadelphia, PA

While the car commuters get all the media attention, there's a lot of people who have figured out a better way. The best commute is the stumble down in the stairs in your bunny slippers and turn on the computer commute. Makes my 8 minutes look like an eternity.

Commute Week, Part I

Like most of America, Mrs. PFOS and I suffer through a morning commute to earn our daily bread. Her drive to work is around 4 minutes if the stoplight is green. By comparison, my ride off to work can take a grueling 8, sometimes 10 minutes.

OK, our commuting lives, thru a series of events both fortunate and structured, are above average. My daughter has been commuting 1,900 miles each Monday for the last 7 months. She would be in the "below average" category in terms of being happy with her commute. While we're discussing it, yes, we're all among the fortunate to still be commuting to something during the Great Depression of the 00's. By the way, that is pronounced "oh-ohs", similar to "uh-oh", as in "I hope we've found the bottom before it gets to me".

So, as we begin "Commuting Week" here at NADM, I have chosen to address the problem that vexes most commuters: too many cars. Bear in mind, if you read NADM, you are OK. It is the other people out there, they are the ones who are driving the vehicles that constitute the "too many". Now, this issue of too many cars is a substantial one, with ramifications that are serious and far-reaching, affecting many, many people. I have therefore decided to consult the source to which I frequently turn when I am faced with issues of this magnitutde.

Ebay.

If I were the marketing person at Ebay, I would tell the world "All the answers are here. You just furnish the questions." In this case, the question is too many cars. Here is the answer.

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Big Mac Portable Car Crusher Truck Auto Salvage Trailer

You are Bidding on a Portable Big Mac Car Crusher.
These Machines sell new for around $180,000.00+
　
Rebuilt Detroit Engine
Capable of crushing a car or truck down to 14”
Able to Crush Three to five scrap autos, with or without engines, into thirty-inch high bundles
　
The unit is in Nice Shape, The Cylinders were rebuilt last year.
The Crushing bed was completely rebuilt last summer and built heavier then factory, all work was done professionally by Greiner Industries.
Detroit engine was also rebuilt at the same time.
This machine is equipped with a controller box to add a remote for operating machine from loader, we do not have a remote with the crusher.

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If you would like to pitch in on this, we will set it up on I-55 by the weigh station. We will put up a sign that says "FREE COFFEE AND" People are total suckers for coffee and. There will be a wall of fourteen inch steel bundles, and much more room on I-55, in a couple of days. Then we will move on to another highway.

You have problems, we have answers. Portable, very cool. Sorry about the missing remote.

Gimli Glider, Part II

When you run out of fuel in your Boeing 767, you get a 132 ton glider that is dropping out of the sky at 2,000 feet per minute. We pick up the story from yesterday with the plane at an altitude of 28,000 feet, or roughly 14 or less minutes to earth...with no power and no electronics except the radio.

There was actually a bit of power, just not electrical power. While the auxiliary power unit provided no electricity because it ran on jet fuel, the same source as the engines, there was a RAT onboard. RAT is the acronym for ram air turbine, a propeller driven hydraulic pump that had automatically dropped into the air flow under the plane when the engines stopped. The RAT supplied enough hydraulic pressure to steer the aircraft and to enable a dead stick landing.

On the ground, controllers were scrambling to find a place for the airplane to land. Quick calculations showed the craft with a glide ratio of 11:1, that is 11 forward units for each 1 unit of descent. The RAT had created extra drag, so the rate of descent had increased. Winnipeg airport was out of reach. The last option for a landing strip --as opposed to a landing "spot" -- was Gimli, an abandoned Canadian Air Force base. Co-pilot Maurice Quintal was familiar with Gimli,, having been stationed there while in the Air Force.

What neither the pilots nor the ground controllers knew nor had time to research was that since the Air Force had left Gimli, runway 32L had been reconfigured for local use. Gimli was now an amateur auto racing track. The left runway had a steel guardrail down the middle, a safety precaution for the dragstrip it had become, and an impeding on the landing strip it was about to become.

On the ground at Gimli, there was no drag racing this day, but that wasn't good news. It was Family Day for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club, so there were go-kart races, road races, campers, kids everywhere, everyone having a great time. The last thing they all expected to see at the former airfield was an airplane attempting to land.

Back on the airplane, the pilots had discovered that the RAT didn't supply enought hydraulic pressure to force the landing gear into position. Co-pilot Quintal hit the button to release the landing gear and heard it drop into place. Indicator lights showed the new problem: the nose gear had not locked in place.

It was six miles to Gimli.,at an air speed of 180 knots or so, just two minutes or so remained to get the big machine lined up to land. Pilot Pearson needed to both slow the airplane and descend. Without the power needed to employ the airbrakes, the only way he could simultaneously accomplish slower and lower was to throw the airplane into a side slip. That involves using the surface of the airplane to catch the air. To do that, the plane must no longer be pointed into its path like an arrow. The plane gets re-oriented so it's like a big "X" moving on the line of flight, belly first. When Pearson threw the plane into the side slip, half the passengers looked out the window at nothing but blue sky while the other half were staring at the ground, all this in silence, adding another element of terror to the occupants of the stricken airplane. Fate had reserved one positive for the passengers and crew of Flight 143. Robert Pearson was an accomplished recreational flyer in sailplanes, or gliders. This side slip wasn't foreign to him, though doing it with a crippled Boeing 767 was never part of any plan.

Once the correction in height and speed was deemed done, the precious seconds ticking away, the enormous airplane had to be wrestled back into an appropriate orientation to land. The side slip maneuver had reduced airflow to the RAT, so Pilot Pearson had an enormous physical challenge simply to reorient the craft. Further, by changing the plane's attitude, Pearson had been unable to see the landing strip--and the guardrail that bisected the runway he was about to attempt to use.

The people on the ground, the Winnipeg racers and their families having their day of fun, heard nothing, no whining roar of jet engines to warn them that there was an airplane falling out of the sky into their picnic.

Pearson righted the plane at the last second. As it touched down, the pilot locked up the brakes. The explosion of the landing gear tires as they blew was like a cannon announcing the danger to the race crowd at the other end of Runway 32L, a mile straight ahead of the two and a half million pound machine that had come from nowhere and was headed right at them.

The partyers on the ground ran for their lives as they realized the beast was headed toward them.

The nose of the plane slammed to the ground, sending a 300 foot tail of sparks behind the plane. Pearson saw the guard rail and steered with the brakes to straddle the rail between the locked in rear landing gear. The right engine nacelle hit the ground as the plane charged ahead. The mile interval of landing strip raced past in seconds.

Less that a hundred feet from the people and their toys and their campers, silence, as Flight 143 came to a halt. The cheers from the passengers were short as small fires broke out on board, and the car club members, in mortal danger seconds earlier, came running with their fire extinguishers to help.

There were only minor injuries, those sustained exiting the aircraft via the emergency slides. Damage to the airplane was so small that the craft would be repaired and flown out of Gimli-- just two days after the amazing landing.

Nearly 25 years later, Pilot Robert Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal flew that same airplane out of Montreal to its retirement at the Mojave, California airport. They were accompanied by three of the six flight attendants who were on the plane on July 24, 1983 when the incredible landing was accomplished. The photo below is from the good-bye fly-by over Montreal airport.