The search for good decisions continues

Although piracy continues unabated off the Somali coast, “we the people” have largely moved on to more compelling matters like the Palin book barrage, Lou Dobb’s retirement, and oh yes, Health Care reform.  A couple of items did sneak into the popular press in the past week that cause me to wonder “what were the thinking?”

The first that comes to mind is the case of a British couple named Chandler.

The Chandlers, married for 28 years, took early retirement about three years ago, sailing around the world. In an entry on a Web site in June they wrote that they were headed for Tanzania, after initially delaying a voyage there “because of the Somali pirate problem.”

You already can surmise the rest: They got within range of the bad guys who grabbed them, apparently in plain view of a Royal Navy boat (another matter entirely).  Now the pirates are issuing videos, ransom demands, and death threats.

If you’re the Chandlers, this is clearly not good.  But I am left asking, not only “what were they thinking?”, but what was the alternative they rejected when they chose to go whistling by pirate land?

One of the big decision traps is a failure to grapple with uncertainty.  One of the big ways that shows up is the understandable assumption that the future will look like the past . . . in other words, all the interesting uncertainties are known and accounted for.  Another version is a failure of imagination: You have no interest in thinking about what you don’t know and what could go wrong.  Finally (but not exhaustively), you may have identified the key uncertainties and decided to go forward anyway.

I have no idea the Chandler’s thought process, but at least according to the news item, the Chandlers were aware of the whole pirate problem.  If your intent is to sail around the world on a 38 foot boat (hardly a yacht by the way), sticking reasonably close to land is probably a good idea, but not something you’re going to have much luck with when it comes to crossing either the Pacific or the Atlantic.

Tanzania is just south of Somalia, separated by a chunk of Kenyan coast line.

• Choice A is keep to the coast.  Key Risk Factor: Capture by Pirates.  Probable outcome: Held for ransom; death possible.
• Choice B is to head east towards India. Key Risk Factor: Weather.  Probable outcome: You get wet; death possible.

Meanwhile, news of another pirate attack, this one on a ship called the Maersk Alabama raises another version of the same question, “What were they thinking?”

Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama on Wednesday for the second time in seven months and were thwarted by private guards on board the U.S.-flagged ship who fired off guns and a high-decibel noise device.

Hmmmm, something about the name of that ship is familiar.  Oh, wait . . .

Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.

I guess the whole thing worked so well the last time the locals thought they’d try to crash that party again.

Four suspected pirates in a skiff attacked the ship again on Wednesday around 6:30 a.m. local time, firing on the ship with automatic weapons from about 300 yards (meters) away, a statement from the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said.

An on-board security team repelled the attack by using evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones, the fleet said.

In this case, the pirates live to play another day.  It doesn’t matter what they were thinking.  The ship owners looked at the same information available to the Chandlers, framed the problem statement differently, and came up with what appears to have been a superior choice.

Note to owners of 38 foot sail boats: Think about taking another route.

I’m always on the lookout for pieces about decision making at work, or better still, great examples of decision traps at work.  Richard Thaler writes about one of those traps called “escalation of commitment” in the New York Times when he describes a game that’s sometimes called a dollar auction.  I’ve seen it done several ways but a common form is to auction off a $20 bill.  It goes like this . . .

Bidding starts at $1 and goes up in $1 increments. The winner pays the [auctioneer] whatever the high bid was, and gets the $20. Here’s the catch: the second-highest bidder also has to pay, but gets nothing in return.

Typically, a few brave or stupid [bidders] — nearly always male — open the bidding but fairly quickly only two bidders remain and they discover they are in a war of attrition. The bidding slows when someone bids $20, but then resumes with neither wanting to “lose.” If the two students are particularly stubborn, prices can go over $50. [I have seen it go higher than that]

The dollar auction game was invented by a pioneer of game theory, Martin Shubik of Yale, and it illustrates the concept of “escalation of commitment.” Once people are trapped into playing, they have a hard time stopping. (Consider Vietnam.) The higher the bidding goes, and the more each bidder has invested, the harder it is to say “uncle.” The best advice you can give anyone invited to play this particular game is to decline.

Another version of this same trap is called “sunk cost thinking” which is exactly what it sounds like:  You stay with an investment or keep doing something because you’ve already paid for it. It is one of the big reasons why the US is still prosecuting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and why tax payers continue to pour billions of dollars into rescuing firms that should be shuttered.

I haven’t actually tried it (and probably won’t), but Thaler holds up yet another example of this decision trap at work.  It’s a company called Swoopo, a self-described “entertainment shopping” company.  It works like this . . .

Swoopo sells new merchandise using unusual auction formats. Let’s concentrate on one of them, the so-called penny auction.

Typically an item — say, a laptop that retails for $1,500, is offered for sale. The bidding starts at a penny, and goes up in one-cent increments, but it costs bidders 60 cents to make a bid. Each auction has a scheduled closing time, but as the deadline nears, that time is extended by 20 seconds whenever someone bids.

The site’s home page displays several attractive objects for sale with closing times fast approaching. It is mesmerizing.

One winning strategy might seem to be this: Bid at the last second, just before an auction is about to end. To “help” you do so, the site offers an automatic bidding program called a Bid Butler that allows you to make bids in the last 10 seconds. Alas, others can also use this automatic program, and you soon discover that just as the clock is ticking down and you’re about to make your big score, a bunch of other Bid Butlers get busy, the price jumps by a few cents, and the clock adds more time. Items can remain “in their final seconds” for days.

What makes this procedure so devilish is that while bidders are looking at what seem to be amazing bargains, the Web site is raking in the money. Because Swoopo collects 60 cents for each penny bid, its revenue is the selling price multiplied by 60. This means that if a computer you covet sells for $100, seemingly a bargain, Swoopo collects $6,000 in revenue, a very juicy profit.

Tags: DollarAuction, EscalationofCommitment, Vietnam, MartinShubik, Swoopo

Here’s a story lead from the WSJ that should get your attention:

Even as the financial system collapsed last year, and millions of investors lost billions of dollars, one unlikely investor was racking up historic profits: John Paulson, a hedge-fund manager in New York.

His firm made $20 billion between 2007 and early 2009 by betting against the housing market and big financial companies. Mr. Paulson’s personal cut would amount to nearly $4 billion, or more than $10 million a day. That was more than the 2007 earnings of J.K. Rowling, Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods combined.

Wow, $20 billion seems like a lot of money, even in these post-trillion times.  How did he do it?  The short answer is that he went short the housing market and then financial services companies.  For those not in the biz, it means he bought a bunch of insurance on the first and then bet on the second.  For those still not tracking the story, he was on the other side of . . .

• All those credit default swaps that sunk the big financial companies, you know, the ones the tax payers bailed out? Well not all of them.
• Investors, some of whom were folks like you and me, some of whom were some of the “savviest” investors in the game who wanted a piece of that free money.
• Ultimately tax payers whose great, great grandchildren will still be paying the Chinese government for funding the clean up.

[Read more →]

This is an absolutely delightful contemplation on leadership through the eyes of a orchestra conductor. 

Think about the dynamics such a person must master . . .

There is the responsibility to the composer, perhaps a minor one, perhaps one like Mozart who takes tea with the Gods.

There are the musicians, each of whom have a story to tell, a skill to display, a wellspring from which to draw.  How to bring those stories together?  How to highlight this one just so? 

And of course there is you, the conductor, with your story, your experiences, your beliefs about structure, process, control, meaning, and more. 

As Talgam points out, there isn’t a single way.  In fact, if you as a musician had the opportunity to play for more than one great conductor, you might find their differences in approach maddening. But by some means, they each are able to bring together and balance the seeming tensions to bring out the best in the individual story teller / musicians, the meaning they find in the music, all within the structure and integrity provided by the composer (who may be centuries gone).  Wonderful.

It is surely the height of arrogance to propose an expert point of view on Afghanistan unless you have the relevant information.  I don’t have foreign policy or military expertise, but I do have a point of view on decision making, so at the risk of hubris, here goes . . .

One of the problems I see (already I’m in trouble) is that there is no shared problem definition.  That’s pretty typical of a class of puzzles many refer to as “wicked problems.”  No surprise here but this is where the problems begin. In the case of Afghanistan, it’s easy to spot the following problem definitions or frames:

According to one piece I read recently, the problem as defined by Sec Def Gates is, “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans as well as the American people that this is not an open-ended commitment?”

The problem that General McChrystal sees relates specifically to the mission he’s been tasked with, which is to fight an insurgency.  Current Army doctrine on that topic says protect the civilians from the bad guys, kill bad guys, and work on building a civil society.

The problem many politicians see is “How do I position myself to score political points?”

The problem that many US citizens see is a pointless war.

The problem that many who think about these things see is how to not destroy the finest military our country, and maybe the world, has ever seen because of eight years of nonstop war.

You see where I’m going with this and you can further appreciate that each of these problem definitions, or “frames,” lead the honest thinker in different directions, both in terms of the alternatives you would consider and the trade-offs you might make.

What is true is that the collective we will not arrive at a common definition of the problem.  There was a time that could have happened, indeed did happen, but that time is now long past.  The question President Obama and his aides are asking is both geopolitical as well as simply political: Balancing the perceived need to continue to prosecute two wars in the Middle East while keeping the general populace onboard.  None of the alternatives are appealing on a good day, and it’s no longer a good day.

As a citizen, I have a point of view on what I think should happen.  As someone that thinks daily about quality decision making, I am annoyed by those who think Obama is dithering or prevaracating.  His predecessors had the dual luxury of having starting this war when the public was with them as well as an ideological lens that eliminating competing points of view and the alternatives that came with them.  Obama is not an idealogue when it comes to foreign policy and is genuinely trying to make a quality decision.  What must trouble him is the abiding fear that despite his best intentions, the outcomes will most likely not be good.

It’s nearing the end of Day 5 in BCN, so at this point I think I can fairly say that I am now an expert on all things Barcelonian, particularly because I have now been to not one but two museums having to do with the history of the city and the surrounding area, not to mention a day visit to the ancient hub of the area, Tarragona.  So what have I surmised?

There are no fat people

This seems important given the raging debate about health care (if that’s what it’s really about) in the US.  Here in Barcelona, which is in Europe which is as all Americans know vastly inferior to the US, health care comes as part of the standard equipment package.  People get up late, eat more often, eat later, drink more, drink more often, go to bed later, live longer, live healthier lives, aren’t half as fat, and don’t obviously mope about bemoaning the fact that they’re not Americans.  For that matter, most don’t even speak English!

Taxes are evil

I’ve been to Spain several times, the first time more than thirty years ago. Franco was still holding down the fort and the country was far poorer and much more closed.  The south had also not yet been annexed by the English or reinvaded for at least the second time by the Moors.  Three decades on, the evils of joining the EU can be seen everywhere.  The infrastructure is modern and works well.  The harbors are clean.  The population is secular and open to the world.  The overall standard of living is up to varsity standards.  Think how much better a place it would be if none of those tax dollars from Northern Europe had never shown up!

Earth may only be 6000 years old but Spain is much older

I don’t know why I thought about this but it is absolutely clear to me that the people who think that the earth is only 6000 years ago have never seen any of it.  Here in Spain, the previous gold medal winner for Religious intolerance, folks have been living and building on the same patches of land for, oh, 400,000 years or so.  I tried to imagine all those liths (neo, paleo, etc.) telescoped into just 6000 years and, well, spots like Barcelona would have been pretty darned crowded with all those different civilizations building on the same foundations at exactly the same time.  Must have been quite a sight.

God of the month club

If by some miracle some lithic person could have lived for a couple of thousand years, besides meeting Adam and Eve, here’s what his life would have been like.

1. A bunch of people show up from somewhere else.   Depending on the era, those people came from the North, East, or South.
2. They bring some cool new stuff (pottery, bronze, Iron, ivory, silk, the alphabet, numbers, etc.).
3. They reorganize the populace (again) . . .
4. So they can tax the populace (again, still, more).
5. They impose a new order (political, military, social, religious).
6. They fight a war or two.
7. Repeat and rinse.

So for several thousand years, the basic idea was, “Hi, we’re new on the block, we’re here with a brand new belief system which you will now follow, and you now work for us.”  The only thing that changed was the name on the back of the uniform.  How or why anyone thinks that Christianity was a better deal for Joe and Mary Peasant than being a Visigoth or a Carthaginian, or a Husky is beyond me.

Picking a pocket near you for a thousand years

Going to the history museum snapped me out of my picked-pocket funk.  Somehow it helped to realize that the good people of Catalonia have been banditing and pirating since before Jesus was a gleam in Mary’s eye made me feel less singled out.  The search for an honest man is best conducted elsewhere.

Where did Islam go wrong?

Somehow I had forgotten that one of the waves of Iberian occupiers were the Moors.  During their time here, they built cool buildings, generally civilized the southern part of the Peninsula, and introduced every conceivable cultural, scientific, and material wonder to Europe (via the monks of Catalonia).  They also left the Christians and Jews alone to do their thing, which at that particular time in history did not involve slaughtering each other.  That came later after the One True Church managed to pull together enough flash, bang, boom to toss the Moors out and get things properly sorted.

Not long after, the Christian nobility re-enslaved (they didn’t call it that) the peasantry, the Plague made a star turn, and the Inquisitors stopped by for a couple of centuries (including the counter reformation).  If you were one of those lithic peasants who’d been hanging around for a couple of thousand years, this wouldn’t have been your favorite epoch.

What passes for the conservative intelligentsia has suddenly become hugely concerned about the doings up in New York Congressional District 23.  The Club for Growth (funded by a crotchety zillionaire from Arkansas), Tim Pawlenty (trying to put some bounce in his non-existent national awareness), Sarah Palin (who is everywhere), Fred Thompson, Glen Beck, Rushbo, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich . . . they’re all, all in, which has now brought the Obamas to the fray.  Wow.

It’s good to see all these good conservatives taking such an interest in, where is it again?  Oh yeah, what the locals call the North Country and what the rest of us, meaning those who can find New York on a map and/or believe that there is more to the state than five boroughs, call The Adirondaks.  Or most of it.  There’s a sliver that goes right up the middle of District 23 that is part of District 20, but that’s another story.

The cause for all this excitement is a special election to fill a seat for one year for a part of the country in which there are no people and no jobs: They all left years ago (another story).  The NY State GOP put up a candidate as did the Blues.  The conservative crew can’t abide either, and particularly the GOP candidate who fails on a number of purity tests.  So they have put up a guy named Hoffman who counts among his credentials:

1. He doesn’t live in the District.  He lives in District 20.
2. He’s never run for office much less held one.
3. None of his endorsers would recognize him in a police line up.
4. He’s running as an independent (or something like that) so he doesn’t actually have a party (though he will caucus with the GOP).

And what is his plan for District 23, a part of the state being re-colonized by Amish farmers?  A corner of the country where the biggest employers are colleges, universities, a massive Army fort, and local and state government, none of whom pay taxes?  A little piece of paradise where the median income, when you factor out all the summer bugs and their summer mansions, is at or below the poverty line so they don’t pay taxes either?  A part of the state and country that is a net RECIPIENT of tax dollars?

Speaking to Glenn Beck . . .

Well, I never thought I would be in politics, but Glenn, quite frankly, I was fed up. I was fed up with what’s happening to our country. I was fed up with the out-of-control spending, taxes, government regulations on us and businesses, and I thought somebody had to step up and do something about it.

So that’s his plan for representing one of the hardest-bit parts of the country. Nothing about Jobs.  Nothing about fighting global warming which is plaing havoc in the one of the most beautiful places in the country. 

He’s going to Washington to fight the evils of taxation, something half the people in his District actually don’t pay; something that generates a huge percentage of the payrolls that do exist in the North Country. 

Like I said, it’s good to see the national conservative brain trust taking such an interest in the good and welfare of District 23.

Some interesting articles in the Seattle Washrag this morning having to do with South Carolina.  Normally 47 people give a rip but for two factors:  Boeing is threatening to move more production there and the political leadership of the state, and I’m using that term loosely, can’t seem to stay out of the news.  So here’s what’s stuck in my craw.

Their idiot governor was part of the famous class of ‘94 that swept into Washington DC during the early stanzas of the Clinton opera.  Among their many accomplishments were shutting down the government (over Medicare among other things, something that conservatives are fiercely defending these days by the way) and impeaching the President.  As a sideline, a noticeable percentage of them subsequently specialized in every imaginable form of moral turpitude.

Mark himself rode into town on the strength of his piety and cost cutting ways.  He has worn both of those credentials with pride up to the present day.

So what has the conservative darling accomplished recently?  Well for starters, he shut the state down over his grandstanding about not taking $700 million in federal stimulus funds.  By the time that was litigated and slammed back down his throat the legislative session was toast.  They got nothing done.  On the heals of that he decamped to the Appalachian trail, and who knew that it ran all the way to Buenos Aires, and you know how that one played out.  Given that all things government are presumptively evil, some I’m sure find at least the first part of this agreeable in the extreme.  But what about the second bit?

The pious one is now barnstorming the state on what is described by many as a “reconciliation tour.”  Or to put it bluntly, he is giving his personal testimony to every Christian with an ounce of power and the time to listen.  This is standard fare for besmirched believers and serves all players in the drama well.  The forgiver accrues political power and the forgiven gets to return to the playing field.  It’s political kabuki at its finest and as long as everyone plays the part correctly, all is forgiven.  This will be true for governor Mark, just as it has been true of a long, long line of politically powerful and politically useful sinners for lo these many years (even mass murders are washed clean in this life if they confess according to the formula to the right people).  The fact that his wife wants nothing to do with him and is writing a tell-all is another thing.

So now, the man-who-won’t-resign is holding secret negotiations to shower Boeing with huge financial benefits, benefits by the way that will exceed the financial value of the stimulus money he so roundly rejected, to entice the company to come on down and give 3000 jobs to all those non-union workers who have no experience building airplanes and no education in what it takes to do so. 

(As an aside, given Boeing’s recent and appalling record at doing just about anything right, particularly delivering the 787, I can see why they would want to have even more work done in a part of the country best known for the Confederate Battle Flag on the State House Building and that last enjoyed a strong economy in the 1860s but that’s another matter.  Attention management.  Your problem isn’t cost control. It’s competence.)

So my question is, what does it mean anymore to be a conservative? 

Mark Sanford’s pecker problems have more to do with hubris than religion, so I’m not generalizing based on his fine example.  No party or political belief system has a lock on stupidity, hubris, and especially falling from grace, but American conservatives have turned the whole fall-forgiveness-redemption-back to work thing into high art.

But how do you square the part about handing Boeing massive chunks of the tax payers’ money other than it’s expedient?  Is that not a shining example of the moral relativism that conservatives bleat so loudly about when it comes to liberals?  Giving money to taxpayers who are down on their luck is bad.  And let us be clear that the reasons people like Sanford believe this are a toxic mix of big-business capitalism and a perverse 20th-21st century Calvinism.  But giving equal or greater sums of money to a large enterprise whose leadership has eviscerated one of the greatest engineering and manufacturing companies in the world and whose competitive strategy is based on taking work from people who know how to do it and give it to firms and people who don’t is a good thing?

None of this is surprising or even noteworthy other than it’s such a stunning example of what the GOP has become, at least on a national scale.  There, in the span of a single narrative it is: Big Business socialism wrapped in a thin free-market candy coating joined up with a fervent religiosity where anything goes as long as its done by the washed.

This rant begins with a story.

I just came back from a road trip where I spent two days trying to close out a negotiation I started a year ago.  For our little company, it’s big money.  Up until yesterday, I thought the number was in the x range over several years.  Turns out there are new facts on the ground so it’s y in the range.  But still big.  The actual amounts don’t matter.

So what does an entrepreneur do?  You figure out a way to deliver value to the client under the new constraints.  You rescope, rescale, and rethink.

If you were a squad of Marines in a similar situation (and we know that no government employee is capable of doing anything well; that taking a pay check from the taxpayers automatically makes you stupid whereas taking a subsidy or an anti-trust exemption makes you smart), what would they do?  Different words but the same thing.  You focus on the mission and figure out a way to get it done given the facts on the ground and the resources you have.  Sure it might be useful to have close air support but if all you have are M4 carbines, you solve the problem with those.

And if you’re a big player in the health care “industry”, say a large payor, what would you do?  After all you believe in free markets, open competition,  and the consumers’ right to choose.  At least that’s what you’ve been bleating to anyone that will listen for the past oh-so-many years.

Oh, wait, you have an anti-trust exemption.  Oh wait, the big decision makers are paid hundreds of times what their employees and customers are, so they’re completely insulated from market forces.  You do what you always do!  You dig in and fight, not in pursuit of the mission but to pump more fog onto the battle field.  You argue that the mission is wrong, that the facts on the ground are irrelevant, that the rules are unfair, that having to compete actually isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, unless it’s under the thick cloak of anti-trust protection.

With that in mind hear me cheering wildly as Obama throws down the gloves.  From the NYT . . .

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to push back against industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”

Rather than trying to curb costs and help patients, he said the industry is busy “figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

We are suckers for a national narrative that says what is good for massive bureaucratic companies in consolidated industries that systematically and consistently use their resources to kill off competition, particularly the nimble entrepreneurial kind that would actually drive down costs and improve care—and health care is the poster child for this—is good for the rest of us, even in the face of mountains of evidence that there are superior alternatives.

My read on the latest facts on the ground is that Obama thought he had some sort of deal.  Predictably he didn’t.  I am really going to enjoy watching what I hope is a first class cage match.

Tags: Obama, healthcare, healthinsurance, cagematch

Some people have many friends.  I’m not that person.  While I know many people, I count very few of them as true friends and fewer still are in the inner circle.

Steve is one of those in that circle.  I’ve known Steve since I was in high school.  I met him because he dated my younger sister.  She met him because he knew my mom from her work as a campus counselor at the college in Brockport, NY. At least for me it wasn’t love at first sight.  He was just this guy.  And then he became a friend.

Over the years Steve and I had some good adventures together.  We did some carpentry together, drove across the country, went to Hawaii and renovated a building, and started a coffee company.  He was at my wedding.  Over the years, we emailed each other not weekly but nearly.  We talked on the phone a couple of times a year and we got together when I was back in Rochester or nearby there.  There are lots of people that I spent more time with, and the same is true for him, but it misses the point to think that accumulated time is the measure of a friendship.

Every time we talked it was like we had paused for five minutes instead of five months.  It was all one big dialog.  We talked and messaged about politics, cars, motorbikes, and the random goofiness of life—just the other day he sent me an Internet sightem of a motorbike some guy had made out of a Citroen.  We also talked about religion, philosophy, metaphysics, love, sex, life, Jung, God, Gnosticism, Agnosticism, and isms I can no longer recall.  He knew the substance of my heart and I like to think I knew what made him tick.

Yes, past tense has arrived.  I learned today that Steve was killed in a freak accident.  He was riding his bike, swerved to miss a dog, fell and never got back up.  One of the people closest to my heart is dead and I’m shattered.

Steve believed in God.  He was a Christian Scientist and took strength and comfort in a life informed by study and prayer.  I was raised in the same religion but no longer believe in God.  I say this because in the midst of the pain and emptiness I feel, I at least don’t have to labor with pointless questions about “why?”

Why does a dog pick that moment to run into the road?  Why ride that road vs. another?  Why does a man so full of life and love die before his time?  Why must a woman so filled with life and love for this man, now have to live without him?  How is it right that a mother and father have to bury their son?  What makes it okay that a brother can no longer pick up the phone to shoot the breeze or ask a question?  What plan is served here?

There are no useful answers to these questions.  It just happened and now we have to deal with it.

Fortunately there are wonderful memories.  My wife told me today that Steve is one of the few people we know that lived his life just how he wanted.  If that’s not a true statement, he sure did a fine imitation.  There was always something broken to fix, some odd part to be sourced, some project his wife needed doing, some new demand from Church or family and at least to my eyes and ears, Steve was always amused, bemused, and entertained to be doing it (yes, I did hear him swear at a particularly dumb piece of auto engineering from under some car or other but that doesn’t count).

His laugh came from his toes and took his entire body with it.  His smile made his large head ten times larger.  He walked like a fullback and skied like a drunk.  Everything he did, he did with purpose and determination.  I struggled to keep up.

In my mind, Steve was a wizard with a wrench.  If it was mechanical and it wasn’t working, he was the guy you wanted nearby.  If it was a British car (and later and Alfa Romeo) that went double.

Some years ago I bought a 1966 Austin Healy 3000, the famous “Big Healy.”  It had belonged to a guy I vaguely knew and had been sitting in a garage for years going on decades.  The interior had become a mouse hotel and the boot looked like an elephant had sat on it, but everything else was straight and true.

The car sat in my garage while I tried to sort it out.  Not being a wizard with a wrench I quickly got to the point where I was out of tricks and the car still wouldn’t start.  So I called Steve.

Steve always answered the phone the same way.  “Hea-low.”  I can’t write it the way he said it but if you know him, you know what I mean.  Steve had a Healy some years ago and had taken me for a ride so memorable, I wrote a story about the experience that won me a sparkling grade in a 400 level writing class at University.

He asked me a couple of questions and then diagnosed the problem.  He was of course right.  The car was positive ground and I had put the distributor back together the wrong way.  Not a big story or even an interesting story . . . but those are the kind of things you remember and smile about.

In 1980 Steve and I drove a ten-year-old Mercedes Benz from Rochester to Hawaii.  Actually we only drove it as far as Los Angeles via Canada, Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin, Rochester Minnesota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Missoula Montana, Seattle, and San Francisco (there’s a reason for remembering it like that).  The car had belonged to my Grandfather and had grown down at its heels with rust.  Steve and I did a brake job (alright, I helped) and tune-up.  I had a guy put on a new front fender and paint it.  Another friend (who oddly also died much too young) helped me install a monster hi-fi.  We loaded the trunk with stuff, the back seat with snacks and cassette tapes, and off we went.

Back then we both believed, so we’d start the day reading scripture and chatting privately with God.  Prayed up, fooded and fueled we’d pop a tape in the deck and keep the car pointed west.  By the mid-west, we hadn’t run out of things to talk about but I can say for certain we were tired of the tapes.

Late the second night we pulled off US 90 at Rochester, MN thinking we’d sleep there.  The signs for the Clinic View Hotel seemed inviting.  For those not following the libretto, Rochester is home to the Mayo Clinic, and that was the Clinic in view of the Hotel.  But we didn’t make that connection until we were walking down the hall to check-in, wondering why there were stainless steel railings down both hall walls and why the floors were all tiled.  We literally ran the other way, got in the car and sped out of town . . .

. . . until there was this terrible noise and we lost our headlights.  The wizard with the wrench was driving, got us to the side of the road, and soon puzzled out that the hood support—and you have to know cars of this type and vintage to know that we’re talking about an articulated armature with a big garage door type of spring on it—had finally gotten the best of the cancerous inner fender, punching through and taking out the fuse box with it.  We spent the night in some Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere.  Steve fixed things up the next day and on we went.

Later that same trip we started to notice a growing swarm of Harley Davidsons heading west.  First one, then some, then it was like a bad dream.  It wasn’t until later we found out they were all heading to Sturgis, Mecca for 50,000 Harley drivers every summer.  We just thought we were going to die.

Somewhere in South Dakota we pulled into a rest stop.  We were both in khaki shorts, tennis shoes, and polo shirts (at least I was).  Steve ran on to the head, but I for some reason stopped to quiz a group of obvious reprobates as to why they were watching a leather clad monkey jump up and down on a kick-start of an obviously unimpressed Harley Davidson.  What possessed me I don’t know but the story that unfolded was they were on their way to Sturgis (what?) and the owner of the big two-wheeled paperweight had just the day before installed an SU carburetor (as HD drivers did back then) and now the fucker wouldn’t start yet alone run right.  You can see where this is going.

Back in the head, I told Steve about my great discovery.  He being Steve wandered up to the sweaty and crabby mob and said something like, “What seems to be the problem?”  Those weren’t the words exactly but it was like that: like of course a guy in shorts and a polo shirt would not only ask the killer throng but would have the answer as well. Which he did.

Somehow Steve persuaded the bike owner that he knew what the problem was and that he could fix it with a screwdriver or even a beer can pull-tab.  It was a measure of the man’s frustration and anger that he agreed.  With that, Steve rebuilt the carb (common problem aligning the jet and needle it turns out) and then said, “Let me show you how to start it.”  Well that was too much for macho man, so Steve settled for telling him the secret incantation and order of services.

The bike started on the second kick and much merriment followed during which we learned that the death dealers were really laid off GM assembly line workers and were hale and agreeable gals and guys.  Oh.

Which leads me to the only possible lesson I can at this time take from this.  It’s simply this.  All the clichés are true.  In this case, it’s “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”  The Harley drivers were good folks.  So was Steve. But for the way we all looked to each other, we might never have met and they might still be at that rest stop.

Another that comes to mind is “live each day like it’s your last.”  Steve died on September 10, but it wasn’t something anyone saw coming.  I have my own story about canceling an appointment on September 11, 2001 to be in the World Trade Center at 9:00 AM.  We don’t get to know.  What I do know is that to my eyes and in my heart, I know that Steve lived every day he was alive.  He lived his days well.  He loved and laughed and cried and did it all like nobody else before or ever will.  He was his own person and we loved him for that.

Finally, I’m reminded of all the different versions of “Don’t go to bed mad at anyone.”  Our friendships are too dear and too precious:  Our family members even more so. I have thought about Steve all day and I can say with complete love and certainty that there is nothing I want back.  There are no words I wish I didn’t say, no thoughts I wish I hadn’t thought, and no memories I wish would go away.  They’re all nothing but good.  I wish there were more of them, I really, really do, but I am treasuring and holding tight to the ones I have.

I loved Steve.  I knew that before he died.  I never told him but I know he knew.  Today I made sure that the people close to me know that I love them.  Please do the same.

Good-bye Steve.  I miss you.