Hello, and welcome! I created this blog for – but not limited to – those of us who are of the Baby Boomer generation. Any and all who are young at heart and possess a sense of adventure are welcome aboard. We will cover a wide range of topics that affect us as we venture into this next phase of our lives, creating our own bucket lists of things yet to be accomplished! So LET’S GET STARTED!
OK, What now?
We are Baby Boomers. We have, or soon will have finally made it to retirement. Our future is both exciting – we now have the freedom we have worked, sacrificed, and saved for – and at the same time, frightening. We go from being vital and necessary, to “I used to be ….” And we fear our future will never be as good as our past.
“I used to be …. a pilot.”
My last flight
It was well past midnight. We were just east of St. Louis, and would soon begin our descent into the Greater Cincinnati International Airport. “Ready for the approach briefing?” the First Officer, Bob Ranson asked.
I nodded. This was it. I would be landing the Boeing 767 for the last time, taking an early retirement at the young age of 56. But I knew it was time. Someone once said that you begin your flying career with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience. The goal is to fill your bag of experience before you empty your bag of luck. I’d pushed my luck too many times over the past 37 years. I began flying at age 19 at the Olney-Noble Airport in Southern Illinois. I loved flying. It gave me a great sense of pride to say I was a pilot. Of course, I made a lot of amateurish mistakes early on, like everyone does. And I pushed too hard in weather, trying to prove myself. Not wanting to disappoint my bosses or my passengers by cancelling flights or missing approaches due to poor visibility. I’m not proud to say it, but I busted minimums more than once in order to get in, avoid diverting to an alternate airport. It was foolish. There’s an expression in aviation that summed up my flying career. “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are NO old, bold pilots.” I was bold, back in those days, young and cocky.
I paid dues and built flying hours as a flight instructor. After that I flew as an air taxi and later on as a corporate pilot for people who thought nothing of working me around the clock, 24/7. Weekends, Christmas, anniversaries, and birthdays meant nothing. I was there for their convenience.
Somehow I survived that, and became a regional airline pilot working for peanuts. Then, I got my big break, and became a “freight dog” with Airborne Express. The operation at Airborne was much more disciplined and professional. No busting minimums, but flying night freight meant that sleep deprivation would become a routine part of my life. Now, 21 years after coming on board with Airborne, the company had evolved to become ABX Air, an ACMI carrier – meaning that we provided Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance for other companies. We were basically a contract carrier for DHL and others. During that time, I progressed from flying as first officer (copilot) on the YS-11 turboprop and DC9 (my first jet!) to captain on the YS and the 9. And then, I found myself in the left seat of a Boeing 767. Not bad for a kid who grew up on a Southern Illinois pig farm!
It was a good life, once you adjusted to the weird hours. And the pay was good. Really good. Looking back, after all these years, I sometimes struggle to understand why I wanted to take the early retirement incentive the company offered us.
The company had been “junior manning” crewmembers a lot, basically requiring us to fly on our days off. Which made it nearly impossible to get caught up on rest. I had trouble staying awake while flying all night long from our sort center in Cincinnati to the west coast. And once there, I had trouble sleeping during the day at the hotel. Then, in the evening, when the rest of the world was winding down, I had to drag myself to the airport to fly back to Cincinnati. Then to somewhere else the next day. And so on for the rest of my duty block. I was wrung out, and burned out. Through the years, I accumulated a lot of knowledge, experience, and judgment. Dare I say wisdom? I knew my limitations. No longer bold, I was feeling old beyond my years.
“Approach briefing?” Bob prompted me again.“
I sighed heavily, turned to him and said with a grin, “Hang on Goose, We’re gonna buzz the tower!”
Bob’s eyes widened. “You’re gonna do what?!!!”
I laughed, then proceeded to brief the approach for real. Initial approach altitude, touchdown zone elevation, approach speeds based on aircraft weight, and missed approach procedure. We would be landing to the east on a snow-packed runway with a quartering crosswind from the left. I wanted to make it a good one.
I couldn’t help but wonder what my new life was going to be like. I would now have to find out if I could live full time with my wife, for one thing. We had been married for 36 years by then, but being a pilot, I was gone half the time. If she got tired of me on my days off, Marsha knew she would only have to tolerate me a couple more days and then I’d be out of her hair again. More than once she would ask, “When are you going back to work?” So yeah, it would be a challenge. Probably more for her than for me.
Just a couple days prior to this, my retirement flight, we were laying over in San Diego. I was sitting at a table in the hotel restaurant, enjoying a leisurely breakfast with another ABX crew. The waitress overheard us talking about my upcoming retirement. She’d gotten to know me over the years, so she joined in the conversation, saying, “What are you going to do? You’ll need to feel needed.”
To which one of our group replied, “It won’t be long before his wife says, ‘I NEED you to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!” I remember thinking he was probably right. (*Note: To any retired husbands who want a boat … spend LOTS of time at home with your wife … It worked for me, and it didn’t take long!)
Normally, I made smooth landings in the 767, but this, my final one, was not so smooth. I guess you could say I arrived with authority. (Which is another way of saying I pranged it in.)
We taxied to the ramp, shut down the engines, and for the final time, completed the shutdown checklist. I took a moment, listening to the sounds of the ground crew offloading the freight containers, looking at the cockpit, burning the images of the instruments, the overhead panel, the view of the ramp through the cockpit window. I wanted to linger, just a while longer. But the crew van was pulling up to the airplane. It was time to go.
A short ride on the crew van to our crew lounge, a call to flight control to debrief the flight, and then my final act, turning in my company manuals to the chief pilot on duty. I was so tempted to tell him I had changed my mind at the last minute, that I wanted stay with it a few more years. But, like I said, it was time. I said goodbye to a few friends, knowing I would never see most of them ever again, turned in my ID badge, and next thing I knew I was leaving the parking lot for a nearby hotel. In the morning, I would drive home to Florida. I was now a retiree. A new chapter in my life was about to begin.
I soon learned that I was nowhere near as ready for retirement as I thought I was.
The fatigue, the burnout, the sleep deprivation, combined with the junior manning – messing with my days off – had all combined to convince me I had nothing left in me. I, like most others, frequently bid to fly an extra trip or two a month, but that was different. I could pick and choose the days I volunteered for, based on how well rested I felt, where the trip was going, etc. When they arbitrarily threw me onto another trip in the middle of my days off, it only added to the fatigue and frustration.
After a few months of retirement, I was rested. All I really needed was a long vacation and for them to not make me fly on my days off. But it was too late. So I started looking for something to do. I took a couple of jobs working security. It was something to do, and it let me make a few extra bucks, but not much. And then one night, there was a gunshot. I was alone, unarmed, out in the middle of nowhere. It took the police 16 minutes to get there.
So, working security was a short-lived career for me. It did provide me with material for a fictional book I wrote – Walkabout – Taking a Mulligan. It’s a story about Ty Hamilton, a retired pilot, bored out of his mind, working as an unarmed security guard in the middle of nowhere. One night, he sees something he is not supposed to see happening on an adjoining property. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, someone is hired to kill him.
Our retired pilot/security guard manages to turn the tables, and the hired killer is the one who doesn’t live to see the next morning. Then, a funny thing happened. Ty realizes that there is a strong physical resemblance between himself and the assassin. Easy as falling off a log to assume the other fellow’s identity and start life over with a clean slate. Go wherever he wants. Do whatever he wants, with whomever he wants. For as long as he wants. All. The. Time. Sounds like a heckuvva deal, eh?
Well, Ty soon learns the hard way that as Erma Bombeck used to say, “The grass is always greener over the septic tank.” But it’s too late to turn back. And of course, with a title like “Walkabout,” you know he ends up in Australia.
So, that’s what I do to amuse myself. I write. And now, beginning today, I am a blogger
Finances and health permitting, many of us now have time to do things we’ve always dreamed of.
Hopefully, we have by now already checked off several items on our bucket list, replacing them with new ones as we went along. My wife Marsha died at the age of 63. I am glad that we took advantage of opportunities to do enjoyable things along the way, before her health prevented it.
We raised horses on our small farm, camped and rode trails with our “horse friends” in Indiana. We rode trails with outfitters in Alaska, the Canadian Rockies, and on beaches in New Zealand.
We attended a performance at the Sydney Opera House, and rode in a hot air balloon while in Australia. Later, when we lived in Florida, we cruised the lakes in our pontoon boat, stopping at lakeside restaurants for lunch. The boat was also great for fishing. Some people take fishing very seriously, and they carefully choose their boats, not to mention fishing equipment to enhance the enjoyment of their hobby. There are many fishing campgrounds throughout the country where you can come and go as you please, and lodges to choose from if you prefer to do it that way.
And we raised a daughter that we loved with all our hearts, and we had a good life together. But all too soon, Marsha was gone. She knew and loved one grandchild, but never knew the others that would come along later.
Somehow, life goes on.
We are now … I can hardly make myself say it … Senior Citizens. Baby Boomers! Who among us knows how many grains of sand remain in the hourglass? By now, we’ve lost friends and, some of us have lost spouses. We understand that life is short, and nothing lasts forever. I myself had a couple of wake-up calls with regard to my health. In December of 2020 I had an eye stroke that left me permanently blind in my right eye. And more recently I had a close encounter with the Grim Reaper in September of 2023. My heart was about to give out on me. I went in for surgery to replace the aortic valve, and when they opened me up, they discovered an aneurysm that was about to burst. Following my surgery, the surgeon told my daughter I was a “dead man walking” when I came into the hospital.
If I’d known I was going to live this long, I certainly would have taken better care of myself!
I don’t know about you, but when I was young, I had no idea how quickly the years would fly by. All my life, I took my health for granted. Now, I realize that was a mistake. All I can do now is do better. Eat right. Exercise. Use my BIPAP machine when I sleep. Take my meds. Go to the doctor. (I seldom went prior to my eye stroke.)
So, ok, what do we do now? How do we make the future the best it can be? While we can afford to? While we still have our health? Do we go into a version of the two-minute drill, packing as much as we can into every day? Or do we pace ourselves? I personally would rather wear out than rest out.
I am a firm believer that the time to do things is NOW!
While you can afford it. While you are still healthy and able.
Let’s face it, we aren’t getting any younger!
I am reasonably healthy, but finances and family circumstances prevent me from having a new adventure every week. Even so, I do still have several opportunities. And so do you, I bet. Some of us want to travel. Some want to pursue hobbies. And others want to continue working. Or maybe a combination of these options. That’s the best part about being retired. You can pick and choose. And if you don’t like something, leave it, forget it, and choose again.
I’m constantly working on my version of a Bucket List –
adding to, deleting from, modifying it. And I’ve checked off quite a few items. I’ll mention some of them here, just in case you are looking for ideas.
A bucket list is essentially a list of things that you want to do or accomplish in your lifetime. The term “bucket list” comes from the phrase “kick the bucket,” which means to die. Therefore, a bucket list includes all the different things you want to do before you die, including dreams, goals, and adventures.
Bucket lists can also include major accomplishments, small pleasures in life, and everything in between. It’s good for our well-being to have a north star, and bucket lists give us something positive (and uplifting) to focus on.
Some people’s bucket lists might include traveling to exotic destinations, skydiving, or running a marathon. Others might include more personal goals, like learning to play a musical instrument or getting a tattoo. No matter what’s on your list, a bucket list is a great way to keep track of the things that are most important to you. That way, you don’t miss out on any of the amazing experiences life has to offer.
Tips for creating a bucket list in 2024
To help you brainstorm and prioritize all the different bucket list ideas below, here are some quick tips that might be helpful:
1. Think big!
Don’t limit yourself to small or practical ideas. Your bucket list is a chance to dream big and push yourself out of your comfort zone.
2. Don’t be afraid to get creative
Your bucket list doesn’t have to be traditional or conventional. It can include unconventional or offbeat ideas that reflect your unique interests and personality.
3. Make it personal
Your bucket list should reflect your values, goals, and passions. Don’t worry about what others think or try to conform to societal expectations.
4. Be open to new experiences
Your bucket list is a chance to try new things and step out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid to experiment and be open to new ideas.
5. Seek inspiration
Look for inspiration from friends, family, books, movies, and other sources. Don’t be afraid to ask for suggestions or borrow ideas from others.
6. Prioritize your goals
Decide which items on your list are most important to you and set goals for when you want to accomplish them. This will help you stay focused and motivated.
7. Have fun and enjoy the journey
Remember, the purpose of a bucket list is to have fun and enjoy life to the fullest. Don’t stress about completing everything on your list or worry about perfection. Just have fun and make the most of every moment.