(Bart Simpson voice) Mmm, airplanes.

This morning I went to West Valley Flying Club's open house on leasebacks. There were two speakers and one salesguy. As they spent a bunch of time discussing aircraft purchase, ownership, loans, and that sort of thing, it wasn't as informative about the finances of leaseback as I had hoped. Still, I got some sense of the big picture. Some factoids:

1) New aircraft do depreciate right off the lot, just like cars do, although sometimes not quite so badly (viewed as a percentage). Used ones are still appreciating slowly.

2) Sellers are not as motivated right now as buyers might hope. Anyone who couldn't afford to hang onto an airplane in this economy has probably already unloaded it.

3) Most aircraft on leaseback will be a net loss, except of course that you get to own an aircraft when you're done. It just won't be as expensive as it could have been.

4) Light trainers might break even or turn a profit. They're relatively inexpensive and relatively popular with renters. Best bets: 152s, 172s, Warriors, Archers, Citabrias.

5) I got an asking-price quote on a lovely 1976 Citabria and it seemed affordable. Based on a very preliminary personality reading of its seller, I am confident I could do better elsewhere.

It's a possibility. I'm not serious about it yet, but as I learn more I might get serious.

Running stuff

Read through the beginners' marathon book today. It does indeed have a decent amount of information on care of joints, overuse injuries, and injury prevention (including good footwear and good stretches). It specifically mentions ITB problems - yay!

Supposedly running shoes have five hundred miles of life in them. I don't remember exactly when I got mine, but I bet they're fifty miles down by now. Strange to think how quickly they'll be gone. They're hardly even dirty yet!

I wonder how much more life my knees have. (I have a mild case of osteoarthritis, currently noticeable in the knees and in the thumb joints.) I'm doing fine right now, but it's odd to look to the future and wonder exactly when the day will come when I'll want to switch to swimming. It's almost Flowers-for-Algernon-y. Wish I had little windows to peek inside at my cartilege. "Your front brakes are at sixty percent, so they'll be fine until your next scheduled maintenance."

Hey. That book's training program, if I start from my current level, would be sixteen weeks long. I just counted it up and its grand total mileage is 418.2. If I were to start now, that would finish off this pair of running shoes by early fall. (And if my house were on my back, I'd have run to Los Angeles.)

Sleep now.

Busy summer

No marathon this year. Training is at least sixteen weeks, and each week wants one 'long run' day, preferably a Saturday so it lines up nicely with the race. That's tough to schedule. I just do not have sixteen Saturdays in a row in 2003. (NB: the Saturdays I don't have free are adjacent to Sundays and Fridays I also don't have free. Larger adjustment needed.) That's OK: half-marathon or 25K would be a wiser goal for now anyway.

All of which brings me to how busy my summer is. I drew a tiny calendar on graph paper and yellowed out the days I'm not home. The summer glows yellow. Most of my travel is along the west coast, but the jet lag stuff is creatively clustered: I get two weeks in Sunnyvale in between Maryland and Germany. In the month of July, I'm in town ten whole days, but it's that long only because the Scotland trip overflows into August. Yikes, I better write some square dance choreography in the next two weeks while I have some tranquility.

Okay, this time for sure: sleep now.