Light in the Morning, Light in the Evening

The days are getting longer, showing signs that summer is getting closer, even if the weather still says "Winter". The past few days have brought rain and high temps in the mid-50s. Thursday night's rain left a solid covering of snow up on Mt. Hamilton, with the snow floor down below 3,000'. This is January weather, not April! Ah, but like I said, one sign that it's actually April, one surprising but pleasant sign, is that the days have been getting longer.

I noticed the first change a week ago: There's light in the sky once again when my 6:45am weekday alarm rings. The last time that happened was right before we switched the clocks for Daylight Saving Time. The change plunged my wakeup time back into the dark, making it harder for me to get going in the morning. But now there's light again, with sunrise right about 6.45. ...Not that I really noticed this past week, as I was getting up at 6:00 all week for early meetings.

The other change, of course, is that it's also light later into the evening. This one caught me by surprise a week ago... and then again a few days ago. A week ago Friday Hawk and I went out for dinner. As we drove into the restaurant parking lot with the late afternoon sun behind us I quipped, "It feels way too early for dinner; the sun's still out!" But it wasn't early. It was at least 6:30pm.

The second surprise came when we were out for dinner this past Thursday. As we walked out of the restaurant sometime after 7:30, maybe 7:45, I noticed the sun was only just setting. Whoa, still light after dinner? I haven't seen that for several months!

* * *

In addition to thoughts about the changing sunrise and sunset, I've had thoughts about my thoughts. That's right; I can't just have simple wonder. There's always at least one background process performing second order (or higher) analysis. And those background processes can be harsh judges. Devil's advocates. "You haven't always noticed mundane things like this before, why now? Is it a sign of advancing age and senescence?" 😳

I figure the reason is mundane itself. I haven't traveled much lately. For the past 20 years my life has been about going other places to do things. At first it was heavily tilted to work travel, when I'd be in the air 2-3 weeks a month for my job, but in recent years it's shifted more toward leisure travel. Leisure travel isn't 2-3 trips a month to remote cities, though. Well, last April/May it was. But that was an anomalous level of activity. Lately I've been home a lot. Since returning from our Australia trip 14 weeks ago I've had just one trip, a 3-day business trip to Las Vegas. When I travel a lot it creates natural breakpoints in my sense of continuity about time and weather. When I stay home a lot I notice the graduality of these changes.

Hawk now Unemployed

Hawk (my spouse) is now officially unemployed. I could have posted this yesterday, as yesterday was her last day of work and her boss told her she could leave at lunchtime. She was home around 1:30pm.

No, this didn't happen suddenly. Hawk learned two months ago that her company was eliminating her position. They offered her a new, lower role. It took her all of 1.5 seconds to think before responding, "Thank you, but I am declining your offer." Cue surprised Pikachu faces. 😂 They came back in a few days with a retention offer to keep her on an extra 5 weeks. Thus her last day was delayed from March 1 to April 5.

What's next? Well, first, this isn't retirement. We're not there yet. We're close!— but not there. So Hawk is already looking for a new job. Unfortunately the job market seems to have cooled a lot from a year ago.

While we don't have enough money to call ourselves done with working for a living, we do have enough not to sweat time in between jobs. Thus Hawk's unemployment is also a bit of funemployment. We planned our trip to New Zealand only after finding out about her job evaporating. And yes, we planned it so that we'd leave pretty much right after her last day. Her last day was yesterday, and today we're packing our bags because we leave tonight!

A Journey of 16,000 Miles Starts With... a Lyft Ride

New Zealand Travelog #1
SFO Airport lounge - Sat, 6 Apr 2024, 7:15pm

We officially began our trip to New Zealand today a bit after 6pm. That's when we left home and boarded... a Lyft car to SFO. Yes, a journey of 16,000 miles— about how far we'll travel in the air and on the ground over the next 17 days— begins with a Lyft ride.

One interesting thing about this Lyft ride is that as we sat in the car the driver was still fiddling with his app to find the "Start Ride" button. While he was swiping through screens I saw how our ride appeared to him. The ride, which showed a charge of almost $54 on my app, showed him a payment of just $29 and change for providing the ride. That's... astonishing. The driver is paid only a little more than half what we riders pay. The rest goes to Lyft. Lyft, which is... running an app.

That's not just astonishing, it's disgusting. It's made me reconsider whether it'd be better, from a workers' rights perspective, to take a taxi. Except I know that as bad as this is, the taxi industry is worse. 😱

Heels Up before Wheels Up. Flying on Miles.

New Zealand Travelog #2
SFO Airport lounge - Sat, 6 Apr 2024, 9:30pm

It's almost time to board our flight to New Zealand. We've got a nonstop from San Francisco to Auckland. It's a nearly 12.5 hour flight. And we're flying in coach— which means the food we'll get aboard the flight will be hit-or-miss. Thus we've filled up here at SFO prior to departure. As with our Australia flight in December, we're cooling our heels— and wetting our whistles— at the United flight lounge. Gaining lounge access when flying internationally is one of the perks of my Million Miler lifetime status with United Airlines.



Alas dinner this evening in the lounge was not as good as back in December when I made myself a dish I dubbed nacho libre by combining Cuban-style pulled pork and black beans with some chips, salsa, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. Tonight the chips and toppings were still there but the "main dish" was some anonymous lukewarm chicken bits. Oh, and stale bread. (I moved the bread straight from my plate to the trash.) The result was still nachos but less tasty than before. The beer hit the spot, though. I went back for a second. All in all it beat the pants off of paying $25+ for a bland airport pizza and a bottle of Coke Zero.

Another perk of my years with United is that we booked this trip on frequent flyer miles. Well, miles aren't a perk, per se. I earn them. And some of that earning comes through blood, sweat, and tears. Thus it's extra satisfying that this trip is a decent use of miles. Well, part of it is.

Miles or Cash?

The challenge when redeeming airline and hotel points nowadays is that while there's almost always a miles/points rate available, it's almost always a poor rate. Years ago I valued UA miles at 1.8 cents per point (cpp). It was easy to find redemptions at that rate. But over the years UA, like all airlines and hotels, has devalued its points. Nowadays it's hard to find a redemption above 1.1 cpp. And that drop in the rate comes while airfares have also gotten more expensive. 25k used to be the standard for a domestic round-trip award; now it's frequently not enough even for a domestic one-way.

On our Australia trip months ago we got an astounding value for booking with points, 3.75cpp. That's more than triple the crummy 1.1cpp threshold value. This trip the points-vs-cash tradeoffs weren't as sweet. Outbound was still a decent exchange at about 1.4cpp, but homebound was only 1.0cpp once cash fares dropped a bit. Thus while I initially booked the trip using points both ways, I canceled my points ticket for the flight home and re-bought with cash.

Anyway, that's enough math for tonight. I'm two beers and a couple of gin-and-tonics into it already. Yes, I'm hoping this will help me sleep on the flight. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to take one last swig of my gin and tonic and walk over to the boarding gate.