I considered pursuing an MBA, but I quickly realized I’m not MBA material. I have no desire to manage people, nor do I have the skills to climb the corporate ladder. Besides, I’ve always been deeply sympathetic to almost any “worker cause.”

My wife is a member of the UFT union, and thanks to that union, we have amazing healthcare. Honestly, I doubt we would have had three kids without the security of union-negotiated insurance.

I’ve also read too much Marx and still admire Bernard Sanders. Marx offers a helpful lens through which to view and understand the world, but his vision of how the world should function is deeply flawed. In practice, his ideas almost always lead to ruin, chaos, and famine. If you read Marx, you also need to read Friedman and Thomas Sowell; otherwise, you might lose perspective and go on tilt. At my age, one of the best things I’ve learned is knowing when to get off an ideological train (many don’t learn this, and it shows).

After taking a prompt engineering class, I came to realize that almost all white-collar work can and will be automated.

Last spring, I decided I eventually want to work in the bike industry. I’ve loved bicycles my whole life—they actually make me less depressed. My first quality bike was a Trek Antelope 820. I’ve followed politics like a hawk since high school. I even watch C-SPAN (shout-out to Brian Lamb). The only way to really see how politics works is by watching it unfiltered—news, podcasts, and social media are just processed to engage and enrage you for money and clout for the hosts. I used to joke that I should have spent the last 25 years learning to weld instead of wasting time reading about politics. My dream is to open a bike shop that sells coffee and moonlights as an art gallery and space for community meetings and events. The bike shop will sell only high-end boutique bikes and low-end entry-level bikes. Forty-four years in the USA made me realize that if you’re in the middle, you just get squeezed. I’ll focus on the high-end and low-end markets—let the middle just be the middle.

So, I enrolled in a welding class—and I loved it. Then I took more classes, purchased my first MIG machine, bought a tank of Argon, and flipped my home’s circuit breaker so many times I had to upgrade our electrical system and electrify the garage for $5 grand (sorry, Jenny).

I intend to document my process—from welding metal plates to creating furniture and skateboarding rails for my kids (basically 90-degree angles)—until I can design, weld, or braze a bicycle entirely on my own.

My 10-year goal is to design and build a bicycle and ride the full length of the Transcontinental Trail.