The View from Short Final Podcast

Summers Over.

We closed the pool and put away the patio furniture yesterday. The literal end of the season for us. It’s always bittersweet losing our outdoor dining, drinking, and gathering space.

This is the first time I’ve closed the pool in a long time. We’ve been having one of the two pool places in Danbury close it ever since we got frustrated with the other place, who installed the pool in 1997.

The new company stopped emailing us closing reminders — and if you don’t give them a date by mid-July, they book up, then they’re coming in late October.

In mid-July the last thing I am thinking about is closing the pool. We discussed it a few times while sitting poolside but one of my friends wouldn’t hear of it. “Close it the weekend after Labor Day? Madness, I won’t hear of it” he said as he skulked off to his bar, in our basement, and poured himself a strong one to salve the anguish of that thought.

We live on the edge of the Appalachian oak-hickory forest ecosystem. We’re literally surrounded by trees. Oak, Hickory, Tulip, Maple, and Birches are the major species which at this time of year are starting to change color into a wonderous palate of hues.

Soon the New York Times will be publishing clips on the fall foliage and what areas are in peak season. This usually attracts people from New York Metro to get in cars and drive slow all over our and neighboring communities to peep at the leaves. After those leaves have entertained the masses, they invariably start falling. The uncovered pool seems to have a magnetic property drawing them into the water. Left unattended they steep like English breakfast tea filling the pool and staining it similarly to the dentures shown in cleaning tablet commercials from the 70s.

Reality is I only go into the pool when the water temperature tops 80 degrees. We used to have a propane heater which gave us mid-May until late September’s worth of usage. We kept the pool open one year when my brother and his kids came to visit deep into October. We heated it from two large bottles of propane and had a thick bubble wrap cover mounted on a reel that required two people to roll it on and off.

My niece and nephew were little when they came, and the weather was sunny around 70 when we rolled the cover off. The kids hopped into the 85-degree water and were swimming and splashing and having a great time until the wind started blowing. Once they felt that 70-degree wind against the 85-degree water they asked, “Uncle Sean, can we use the hot tub?”

That night we left the cover off and the next morning, in the quiet air, we awoke to a perfect kidney shaped column of steam rising from the water’s surface into the sky. My wife Judy is a self-identified, card carrying, radical, liberal-tree-hugging-environmental-feminist.

Judy decreed that the pool would never be heated again, justifying this position with the fact that we live in a passive solar home and have spent more heating the pool this summer than we spent to heat the house all winter. This was a truth that could not be disputed.

I discreetly used the heater one more time to burn off the remaining propane in the tanks and it caught on fire. Judy nonchalantly mentioned that something was wrong with the pool heater. When I looked outside a four-foot plume of flames was shooting from the top. Running outside I shut off the gas at the bottles, and we never mentioned it again. We had my sister and her husband the plumber over for dinner and he cut and capped off the pipes, deinstalled the heater which I brought it to the landfill later. That’s what you get when you defy your bride’s decree.

Anyway, back to this week, we’ve been watching the forecast and there has been a tale of a powerful Nor’easter coming up the coast poised to strike New England on the Connecticut coastline.

Depending on whose weather dice you’re watching this could be either a home run or a swing and a miss. I’ve always believed that luck favors the well prepared and after hearing the forecast we decided to strike the patio and close the pool. Lacking the jet pump the pool companies use I decided that I would just open the valve on the filter and use the circulating pump to bring it down to the skimmer then use a standpipe assembly I constructed from two ten-foot lengths of one inch and a half PVC with flexible couplings on the joints. Judy ordered a closing kit from Amazon, but they have a new option where it defaults to environmentally conscious shipping so it wouldn’t have made it on time.

Off to pool company number one, where they sold us the same kit we ordered for a mere $37 more than the Jeff Bezos price. A trip or two to Home Depot for things we forgot, and we were well into it.

While I was doing all that Judy set about disassembling the patio and loading the contents into our shed making it a tightly packed cube where removing one piece that you might need requires unloading the whole lot.

We drained it down, packed away the pump and the filter, blew out and capped the underground return lines. I vacuumed the water out of the skimmer and the low water bypass line, poured a gallon of RV anti-freeze in the skimmer line and capped them both.

I open the pool every year in April, and it’s always a struggle to get the Loop-loc cover off, putting it on was a new experience. It was a double the nightmare putting it back down with some almost divorce inducing disagreements on technique.

Several years ago, we bought a Stand Straight Christmas tree stand the moment they came out, and it may have saved our marriage. That’s the stand where the tree guys bore a hole in the bottom of the tree and you simply place the tree onto the stand which has a mating PVC dowel that the tree is placed on. Nothing tested us like lying on the floor turning rusted thumbscrews into a Fraser fir’s trunk, sap on your hands, yelling up “is it straight yet?” —tightening all three, easing off when she said yes, and watching it tip sideways anyway. Putting that cover on was the pool version of the same fight.

We started at 10:30 in the morning and finished at 4:20 in the afternoon. We saved the $750 charge by doing it ourselves and got it covered before the trees full of leaves were prematurely defoliated by the high winds and wind driven rain expected over the weekend.

Next year I’m buying the jet pump with the fifteen hundred I saved by doing it ourselves.

This is a reader supported publication. Your likes, comments, and shares mean the world to me. If you’ve already subscribed I thank you. If you haven’t already please consider doing so. It’s free!

I’m Sean a 65 year old first generation American. My mom came from Ireland through Ellis Island. My dad’s mom came from Ireland and landed in Boston. I was born in New York, live in Western Connecticut USA and write (rant) about things related to Aviation, The Healthcare Industrial Complex, Addiction and how it has impacted me from my childhood to the present day. And technology. I was a technology consultant before I started flying professionally. It bought and maintained the two airplanes that used to train in and received all but one pilot certificates in.

Just click this button here.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Chub Cay

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. Routine eye exam over in Newtown. It was 09:30 and I needed to allow 45 minutes to get there with the morning traffic. I got up at 05:00 when Missy my white cat woke me.

We have two cats that are totally different when it comes to waking us up. Missy is nice she makes little trills and brushes your face with her whiskers to wake you then comes across the top of your pillow and does it to the other side of your face then goes to the bottom of the bed and waits on the footboard. Rusty’s a dick he’ll sit on top of your bladder then climb up and bat you in the face with slightly extended claws. I was happy to get up for Missy this morning.

We went out for our morning walk around 7am with me being mindful of my 08:45 departure time to arrive at the doctors on time. We had a quick breakfast, and I hopped into the shower and got dressed.

I always dress for healthcare appointments. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of bringing my dad and my sister to doctors’ appointments and was with them during many of these occasions. First impressions being lasting ones. If I am going to be in a situation where someone is going to be touching my body or getting close enough to me to examine it, I want to be dressed well, clean and nice smelling. Their job is difficult enough without it being unpleasant as well.

So, with no time to spare what to wear? I started digging though my collection of black Nike Golf Dri-Fit polo shirts, most of them were uniform pieces and swag from my flying days emblazoned with logos of the companies I’ve worked at or different resorts I have visited where I spent the ~$65-85 to remember them by.

I try not to be one of those guys who advertises that I was a pilot everywhere I go. A flight attendant could pick me out of a crowd by the outfit — expensive running shoes with no-see-um black socks,, cargo shorts, and today it was the Chub Cay shirt.

Just touching the shirt brought back memories. Many of them good, some not so good.

The job I got from the dead friend.

I got laid off from Excelaire on April 10th, 2020, after Governor DeSantis put a 14-day quarantine on passengers arriving from the northeast traveling to Florida during the start of Covid 19 pandemic in the United States.

New York, particularly New York Metro was explicitly named as it was the epicenter of the virus’s spread in the northeast. New Rochelle had National Guard troops activated to establish a one-mile containment zone on March 12th 2020.

I had been flying evacuating wealthy folks from New York to their vacation properties around the nation. Even my hometown of New Fairfield’s population blew up to summertime proportion as the communities around Candlewood Lake began filling up months earlier than normal, as their owners fled the city and surrounding suburbs to their vacation homes.

While I was upset about the layoff, I was scared about the potential for exposure and generally fearful of getting this new deadly disease in a city far from my home and being deathly ill and possibly dying in a hotel room.

Unemployment was available and with the federal subsidy it was $1100 a week. I was happy as a clam collecting that money not being exposed anymore. Forty-four hundred a month to hang at home with my wife and paid my half of the bills. There is a catch with unemployment though, you must look for work.

I posted on Facebook that I was out of work and looking, got a lot of sympathetic responses but no real hits. I checked the job boards I normally used but Excelaire wasn’t operating in a vacuum. They laid me off; they furloughed many more. The bread and butter of these companies was selling airplane rides from the northeast to Florida and back in the springtime. No one was looking for pilots.

I spent a lot of time online and one day I spotted a post that a friend I had known since he was in cub scouts had died. A fellow pilot, I went to his Facebook profile and wrote my typical pilot farewell post. “So long Captain. Blue skies and tailwinds on your final flight west. Regrettably It’s a flight we all must take. Find all the good bars and I’ll see you out there when it’s my turn. Farewell Buddy”

I didn’t think anything about it, and I really don’t remember how much time elapsed and I went about my business at home. We were erecting a new fence around the garden which we expanded adding another ten feet to the width bringing it to its present size of fifty-by-fifty feet.

Fence building is thirsty work, and I came in for a break one day and sat in front of my computer and opened a hop water and checked Facebook. I had a message on Messenger. Opening it up it was from the dead friend. Reading the message, it was actually from his wife who I had gone to High School with.

She said she had seen that I had posted on Facebook that I was out of work. She saw my post on her husband’s page. She asked me if I was interested in replacing her husband at his position.

I responded and expressed my sympathies for her loss, and how appreciative I was she was thinking of me during such a difficult time. And of course I would be interested in hearing about the opportunity.

She got back to me and asked for a current resume which I sent to her. A few days later I got a call from the lead on the airplane. He was stuck in Chub Cay with the boss and his airplane, and it was AOG (Aircraft on Ground) with some maintenance issues. They couldn’t get parts and a mechanic to fly down there to fix it and then get back into the country.

After protracted negotiations I started work there on June 15th. I attended Indoc and company ground training in Chicago and opted to rent a car and drive there vs. flying getting a room at a Residence Inn where the room had a kitchen and I brought my own food from home in a cooler and a small gas-powered hibachi where I would make my own lunches and dinners in the room and the parking lot and eat in my room.

I couldn’t do that with the type training which was in Tucson Arizona, and I flew out and stayed at Residence Inn the necessary 28 days to get the Challenger 600 type rating. I did visit Whole Foods to buy my food and Target for a new grill, but I cooked in the parking lot and ate in my room as I did at the Waukegan hotel.

We flew a couple charter trips and on December 18th we left for Chub Cay.

Chub Cay is part of the Berry Islands where it sits at the southeastern tip. It sits roughly 30 miles northwest of Nassau Bahamas on the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean. The Tongue is a deepwater channel that makes it the billfishing capital of the Bahamas. In the 1950’s and 60’s it was an unimproved fishing camp frequented by those wealthy enough to seek the best. The Cay is uniquely positioned between shallow flats on one shore and thousands of feet of deep water on the other.

I’ve yet to partake of the joys of fishing, perhaps retirement will change that, but the way it was explained to me was schools of smaller fish would live on the edge of the shallows which draw award-winning billfish out of the deep to feed. Listening to the crews and their clients at the club house bar said much of it depended on the direction of the winds. An east-southeast wind impacts the surface current physically pushing the bait fish schools. With that same wind blowing onto a shoreline, it concentrates them and their food supply along the windward edge. Once the bait fish concentrate along the windward edge the predators cruising the drop off follow the food. Opportunistic fishing crews are paid well to seek out these signs affording their clients opportunities to catch trophy fish. This combination made it the place to sport fish for the Rockefellers, DuPonts and Bushes and other wealthy denizens of the Cay.

I was accustomed to flying to the Bahamas. My first trip was to Freeport with Judy on December 27th, 2003, in our Mooney. I had flown to the major islands and some of the out islands in both the Embraers and the Gulfstream IVs in the ensuing years. The lead on the airplane had worked for the owner Mr. K most of his career starting over twenty years earlier when both were much younger. I was the FNG (f*****g new guy) with a handful of right seat hours in the Challenger and aside from the trip we made back on September 22nd where myself, the lead, and the mechanic flew empty to check me out and I got to fly from the right seat and since then it was my only stick time.

The lead did all the baggage loading and it was a literal jigsaw puzzle in a tiny baggage area. The bags showed up in a couple of minivans, seats removed or flattened out by the owner’s drivers. As the FNG I was the interloper. The plane was based in the same FBO that I had been based at when I worked at JetEdge and had been in and out of there with Excelaire, so I knew the folks who worked there and they knew me. They all seemed surprised that I was working for Mr. K’s shop. I was relegated to the basic stuff handing bags up preflighting and going through the motions. The other guy took care of all the other things. The Chefs showed up first. They were a married couple with a young daughter. I met them and we staged their bags. Formally trained at a world-renowned culinary school, they observed a certain etiquette and didn’t board, sitting in their car instead.

Finally, the owner showed with his personal assistant. We were introduced and I said, “pleasure to meet you sir” and he said something like “you just met me, wait a little while.”

A pile of pizzas showed up from Colony Pizza in Stamford, far too many for the number of passengers we were bringing. I said nothing. Doors closed, engines started, clearance copied and input, we called for taxi and headed on out to the runway. An uneventful takeoff on the Westchester Seven departure we contacted departure and were on our way. Somewhere around halfway the Chef’s wife came up and asked us what kind of pizza we wanted, telling us what was left. I said it didn’t matter as I knew in these situations it usually ended up being whatever was left after the passengers had their feed.

Having worked for an airline, they drummed into us checklist discipline and the importance of the briefings to develop the shared mental model of each phase of the flight. The longer I had been away from the airline, I had witnessed loosely consistent variations on this. One of the things they were emphatic on was the arrival and approach briefing detailing how we were going to descend and the approach procedure. It was all very pedestrian.

Recalling the flight as I write this my brief would have been “We’re landing at Chub Cay International. The winds favor a visual approach to runway 11, on our heading it would suggest left base entry. We’ll land straight ahead and stop on the runway; we’ll 180 on the pavement and taxi to the ramp on the left. Should we go missed for any reason we’ll climb runway heading to 1000 and re-enter the pattern via a left crosswind fly a normal approach and try it again — any questions?” We descend and are taken down to three thousand feet. We’re handed off to Nassau approach who are waiting for us to tell them we have the field in sight. The lead tells me he has the field so I relay it back to Nassau we cancel the instrument flight plan and switch to the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) where I call saying Chub Cay traffic a Challenger jet approaching for landing 10 miles to the northwest inbound for the left base entry runway 11 full stop landing.

The briefing is important because it lets us both know what to expect. Things are busy in a jet because they go real fast. I remember having an instructor screaming at me because I wasn’t responding to checklists prompts quickly or loudly enough by saying “your partner needs to know you’re still in the game — you could be incapacitated having a heart attack or passed out.

I continue reporting position in the blind at five miles and at three miles. I’m expecting us to be turning from base to final, but we keep descending on the same heading. We’re nowhere near the final approach course, still descending. I’m looking at a lot of blue water and see a marina with masts ahead and to our left. The Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS, pronounced Jip Wizz) wakes up and starts alerting us with “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull up!” at regular intervals. We’re coming through two hundred and I’m wondering what’s going on and about to speak when he turns over the marina, arrests the descent adding a generous amount of power with a climbing left turn into a left upwind to runway 11. Completely the opposite of what we briefly discussed.

We buzzed the marina where the boss kept his 90’ Hatteras fishing yacht, ostensibly to let the yacht crew know it was time to head to the airport with the Boss’ vehicles — a Nissan Pathfinder and an eight-man golf cart with a wheelchair ramp attached. Except Chub Cay International Airport doesn’t see enough jet traffic to need announcing. The whole island is barely a thousand acres, sixty percent of it preserved and undeveloped, leaving maybe four hundred acres for the town, the marina, the hotel, the condos, the townhouses, the solar farm, the garages, and the airport itself. A normal approach in a swept wing transport category jet would have worked just as well and more discretely than a low pass over the masts. But the boss loved it. He’d been a pilot himself once, though he hadn’t flown in years, and whatever appetite he still had for airplanes and boats got fed the only way it could anymore — not by flying them, but by owning them, and by watching someone else fly them the way he used to.

I had read about doing this practice in a book about flying in the Bahamas and Frank Kingston Smith’s “Weekend Wings” a book I read when I was a student pilot. Buzz the town so they know to send the cab. But that was in a piston single Piper not in a large cabin business jet with a maximum landing weight of thirty-six thousand pounds and why not brief the “sporty arrival”?

The landing was uneventful and we 180 on the runway and taxi back to a crushed coral ramp on the side of the narrow runway. The opposite side of the runway has a paved ramp but no FBO (fixed base operator). The only building housed the customs office and another small office. The passengers cleared customs while we loaded the bags and the people went ahead — the boss and assistant to the boat, everyone else to the townhouse. We waited at the airport and cleared customs while they unloaded them. There were two ATVs left out by the plane and those were for us. One of them had a trailer attached and we closed the plane, loaded up our stuff, and went into town.

The lead checks me into the hotel, and while I’m at the front desk, one of the guests in the lobby says to both of us “you’re the pilots of the jet, that was so cool you guys buzzing the marina”. I said, “wasn’t us, probably another crew.” The lead wasn’t as bashful. I kept thinking he was nuts. His contention was we weren’t on radar, maybe not Nassau’s but Miami probably painted us, and the cockpit voice and flight data recorder were logging that data. I remember Frank from Jet Edge telling me about witnessing guys coming out of NTSB interviews where they had to be debriefed by the company at ExpressJet. Frank told me how mortified those guys were when the CVR was transcribed and played to them. I could only imagine having participated in some fruity language on the flight deck myself.

We got me settled in my room and he left to go get himself settled in the townhouse. I followed him with the ATV so I got to know the lay of the land. Walking back, I called Judy, ranted about the arrival and then went downstairs to eat dinner alone at the bar.

I hated going to sleep in a room straight from The Shining — all it was missing was the two little girls. I fall asleep and at 11pm the fire alarm goes off. Up until Covid I had been spending ~170 nights a year just in Marriotts. I was used to hotel fire alarms – you let them ring for a couple moments and wait until you get the all clear from the front desk. Firetrucks are usually in the parking lot by the time you make it downstairs. But after a couple minutes I make my way down to the deserted lobby and run into the occupants of the three other rooms presently checked in. Myself and the six other guests of the hotel, meet in the vacant lobby, determine there is no one there, no emergency services on the island, and no staff to turn it off. I went out and slept on a chaise lounge by the pool which was far away enough from the building so the alarm wasn’t ear splitting. I awoke at 0530 in the morning when the cooks arrived to start up the restaurant and shut off the alarm. I made my way up to my room and took a nap before the sun was high in the sky. I went down for coffee and breakfast. Then I walked down to the townhouse to have a cup of coffee that wasn’t $6.00 and met the Chefs and boat crews.

Welcome to Chub Cay

This is a reader supported publication. Your likes, comments, and shares mean the world to me. If you’ve already subscribed I thank you. If you haven’t already please consider doing so. It’s free!

I’m Sean a 65 year old first generation American. My mom came from Ireland through Ellis Island. My dad’s mom came from Ireland and landed in Boston. I was born in New York, live in Western Connecticut USA and write (rant) about things related to Aviation, The Healthcare Industrial Complex, Addiction and how it has impacted me from my childhood to the present day. And technology. I was a technology consultant before I started flying professionally. It bought and maintained the two airplanes that used to train in and received all but one pilot certificates in.

Just click this button here.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I wrote the original email, which I sent out on 9/13/2001, to tell friends and colleagues who wanted to know if I was still alive. It was short because I wrote it fast and because there was too much to put into an email, especially back then when email size limits were small and storage was at a premium. Twenty-five years later, for the anniversary, I went back and wrote down most of the things I left out. I mentioned it to someone and “they said — ‘Oh, so this is the director’s cut.’”

Director’s Cut

I wrote the email on 9/12/2001 and sent it out the next day to my friends and people I had recent regular business dealings with. It made its way around the bank because when I went back to work on the eighteenth all manner of people had copies of it — probably because of my pictures. For nine years after the tragedy on September 11th, 2001, Wilson Chou, Pete Atshaves, Tony Costa, Kevin Boyce and I would get together on the anniversary. As the years elapsed, one by one they all stopped coming until finally it was just me.

Originally, we’d all meet up at One State Street Plaza then walk over to World Financial Center #2 where we would be able to get a good look at the pit and surrounding ceremony without dealing with the crowd. We’d then go and have drinks and talk about the day — who was where, what extra detail did you just remember, and the like. After that we’d have lunch split up and go home.

The whole ordeal fucked me up for a good long time. Watching all my confederates from the experience peel off from our own personal memorial and start moving on with their lives forced me to suck it up and wall it off. Don’t dwell, turn the page, there are no rearview mirrors on airplanes, live in the moment, move forward, life is for the living, were the things I had to tell myself.

All the cliches come easy. You just say them like a mantra, then dull your senses with alcohol and weed. The one thing that I have continued to carry is an intolerance of any activity that I felt was wasting my life force or time.

Judy felt bad for me in 2011 as I couldn’t get anyone else to go anymore, so for the tenth anniversary she took the day off from work and came down to the city with me and we did the things I would have done with the guys in the same order. Then after 10 years I stopped going. Everyone else had moved on so it was only right that I should too. I didn’t know why I couldn’t let go. Judy sat there, listened patiently, and smiled.

Experiencing it firsthand, or live, on site, not “where were you when it happened” or “what were you doing when you heard?” I was f*****g there. On the street corner of Battery Place and Greenwich because I foolishly left “safety” to check it out. If Kevin hadn’t wisely slow walked — which at the time I found so annoying — we probably would have been right on the doorstep of the south tower when the second plane hit. Out of the building it was a left on Whitehall, a left on Pearl, cross Battery Place, onto the perimeter sidewalk of Battery Park. From there it was sidewalk northbound until we crossed Battery Place again standing on the threshold of Greenwich Street when the second plane flew over out heads. The impact of the second plane was in front of my face and it blew my hair. Me turning to my right where Kevin was. Kevin’s a big dude, football player sized. He disappeared like smoke after the plane smacked the building. He left me standing there, viciously hungover, crispy— looking up, staring at the building, and suddenly seeing movement in my lower peripheral vision. On looking down it appeared like the running of the bulls. Greenwich Street from sidewalk to sidewalk was filled with people running down the street towards me in the road. Me slowly wondering, what are they thinking, and why they running my way — then realizing they likely have their reasons, let’s not wait to ask them. Why? Because it’s time to go. I started making my way back to the bank by retracing the route we had just taken.

Several weeks earlier, in late July, Myself, Drew, and Ann flew my 1975 Mooney Executive 21 airplane to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for the big AirVenture 2001 show. One afternoon while we were there, we happened upon the North 40 in the northwest corner of the field. As we were walking across the grass, a flight of two B-1B Lancer bombers came across the field about 500’ above the surface. You heard them before you saw them and they got even louder when they passed you. All three of us are pilots and we stood in awe at the raw energy and engineering marvel these craft displayed. I mentioned, after they passed and the noise died off, that for the people who hear that sound when the plane is used in its actual application it’s usually the last thing they hear. I got some ribbing about my liberal pacifist tendencies — “c’mon we’re at an airshow Sean” — then weeks later, heard the same sound: the whine of large turbofan engines at high thrust down low. The sound you’d hear at an airshow.

It wasn’t a movie, a clip, or TV show and I wasn’t thinking about why or who did it or if it was a hoax. Simply put, I was worried for my life, and too busy escaping to try and figure it out.

I was alternating between talking to Judy on the phone and the people who were now all around us. All completely shocked by the catastrophe. Arriving back at the building, I was surprised to see everyone milling about on the sidewalk and when I found some of my associates they told me they were told to go downstairs out onto the street. I found out later the fear was that more planes were coming to crash into buildings. So out of an abundance of caution some authority decided being on the street would forestall the hardship of evacuating a burning building should their worst fears prevail.

Ultimately it was decided that we would have to return to our desks. We were at work after all. Everyone filed into the building and went to our respective floors. There was a line at the elevator, I worked on the 10th floor and after a while I made it up there.

I sat on the north side of the building in a low cube at the end of a row of high cubes. Kevin sat in the cube behind mine. They were secretarial cubes, when you bill by the hour, they want to see your heads from anywhere in the room. Wilson Chou, my boss, sat opposite the window wall. Sharon Smith was Kevin’s boss. A beautiful blonde woman who was Wilson’s peer but on the applications side. Wilson was on the corner. Sharon sat on the long side of the row, an aisleway separating them both from the glass. You could clearly see the trade center out the window wall both towers now smoking.

No one was working. They were either alternating between calling their family and friends to describe what was going on or hanging in the aisleway between Sharon and Wilson’s office staring at the burning buildings and the large trails of smoke wafting away from them. There was lots of chatter. Sharon was upset and crying a bit, her cube was closest to the glass. We’re all talking about what happened and most of us were trying to comfort her. I was saying they build these buildings to withstand plane crashes remember the Empire State Building was hit by a B-25 bomber and they opened the building two days later. Pete Atshaves is countering every point I am making with “They’ll never going to be able to use those buildings again, they’ll have to be torn down.” And I pull Pete out of Sharon’s earshot “Ixnay Pete, you’re upsetting her.” Pete’s a gruff Brooklynite, a no-nonsense guy with that thick old school Brooklyn accent and he just keeps ranting; I’m trying to console Sharon and others when the floor starts rumbling and our coffees and water bottles start getting ripples in them from the vibration. As quick as I could say “Pete stop it” the first building thundered to the ground.

They closed the shades on the windows. There you go it’s fixed. I went to my desk and emptied my drawers and desktop into my briefcase.

We were told we would be evacuating to the lobby. A big room, it ran only half the depth between Whitehall and State Streets. The other half had a tall service garage entrance, and the balance was filled with the building utilities and mechanicals which occupied the bottom couple of floors tucked in below and behind the ceiling and the room occupied by elevator banks. The lobby’s width ran from Pearl Street to State Street with a piece on the Pearl Street side carved out for an Au Bon Pain. It contained three banks of elevators on the west side in vestibules with elevators on either side of each aisle. The space was jammed with the better part of one thousand souls from the west walls in the elevator banks to the glass walls and revolving doors leading out to Whitehall Street. It was a shade more crowded than a cocktail party but less crowded than a stage front mosh pit. You could move around a bit, but you continually had to ask people to let you through.

I ran into Mr. Darcy, the EVP and CAO of the bank, in the office of the president. I had installed bank remote access equipment at his home in Westchester recently and had been back a time or two helping him get adjusted to accessing his work from home. We both nodded and said something like rough day. He said he’d be driving home soon and asked if I’d like a ride. I thanked him for thinking of me and said it would be better if he would use my seat for another person on his staff who wasn’t as mobile as I was.

We couldn’t see the second tower collapse, but we lost what little sunlight that was making it through the debris saturated air outside as a fresh tidal wave of material rolled past our building through the canal that was State Street onto the harbor. The air quality in the lobby became intolerable.

It was suggested that we go down into Sub Cellar 2 where the bank had shared space with Fiserv. IBJW had floorspace in a corner in that datacenter, and I had my lab setup in a small room where the bank’s disaster recovery standby datacom lines came into the building. There was a rack with some gear, a desk and a table where I had the configuration that I was installing in senior leadership and their staffs’ homes for remote access. A backup T1 ran under the Hudson River to Jersey City along with leased lines to SunGard in Carteret, New Jersey, where the high availability systems lived.

My second machine was hooked up in that room, and I went and checked the connectivity. Mostly all the communications south of Houston Street were severed when the second tower fell. The internet was working. I tried CNN.com where their page was all white, free of color, pictures, or graphics. The page in large block letters said AMERICA UNDER ATTACK and bulleted under that headline detailed the two towers and the Pentagon attack. I emailed Judy and told her I was safe in the cellar, and I’d get back to her when I had a plan.

People saw me using the computer and once Judy was notified, I offered it to the others in the room to contact their families. It was my machine, so it had AOL AIM on it which was the text app in 2001.

I don’t know how long we killed time down there, but I was getting antsy. Looking across the room, I spied a couple of painter’s masks hanging from the power switch on a huge Liebert air conditioner. Remembering how foul the air looked outside, I thought having a mask on would facilitate the walk out of there. But there were only two. I saw how quickly people glommed onto the laptop when they saw it was available. I didn’t want to get into a contractor vs. colleague dispute over a fifty-cent mask, but I also didn’t want to go outside without one. Everyone was in our corner of the room. Clearly not all the bank personnel had heeded the call to go below ground. I casually strolled across the floor and made it look like I was interested in the equipment. I arrived at the A/C unit, reached out, took one of the masks, and put it in the breast pocket of my suit jacket. I walked back up to Kevin and told him about the mask and watched him do the same thing.

Someone came downstairs and said that the air was clear and there was only smoke high above the surface. I left the laptop logged in and said, “safe home everyone” and we split.

We left the building into brilliant sunshine. The streets were trashed, littered with a couple of inches of dust ash and paper. Everything from bits to full sheets with writing on them, whole pages from people desks. And the stuff was blowing around when cars would come by. Not that there was much traffic save for police, fire, and emergency services.

We started walking east on a deserted Water Street. From Water we transitioned to South Street and turned left on Robert Wagner Place. We kept having to change direction to keep from getting sucked into the crowd that was being controlled by the authorities. They were routing people to the Brooklyn Manhattan or Williamsburg bridges, and off Manhattan.

We followed that up to Pearl Street into St. James Place. Keeping the park to our right. There were aid workers every few blocks who were handing out masks and bottles of water. During one stretch we were part of a crowd of people trying to escape lower Manhattan. We heard jet engines screaming fast, loud, and low. People started to drop to the street. A flight of two fighter jets went screaming above our heads patrolling the skies in the aftermath. Meanwhile we’re lying on the ground until someone cries out “wait, they’re ours.” It was surreal. Hearing “they’re ours” from a guy in New York City, then everyone gets up and starts walking again. We’re in the financial capital of the Western Hemisphere and I get some searing insight as to how people displaced by war or terror attacks in other parts of the world feel as I make my way through alphabet city in the lower east side. Like a bad dream that I couldn’t wake up from.

We joined up with Bowery walked it until we picked up 3rd Avenue at East 5th street. And as we get further away from the crash site, the adrenaline wanes a bit and I realize how tired I am. That breakfast sandwich I ate at seven thirty is still working; the hangover is gone but I’m thinking I shouldn’t have brought my briefcase. It had a shoulder strap, but not one meant for hiking. The consultant mindset of leaving no possessions at the customer’s site took over, and this was the payback.

We continued to walk for a while. As we entered Midtown, it was business as usual. Streets were clean, no one was really working it seemed except for the people who are always at work in delis and bodegas. We were drawing a bunch of stares from people because we were filthy yet dressed in business attire. I still had a suit on, wearing the jacket was easier than carrying it, plus it made the shoulder strap from my bag a little more tolerable. We stopped in a bar for a rest and refreshment, then continued splitting up on E38th Street.

I got to Grand Central Terminal, where I had put Judy on a train that morning and saw a blue Harlem Line train departing and just got on. It was a good choice, but it was making all station stops, and it was packed. I got a seat in one of the first four cars, but it was the last seat and I was done walking. I still didn’t have any cell service, and it finally came back when we cleared the blue Park Avenue Bridge AKA the Harlem River Lift Bridge. I had dozens of voicemails and missed calls. My sister, who I hadn’t spoken to in around a year, actually called, which was a plus. She was like that if she was mad at you and it happened a couple of times over the years.

I called Judy and told her to meet me at the Katonah station. It seemed like forever, but we eventually arrived. I got off the train and let the crush of people go up the stairs from the platform. As I made my way toward the stairs, Judy was coming down to meet me. She hurried forward and started crying when she hugged me. I freaked out a little when she went to take my mask off, and I saw that it upset her. I did take it off when we were in the car. Pulling the passenger visor down and looking in the mirror, I saw my face, which appeared like a reverse video raccoon, where around my eyes, and where the mask had been clean and the rest was stained with ash and dust. I apologized for the freak-out to Judy as she drove us home.

Thirty minutes later we arrived at the house we had left yesterday morning. It looked exactly as it did then. A bright late summer day. Hungry cats impatiently waiting at the door to be fed. Sitting there, you would have never known what had happened earlier today a scant 56 nautical miles southwest of here. And that dichotomy really fucked me up the next morning and for some time afterward. Waking up next to Judy in Connecticut in our home to another outstanding weather day.

If you’d like to read more about my September 2001 experiences in Manhattan The Day Before and Morning Of is my September 10th story. The email I’m referring to in this piece is available here The Sound You'd Here at an Airshow

This is a reader supported publication. Your likes, comments, and shares mean the world to me. If you’ve already subscribed I thank you. If you haven’t already please consider doing so. It’s free!

I’m Sean a 65 year old first generation American. My mom came from Ireland through Ellis Island. My dad’s mom came from Ireland and landed in Boston. I was born in New York, live in Western Connecticut USA and write (rant) about things related to Aviation, The Healthcare Industrial Complex, Addiction and how it has impacted me from my childhood to the present day. And technology. I was a technology consultant before I started flying professionally. It bought and maintained the two airplanes that used to train in and received all but one pilot certificates in.

Just click this button here.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I wrote this email on September 13th 2001. I was two days removed from watching the second plane fly directly over my head at the north boundary of Battery Park. I sent it to friends because many of them had asked about me that day and the day after. They left voicemails and sent emails, writing it made me feel better.

I’ve posted it on social media a number of years since. I stopped some years back because it became a cliché. Never Forget. These Colors Don’t Run. It became a flag event everyone had seen on television. They all had strong feelings, some of which I found offensive, painful or simply ludicrous. I ran my ass off through Battery Park as did thousands of other people.

It still breaks my heart just to think about it.

This is what I saw.

Never Forget – I wish I could

Hello All; Where to begin? Numerous friends and associates have called and sent me emails this week inquiring how I was doing in the aftermath of the bombing of the World Trade Center. I started to write a response back and while writing, actually started to feel better as I got my thoughts out. I have been quite confused as to why this tragedy occurred and what I’ll need to do to come to terms with how I feel having witnessed it.

First off, I’m OK, no injuries aside from very sore feet from wearing dress loafers for what turned out to be around a 10-mile walk. I’ve been working for the past few months at an investment bank downtown. My office/cube is on the 10th floor of 1 State Street Plaza on the corner of State and Whitehall. I got a call @ 9:00am from my wife Judy telling me that the Trade Center was on fire. I looked out the window and sure enough it was ‘smoking up good’. A few moments later she called back and said she saw on the TV in her cafeteria that an airplane crashing into the building caused the fire. She said they reported it was a small plane. I tried to rally a few of my associates to come outside to check it out. Most were reluctant but I convinced the other consultant Kevin by saying ‘hey this is history.... we have to check it out’ Kevin and I walked over to Battery Park (It’s behind our building) to get a closer look. He was a bit slow moving trying to recollect how many of his friends and former associates were working in the Trade Center and whether they’d be in this morning. We walked over and closer, looking up at the opening in the building. From our vantage point (we were 5 blocks south) it didn’t look that bad. In retrospect what we were looking at was the exit hole from the 1st plane.

We had no way of knowing it was an airliner that had crashed into the building. After walking northwest bound for about 5 minutes we heard the other plane which was in full cruise @ about 400 500 feet off the surface. We heard the plane well before we saw it. It was the sound you’d hear at an air show. We looked up as the noise intensified and saw the second Jet as it flew directly over our heads. The bottom was gray and in the very few seconds between seeing the plane and the impact my thoughts went from thinking it was a military jet either patrolling after the catastrophe, or a firefighting plane that was going to help put out the fire. The plane was maneuvering. As it passed over, I saw the top was blue making me realize that it was a commercial airliner either US Airways or United who have that type of paint jobs on their planes. Only seconds elapsed between seeing the plane and the impact and I thought that some navigation aid was misconfigured but dismissed this immediately as the day was clear and the visibility was unrestricted. There was just no way I could bring myself to think that the pilot’s intentions were nefarious The plane rolled right, then to the left as it hit the building in a nose low attitude. It was incredible. I have never seen anything like this in my life. It appeared that it hit with its wing as the fireball and debris appeared to continue through both walls of the building. There was no way I was believing that someone had intentionally just flew what appeared to be a 737 through the World Trade Center The noise and fireball I can’t describe. The sound of the engines at full cruise and accelerating, the impact and resulting explosion, all incredibly loud yet seemingly delayed by what I think was the distance between where I stood and the tragedy. Turning and looking for Kevin, I said something like ‘Holy S**t did you see that?’ Kevin was already gone. The impact from the plane was subsiding and a huge plume of black, brown and gray smoke was emanating from the side of the tower. People were crying, screaming and running everywhere. I stood there in disbelief transfixed by the spectacle unfolding around me. I saw hundreds of people running away most of them heading towards me in the park. At that point I remember wondering ‘why are these people running’ and then ‘hey you should be running too’ so I turned and ran southeastward through the park and out to State Street. I used my cell phone to call my wife and was alternately talking to her and the people around me, people of all walks of life talking in disbelief about what they had just seen. Walking back to my building I was thinking ‘just go in, get your stuff and split’, while alternately wondering ‘how am I going to get out of here’. All of the people working in the plaza had been evacuated to the sidewalk on the east side (front) of the building. I saw some coworkers and immediately went up to them, wanting to tell them of the horror I just had witnessed. Everyone was facing north, looking up at the towers smoking, standing there in disbelief. They wouldn’t let anyone upstairs, so I hung on the sidewalk having to squat down as I was getting dizzy and short of breath. It was pandemonium on the streets. The corner of State and Whitehall is across from the Staten Island Ferry and the South Ferry subway stations along with a downtown exit from the FDR drive. Traffic was in gridlock on those streets with emergency vehicles driving on the sidewalks on State Street. It was then when I became cognizant of the noise of horns blaring and emergency vehicle sirens. The trade center was emitting strips of what appeared to be aluminum shavings, which I assumed were part of the aircraft. It was similar to the tickertape you’d see during the Yankee’s parades in the Canyon of Hero’s (Lower Broadway) over the past few years.

At this point the towers were just burning and there was a breeze blowing the smoke to the south, but it was way above our heads. At times the smoke obscured the sun making it appear that it was dark out similarly to the way entering fog while diving will make it dark. The air quality was still good aside from the smokers indulging themselves a cigarette. We were told we would be safer inside and we went back to our desks. We talked about what had happened. People were of all different moods. Everyone was trying to call their loved ones and get messages out that they were OK. Watching out the north wall of our floor (all glass) everyone was discussing what we thought was going to happen. It was then the 1st tower collapsed. It was horrific; no special effects in the movies could ever duplicate that sight and sound. I cannot describe the despair I felt at that moment, as it is still incomprehensible to me. I’m not aware whether it was the fear of debris shattering the windows or people not wanting to witness this spectacle anymore as people pulled down the window shades were on that wall. We were told to go downstairs and instructed to stay in the building lobby as the street outside appeared as if a smoky blizzard was raging. A short time later another loud noise was followed with more smoke, dust and debris as the second tower collapsed and it became like night outside. We couldn’t see the second tower collapse as the windows of the building lobby face eastward. This kept me from believing that it actually collapsed. Whitehall Street became engulfed in a tidal wave of particulate matter rolling southward towards the harbor. After several minutes passed the sky lightened a bit and I went outside (all the smokers were out there still) and looked towards the towers where there was nothing but a huge plume of dust rising several stories. I couldn’t see the towers and went inside. The air quality within the lobby was getting intolerable between the smoke and exhalation of the occupants of a 30-story office building all milling about in the lobby. The Bank security people determined that we would be better off in the Sub-Cellar Data Center two stories underground. Everyone was so frightened as we didn’t know if more planes were going come along at any time and fly into ours or the surrounding buildings. We had no link to the outside world and were unaware of any of the other bombing attacks. Once downstairs I hooked up my laptop and sent out an email to my wife letting her know I was alive and to call the rest of my family and let them know that. After about an hour Kevin and I decided that we’d walk up the east side of Manhattan with several other people to get out of downtown, which we did. I now understand how people in other parts of the world and at other times felt/feel when terror strikes occur during the normal course of their day. Donning painter’s masks we ventured outside. State/Water Street was completely void of traffic save for the constant movement by rescue and police vehicles. As I recollect, I’m amazed at what it must have taken to clear the streets of all traffic. The streets had an apocalyptic appearance covered by a few inches of dust, with blowing smoke paper and debris everywhere. The only sounds were that of emergency vehicles. Thousands of people were filing away towards any route off Manhattan. It was very orderly as people were in shock. The crush of the crowd reminded me of the organized chaos usually experienced when leaving a football game except with a much grimmer undertone. As we walked east out of the financial district, relief workers were offering people paper masks as every passing vehicle would kick up clouds of dust or have it trailing off the horizontal surfaces similarly to snow drifting off your car when you don’t brush before driving away. I put my sunglasses on as this material was the consistency of ash/fine sand and was stinging my eyes as the wind blew it as we walked. Taking up an easterly heading down Water Street and while passing South Street Seaport (where I had eaten lunch the afternoon before), my thoughts turned towards the tourists that typically would be visiting the shops and restaurants there any late summer afternoon at lunchtime. How must they feel, vacationing and sightseeing in downtown New York? I then thought about the tourists that would have been killed visiting the trade towers, the early birds (like my wife), who wouldn’t want the long lines later in the day. Police officers from organizations I never knew existed made everyone stay on the sidewalks to keep the roads clear. Everyone followed directions and cooperated fully with the authorities. Relief workers were in the streets every few blocks offering rest rooms, water, phones and just someone to talk to if needed. We walked through Chinatown, into the East Village and then up 1st Avenue. When 1st became too crowded, we simply walked to 2nd and then ultimately 3rd where we stopped for a drink at a bar that Kevin was familiar with. I looked at my watch and was amazed that it was close to 3:00pm. We had been walking since 11:30. The owner was seating people and told us they weren’t serving outside, as none of their employees were able to come in. We went into the Bar and tried to order a drink. I was talking with an older guy at the bar who told me to be patient with the bartenders as none of the people who were working there were employee’s, but the barfly’s that drink there every day. Getting thirsty hot and impatient, we left there and went to the pub across the street. TVs were on and the place was filled with people staring at NY1, CNN, CNBC, and FOX News drinking. I bought Kevin a Heineken and had a club soda. I went downstairs to piss, spotted a phone and called Judy. When I went upstairs, I realized I couldn’t just hang in the bar all afternoon, I was determined to get off Manhattan. My original plan was to walk to Grand Central to see if the trains were running. If not, my next step was to walk to my apartment on E82nd change into sneakers and workout garb and walk until I was in a place that Judy could come and pick me up. I walked with Kevin until 38th street. He went home and I went on to Grand Central. All the trains were local every stop so I got on the 1st one figuring that once I was clear of the island Judy could pick me up anywhere as she had a car. The train was packed but I got a seat. I have to confess that I looked down or away when I saw someone coming down the aisle more deserving of my seat (old ladies and the like), but I had just walked about 10 miles in dress shoes and was pretty needy myself. I finally got my cell phone to work and was touched by the scores of people who had left me voice mails, just saying that they were thinking of me and please call as soon as you can. Anyway, I can only say that I am very grateful and appreciative of how precious my life is and what a wonderful privilege it is to be as blessed as we are, living and working in a free world. We’ve probably seen the end of our liberties as we have grown to know them. I’ve included some pictures of the skyline we took before this tragedy so you can remember. I don’t think the government will ever let us fly this close to New York again and I’ve heard that Washington National airport may never reopen. My hope is that this terrible act does not change the way we live too appreciably. Stay well and out of harm’s way Your Friend Sean

If you’d like to read more about my September 2001 experiences in Manhattan The Day Before and Morning Of is my September 10th story.

This is a reader supported publication. Your likes, comments, and shares mean the world to me. If you’ve already subscribed I thank you. If you haven’t already please consider doing so. It’s free!

I’m Sean a 65 year old first generation American. My mom came from Ireland through Ellis Island. My dad’s mom came from Ireland and landed in Boston. I was born in New York, live in Western Connecticut USA and write (rant) about things related to Aviation, The Healthcare Industrial Complex, Addiction and how it has impacted me from my childhood to the present day. And technology. I was a technology consultant before I started flying professionally. It bought and maintained the two airplanes that used to train in and received all but one pilot certificates in.

Just click this button here.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

We woke up on September 10th 2001 in New Fairfield and it was a day like any other late summer Monday. Groggy after the weekend where Sundays at home hanging poolside usually involved friends, family, or both, showing up in numbers, a few always staying too late after dinner. So that morning at 0530 there was coffee made, showers taken, clothes chosen, dressed and out the door. We made the hour drive to Stamford where I would stop at the Metro North Station and Judy would switch seats. Monday nights we spent in the city where we had a one-bedroom apartment at 427 E82nd street.

I was working at the Industrial Bank of Japan Whitehall (IBJW) at one State Street Plaza on the corner of State and Whitehall since April. Previously I had been on the bench since December when my last contract with a financial services consulting company in Quincy, Massachusetts wasn’t renewed. So, after three months of unpaid work in my lab at home, trying to figure out the latest “thing”, I was delighted to be back on billing. I had an interesting job there, I liked them and they liked me. My task was to improve and simplify secure remote access for the senior leadership of the bank and their staff who would need to be able to work from home should the need arise.

The commute was rough, no matter which way you chose to negotiate it. Always at least ninety minutes on a good day (Waze reports a 1:41 drive with today’s traffic). Driving involved multiple highways, myriad routes all ending up on the west side highway or the FDR drive. We didn’t have Waze and live traffic in the car was received by listening to AM Radio, particularly WCBS News Radio 88 at 880 on your radio dial. Traffic and weather together on the eights, 8, 18, 28, 38, 48, 58, only on News Radio 88. As a private pilot at the time, I compared it to ATIS (Automated Terminal Information Service) for the car. Plus, you would get the local and national news between traffic reports.

I would alternate driving into the city and taking the metro north commuter railroad and always bought a monthly pass to Brewster NY on the Harlem Line which is a 20-minute ride from our house. You could use the train ticket to any equivalent fare station on any line so there were days where I would drive with Judy to work and get off at Stamford station which was a mile from her office or I would drive to Brewster and leave my car in a lot over there and take the train in, or I would drive in.

But this Monday Judy was planning to spend the night in the city so me leaving a car at the Brewster station and her leaving a car at the Stamford station seemed impractical. So, I rode in with her and took the 06:34 from Stamford which got me into Grand Central Terminal at 07:24. A quick walk across the station and downstairs to the 4-5-6 Lexington Avenue line, I would catch the 5 train to Bowling Green Station which was a short walk to work. I wasn’t picky about the train. A 4 express would do, whatever one showed up first both were around a fifteen-minute ride. So, it was 65 minutes from our house to Stamford station 50 minutes to GCT and 15 minutes to Bowling green and another twenty minutes of walking to get me to work or 2:30 each way .

Five hours of commuting time a day justified the need for an apartment in my mind. Driving could have been quicker on most days, but you really couldn’t tell. All it would take is some late running construction in the summertime or some weather-related event like dense fog, black ice or a snowstorm and all bets were off. On May 12th, 1998, it took me five hours to get from 1 World Financial Center, up 12th avenue, to the 57th street on ramp to the West Side Highway. Taxi drivers had gone on a wildcat strike by parking their cars on the avenues essentially locking up the length of Manhattan. They were pissed about new rules enacted by Mayor Rudy Giuliani 131 days into his second term. I was working at American Express in 3 World Financial Center and had skipped out of work early at 3pm. I parked at Gateway Plaza and in retrospect it was good that I got out of work when I did because that rush hour Manhattan was a parking lot. Ever since that day the train became my primary method of commuting to the city.

We kept in touch during the day and Judy took the 4:24 train into the city which got in at 5:18. I left work at 4:30 and took the 5 train to Grand Central Terminal (GCT) went upstairs and searched for what track her train was getting into so I could meet her. She arrived, and we went back down and picked up a 4 train to 86th Street a three block walk back downtown and a four blocks east cross town. It was an outstanding late summer afternoon and once we emerged the subway, or what an ex-associate of mine nicknamed “the steel urinal”, we stopped at a liquor store and picked up a couple of bottles of wine on the walk to the apartment. When we arrived, we took the elevator to the third floor. I poured us both a glass of wine while Judy got ready and brought it to her in the bathroom. I was sort of chafing at the bit because it was beautiful outside and we had both been inside all day.

I was thinking of finding a place to eat out on a sidewalk, but Judy wanted to go and eat at Elios on 2nd between 84th and 85th, so, we went there. It was a nice Italian restaurant with great food and people watching. There was always someone who was somebody dining there. I used to frequent the place when I was spending the night in town solo, but Judy had a mad crush on Brian the bartender which usually worked out well for us because he would comp some of our drinks and regale us, actually her, with stories of the celebs that he had waited on recently and how he regularly partied after closing with the likes of Russell Crowe when he was in town.

After an amazing dinner with many drinks, we started walking home when we came across “Ship of Fools” which had a Monday night football event going on and a lively crowd already inside. Judy saw the half height sandwich board sign on the sidewalk in front with the details written in multi color team appropriate chalk artwork and printing and said, “I don’t want to go home yet let’s go watch the game in here.” I reminded her of the early train to Stamford and work tomorrow and she just said, “pshaw we’ll just watch until halftime and then go home.”

We started to enter but the doorman stops us and asks which team we were rooting for. I said the Giants and Judy said Broncos, and they gave you a blue dot sticker for the Giants and an orange sticker for Denver. As we walked to find seats at the bar, I said to Judy “you’re in New York and picking the away team?” and she tipsily wet whispered in my ear “They give away free shots when your team scores, I’m hedging — we win either way.”

We sat down and ordered drinks which was a quandary for me. This wasn’t Elio’s so I assumed the wines by the glass weren’t great and I had my fill of great wine with dinner. I remembered the adage “Beer then Wine Fine, Wine then Beer Oh Dear” but considering we were only staying for the half, I ignored that sage advice and ordered a Heineken and Judy had a Guinness.

It was a high scoring game with the Broncos scoring first and the Giants tying it up in the first quarter. We both had a shot. Hers was Kamikaze and I had a Snake Bite. Denver had a field goal and a touchdown in the second quarter, and we were having a blast, so we stayed through half time. Scoring was slow in the 3rd with the Giants scoring a touchdown, but the Broncos scored three times in the 4th with New York scoring a touchdown at the end of the game. We didn’t get to see that one because we left after the final Denver score as it was just before midnight.

As for the shot total it was Bronco’s six to Giants two, and at one time, we had four in front of us. People sitting around us noticed the armada of shots we had amassed and started to give us a hard time. While we each had one, we did the old look like you drank it but really poured it into the carpet sleight of hand. We stumbled back to the apartment, and it was apparent that sleep was the only option left as it was too late and we were too hammered to comprehend anything but that.

The 5:30 alarm came early and I got up and went and got coffees while Judy showered, I picked up some croissants and a small container of cut up watermelon at the bodega on the corner and Judy was happy to have the coffee. We were both fried and I felt lower than whale s**t. As we walked out the door in front of 427 E82nd Street we started westbound down the block we had just walked down a scant six hours earlier. We grab another coffee and Judy asks, “are we going to walk to the subway or are we taking a cab to Grand Central?” I said these shoes are killing my feet already let’s take a cab to which she goes “thank God if I had to smell the subway with the way my stomach feels right now, I think I would lose it.” We grabbed a cab and enjoyed our coffees in the relatively odor free backseat of a yellow cab. I put her on the 6:55 train to Stamford which got her in at 7:48. I took the 5 train to Bowling Green and was at work abou t 7:30 with a stop at Starbucks and a breakfast sandwich at some deli around 1 State Street Plaza. I went upstairs to my desk and started my day.

This is a reader supported publication. Your likes, comments, and shares mean the world to me. If you’ve already subscribed I thank you. If you haven’t already please consider doing so. It’s free!

I’m Sean a 65 year old first generation American. My mom came from Ireland through Ellis Island. My dad’s mom came from Ireland and landed in Boston. I was born in New York, live in Western Connecticut USA and write (rant) about things related to Aviation, The Healthcare Industrial Complex, Addiction and how it has impacted me from my childhood to the present day. And technology. I was a technology consultant before I started flying professionally. It bought and maintained the two airplanes that used to train in and received all but one pilot certificates in.

Just click this button here.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I never had a plan.

What I had was curiosity, a low tolerance for boredom, and a habit of showing up early to every technology wave before the crowd figured out it was happening.

I coded on a teletype in high school when most people didn’t know what a computer was. I became a machinist, then figured out quality control was cleaner. Taught myself dBase and Lotus 123, built barcode tracking systems before anyone called it automation, and rode the Novell networking wave through the 1990s as a consultant.

Then the dot-com crash cut my rate by a third overnight.

So I did two things simultaneously — I started flight instructing part time, and I built a hosting company in my basement.

I bought a pallet of Proliant servers, a high availability fiber array, and stacked everything into three 42U racks next to two 13,000 BTU split air conditioning units running flat out. My team was a couple guys on desktop computers and Cisco IP phones at folding tables from Costco.

We built a hosted Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server platform and sold it by the seat, by the month, to mortgage companies, medical practices and construction firms.

I used to ride the Metro North into Manhattan and watch the guys in the bar car with their Blackberries staying connected on the 90 minute ride — and then watch the guys whose companies couldn’t afford the infrastructure to support them.

I built the solution for the second group.

My wife would come home from work, walk down into the basement, survey the whirring servers and the guys surfing the net, and hand me a pile of checks while saying:

“This has got to be illegal.”

It wasn’t. It was just early.

Microsoft and the cell carriers eventually figured out that SaaS was a real market and priced us out of business.

Story of the early adopter’s life — you’re right about what’s coming, just too small to survive being right when the big money arrives.

By then I had my instrument rating, my commercial certificate, and my flight instructor certificates.

The part time flying had become something else entirely. I opened a flight school in Danbury Connecticut, flew regional jets at ExpressJet Airlines, graduated to Gulfstreams and Challengers in private aviation, and in September of 2023 I walked through the doors at American Airlines — probably the oldest pilot they had ever hired.

It lasted six months.

Federal aviation regulations cap airline pilots at age 65. Congress had been debating raising that limit. American trained me in anticipation of the law changing.

When it became clear it wasn’t going to happen — at least not in time — they stopped training me.

I was home for Christmas and New Year’s for the first time in years.

Which sounds nice until you understand what it meant.

I landed one more flying job after that.

When it became clear that one wasn’t right either, I made a decision I’d been avoiding. In the summer of 2024 I sold my airplane — a 1975 Mooney Executive I’d owned since 2000 — and I retired.

The Mooney wasn’t just an airplane.

For nearly a quarter century she was freedom, identity, and the thing that made every difficult job worth tolerating.

Selling her was the period at the end of a very long sentence.

Then Meniere’s disease confirmed what I already knew. That chapter was done.

So now I’m home doing what I’ve always done — diving into the next thing before most people have decided what to think about it.

Right now that thing is AI.

I’ve been deep in ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini and Claude trying to figure out what’s real and what’s vapor.

Most people are in one of two camps.

The terrified camp — convinced AI is going to take their job, help their kids cheat, or eventually look like the Terminator.

And the breathless camp, selling the sizzle without the steak.

I’ve seen this before.

Every decade has its version. This feels a lot like multimedia computing in the early 1990s — genuinely transformative, but probably years away from delivering on the biggest promises.

The people who’ll shape it aren’t the loudest voices. They’re the ones who’ve been through enough technology cycles to know what’s real and what’s vapor.

I built a cloud company in my basement before anyone called it the cloud.

I flew approaches into airports most people only see from the window seat.

I was standing in Battery Park on September 11th when the second plane flew directly over my head.

I have things to say about all of it.

The technology.

The flying.

The career that never went in a straight line. What it looks like to start something new at 65 with a bad inner ear and a lot of opinions.

This is where I’m going to say them.

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