A Hiking Trip Through The Coronavirus Economy

“You were last seen hiking up Mount Ego.” – Frasier

You know, because I might be using hiking as a metaphor.

When I was younger, I did a lot of hiking.  So much so, that it was second nature to me – I can recall hiking up remote mountain trails when I was kindergarten.  If you take the average kindergartner, they are built to walk a trail, and their strength to weight ratio will beat any four wheel drive.  I guarantee you that unless you are in prime condition, your motor will run out before theirs will.

Before this weekend, the last time I went hiking was about four years ago, and it was quite a hike.  We went up and down and deep into the Rockies, at one point following old mining trails that were originally blazed by miners with mules looking for gold – I know because I found an ore cart still sitting on its rails up around 12,000 feet when I was 20.  I could tell it was a mining cart, because I found their deodorant underneath the cart, and everyone knows miners always pick Axe™.

On this trip, I was in good enough shape that one 18 year old rang the bell before I did, which is the kind of thing that makes an older man smile – he knows he still has “it.”  And I did still have “it,” unlike my hair.  I figure the group did over nine thousand feet up and nine thousand feet down over two days.  It was nice, though I will admit that at one point every muscle in my body cramped all at once, even the bottom of my foot, and that’s my arch nemesis.

My commute often doesn’t include pants.  Pants are for fancy, non-Corona time. 

This weekend, Pugsley, having had enough of the house, convinced me that we should go hiking.  Honestly, it was my idea, too, so I was thrilled when he got me up to go hiking.  Since the lockdown I hadn’t been to my usual gym, and on several days in the last six weeks the most strenuous part of the day had been rolling out of bed to go downstairs to my “office” on the loveseat where I’ve been working from home.  It’s also where I normally write these blog posts, so it’s a place which is already set up physically and mentally for productivity, except for the coffee, which was allllll the way upstairs.  And I spent all that energy being debunked.

But after six weeks of not working out, how would I fare hiking?

Pugsley and I hit the trail.  It was a warm, but not hot, spring day.  In short?  It was a day perfect for a hike.  The grass was vibrantly green under a cloudless sky as we hit the trail.  As trails go, this one isn’t the most challenging that I’ve been on, but it certainly is aggressive.  And four years of rust was immediately apparent.  And we didn’t bring any snacks, though I’ve heard that zombies bring entrail mix when they hike.

We made it about as far as my legs were willing to go.  We weren’t out of the woods yet, but that’s the purpose of hiking, right?  It is clear to me that I need to go hiking with Pugsley again – the treadmill at the gym is no replacement for an actual mountain.  The next day I could feel the pain, but I knew I was getting stronger, since I was still alive.  And Nietzsche always said that, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.  Except for Ruffles®.”

All I need is a gym with a doughnut shop attached.

Getting stronger rarely feels good.  It involves aches and pains.  It involves discomfort, and moving your body in ways it may not have moved for a while.  In a “good” recession, this is what happens.  The economy sheds, often in very painful ways, companies that are no longer competitive and gets stronger.  That recession is the spur for changes within companies that allow them to survive.  Sentimentality goes by the wayside – the harsh blade of profitability determines what products will be built and what products will be discontinued.  Plus the bank helps lots of folks get back up on their feet, mainly by repossessing the car.

This, however, is no ordinary recession.  Entire industries are going to be destroyed.  I’ll pick just one for this post:  air travel.  Airlines and airplane manufacturers are facing the biggest, by far, challenge of their existence.  People are finally coming to the understanding that the last 45 days of their lives is the most momentous (so far) of nearly anyone alive.   With me, it came with the dawning realization of my receding airline.

Body cavity search, Mr. Wilder?

The solution of government to this recession is that of the zombie – prolonging the existence of a company far after its usefulness to the world has ended.  A great example is Boeing®.  Boeing™ used to be among the better designers and builders of aircraft in the world.  Recently, its reputation has suffered after it made a software change that resulted in crashes and the grounding of an entire airplane model, which might be the ultimate Boeing™ constrictor.  It has a loan fund earmarked for it and similar companies that sits at about $17 billion dollars.  I’m betting you and I couldn’t borrow in the way that Boeing© will.

And what about the airline industry as a whole?

• Last year, on average, the TSA screened 2.7 million passengers a day.
• Last week? Less than 100,000.
• On an average day in 2019, there were 44,000 daily flights.
• Last week? 8,000.

The airline industry is backed by $25 billion to pay employees that the Federal government is you and I are giving the airlines to pay employees until September.  I guess you and I were feeling generous that day, since my industry didn’t exactly get paid and yours probably didn’t, either.

At least this government solution isn’t bigger than the problem . . .

And though I generally like the idea of inefficient or corrupt companies failing, this economic tidal wave is different – whereas the normal recession is a very vigorous workout that makes the body stronger, this is more like conducting weight loss surgery with a chainsaw.  I’m sure the doctor is being gentle, but it’s still a chainsaw.  Good companies and bad will fall, large companies and small.

If the economy is normally liquid water in good times, then the government’s tendency to freeze market winners into place is turning the economy to ice.  But this economic collapse we’re seeing as a result of COVID-19 is a boiling pot of water.  It’s chaos.  Who will win?  Who knows?  Will useful, economically viable portions of the country be ripped away?  Certainly.  We can argue that bad companies will die, but this is economic Russian roulette.

And who said the Soviets weren’t innovators???

It has already happened, we just don’t have a real-time graph from Johns-Hopkins showing angry red bubbles of economic destruction on a county by county basis with a counter and a logarithmic graph of job losses to date.  We also don’t have a doctor talking about all of the regulations that will have to change so businesses can grow again and how business regulations people are used to will be gone forever in the “New Normal” that Coronavirus has brought for us.

Some industries will be gone for good.  I don’t miss flying, and had already given it up on all trips where it only saves me a few hours a few years ago.  What else is gone?  How about small movie theaters?  How long can they survive in a world where the movies have turned to crap that’s driven by a corporate model that values sequels and familiarity over originality and cleverness?  Will they be saved by movies that are created by a target audience of people around the world and are so culturally inert that they could be about kung fu warriors or Tom Cruise jumping off of a shiny building and all make equal sense?

Human/CGI cats singing.  How could that be a flop?  Maybe the Coronavirus was the Earth saving itself from the Cats® movie?

Why are comedy movies dead?  Chinese people don’t think we’re funny and in our incredibly Politically Correct world, none of the jokes are allowed to be funny, anyway.  Besides that, the small town theater has already found it hard to compete with Netflix® and Amazon©.  Now the big Hollywood© studios have finally gotten first release on streaming.  How happy will Disney® be when they don’t have to share the profit with small town theater owners?  They’ll smile from mouse-ear to mouse-ear because Disney™ gets a big Federal bailout, and the theater owner doesn’t.

In this era, the results are unpredictable.  If I work really hard on lifting weights?  I’ll get stronger.  But in the economy of 2020, either my arm might fall off, it might grow to world-class proportions in an afternoon.  There’s no way to predict because there’s no rational process determining winners and losers.

Regardless, I need to hit the trails with Pugsley more.  Even though I can’t predict the winners and losers in the economy in the next few weeks, months, or years?  I can predict that I need to be able to hit that trail a little harder.

You never know when that might come in handy.

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