Yes, another long gap in my blog flow. Sorry.

Thanks to everyone who sent along birthday wishes yesterday. Even a fellow who used to be my boss, at a job I left years ago, left a happy birthday on my last blog. I really stopped making a big deal about birthdays at about age 14, but it’s nice when people remember. The fact that my birthday falls on St. Patrick’s day makes it easy.

For those who are wondering, Tony continues to do well. When I went home for lunch today, the weather was brilliant and the sun bright, and Tony was sitting in the living room window, watching me park the car. He’s learned not to put up too much of a struggle about taking his medicine, but he continues to make the token effort to shred me. It’s a tomcat thing. He has to.

I was struggling for a blog topic today when, on my way back to the office from lunch, I thought about routines.

I know my car pretty well. It’s not as familiar as my old one, the Buick I was so fond of, but after a few months with it I’m pretty comfortable. I don’t think about getting in, starting the engine, or buckling my seat belt anymore, those things just happen automatically. Likewise, when I park, my hands and body are accustomed to making a quick series of motions … shift to Park, ignition off, lights off, unfasten seat belt, open door. All of this is done without thinking at all, it’s an ingrained routine that never changes. I do these exact things at least twice a day and they’re second nature.

So why, today, as I got out of my car after lunch, did these exact motions lead me to bang the daylights out of my head on the car’s upper door frame? Something disrupted my routine. As I was standing up to get out of the car, my cell phone slipped out of its holster and I reached down to grab it. My balance shifted, and now my head hurts.

It struck me that routines are a mixed blessing. They certainly make life easier, because my mind can be occupied with other things while I go through the motions required to do mundane daily tasks. On the other hand, they make life a little more dangerous because when a routine is disrupted, I’m out of touch and far less prepared to deal with the contingency.

When I was learning to fly complex airplanes with retractable landing gear, my seasoned Navy-veteran flight instructor had some sage advice about gear-up landings. He said that there are those who HAVE, and those who WILL. Thankfully, I’m still in the latter category, although there have been a couple of very close calls. In each case, though, the reason for the oversight was a disruption in my routine — one was the tower calling to ask for a short approach, and the other was a problem with equipment that I allowed to take far too much of my attention at a critical moment.

Routines can be so well-worn that they scare me. I can remember times when I drove home from a long day of work, a trip of many dozens of miles, and upon arrival I could not remember a single moment of the trip. I call this “driving on autopilot”. I have driven that route so many times that I don’t even need to think about where to turn or which way, and thus a routine is born.

I shudder to think what might have happened if a sudden contingency (an accident ahead of me, an object in the roadway, or even a blowout) had required my immediate attention. My crusty old instructor, whom I’ve mentioned before, used to say that there are three things that are entirely useless to a pilot: Altitude above you, runway behind you, and a half a second ago. It would have taken me crucial seconds just to figure out where I was, and what I was doing, and that might have made the difference between an effective response and one that came too late.

I’m not sure what sort of conclusion to draw from all this, other than that I think I will try being a bit more careful when executing my “get out of the car” routine.