On Becoming an Elephant
When it rains it pours. We’ve all heard that many times in our lives. What hasn’t been so well acknowledged is that when it does rain and therefore does pour, it does so even harder when you have planned a parade or a picnic. My retirement has been in process for twenty months now and the four primary activities I brought to the table to give me at least transitional purpose if not a varied slate of activities to get me up each morning have all kicked in differently. The four are (in no particular order) teaching at the University of San Diego, taking on expert witness assignments through my chosen platform (SEDA Experts, named for Sergio and Damiano, who run it), running that certain little Hydrogen company from a distance, and writing.
Writing has taken the form of my daily 1,300-word stories published on my The Old Lone Ranger blog and writing four books. The books are The Ride is All (440 pages on the 25-year history of my motorcycle group), Journey Into the Dark (250-page book on the drug addiction journey of a friend’s daughter), Jump First, Think Fast (a 325-page business memoir of a dear friend) and Wardroom Warriors (another friend’s 220-page memoir of his ribald days in the Navy). The total word count for these twenty months has been 1,150,000 words, which equates to about fourteen books-worth. I still write at least one story every day and at least two of those books are on the track for serious publication. I would say that I did what I set out to do. Whether anything I wrote is worth saving for posterity is for others to determine.
The little Hydrogen company has been in my rearview mirror for over four months now. I was asked to be Chairman of the Advisory Committee, but that has not materialized, presumably mostly for priority reasons as the new CEO from Switzerland goes about trying to drive the company forward with its technology and fundraising plans. While I still own over 5% of that company (mostly due to incentive and deferred compensation), my retirement goal of passing the baton on to someone more capable and engaged than I, has been achieved. Whether the company will find its way to some form of value (technologically or financially) is yet to be seen, but the most I can do is cheer them on from the distant sidelines.
Teaching at USD has taken an interesting turn. It is always challenging to muscle into an existing faculty at a new University and if there is a gap to be filled, the chances are that it may not be exactly what you want to teach versus what they need to have taught. Last Fall I did teach a small elective course about a subject (project financing) that I had taught at Cornell and that I was willing to teach again. That went well, but the course slate was a bit lighter than I had hoped. Then, in the early summer, I was asked to teach a major Advanced Corporate Finance course, which is a required course for a finance concentration in the MBA program. It should have about forty students in it and it will be taught weekly for one three hour session on campus (last year was only Zoom teaching). That will be the biggest (in terms of credits) course I have ever taught and I feel a far more serious edification challenge than I have had in past courses. I have chosen to invite a dozen guest speakers to help carry the load and make sure the students get the best instruction in finance they possibly can. The orchestration and running of the course started with drawing up a syllabus, and while I had the benefit of the last two years’ syllabi, I had the responsibility and leeway to put together whatever curriculum I chose. This has been a balance of fun and challenge, but has certainly taken some serious time commitment.
I will also add that I have been asked to teach in the Spring, the course I am most interested in teaching. That is a two-credit course on ethics in finance. I have a guest lecture to give in that same course being given in the summer session. That happens next Sunday (strange time for a course) and has allowed me to get a jump on the curriculum setting for the course in the Spring. But the combination of the big Fall course and the advance planning for the Spring ethics course have certainly given me a full academic plate at the moment.
And then, the activity that has occupied the biggest share of my time and has ebbed and flowed as these sorts of things do based on case load, is my expert witness activity. To put it into perspective, I have had three cases over the last two years and one of them is still active every week with testimony. I have put in 644 hours according to my time log, which translates to sixteen man-weeks of work or about 20-25% of my available work time. It’s work that I have found I like a great deal in all its respects. Reading and analyzing a case, writing a report and rebuttals, and giving direct testimony in court or arbitration hearings, all turn out to be more pleasurable for me than not.
Since the start of this year, I have interviewed for perhaps ten new cases and have not been selected for any but one, which was settled before I could begin the engagement (a not uncommon circumstance in the trade). That was before this week. This week I have been awarded two cases, one with the theme of the suitability of certain retail investments, and the other on the theme of the oligopolistic conduct of a certain arcane type of finance. When it rains it pours. It is pouring in the land of expert witness work, it is pouring in the land of academics and there is always lots of rain in the realm of the written word. Thank goodness the Hydrogen market has been able to manage without me.
And then there is the situation of the parade and picnic I have planned. I last set foot on an airplane in early March, 2020 when I was trying to get to London for an expert witness assignment at the London High Court. I was forced to rush back from New York to San Diego to avoid the possibility of getting stuck in New York on account of COVID. We cancelled all of our travel plans in 2020 as most of us did. Then this year, we all decided to redo the planned motorcycle trip to Spain and Portugal, only this year in September rather than August. The trip goes from September 9th until September 23rd. During those fourteen days, we will be covering only a bit more than 1,000 miles, so it is a less than rigorous ride. There are only nine riding days, with the rest intended for sightseeing of one kind or another. The hardest riding day is only 200 miles, but since its through the Pyrenees, it should be both fun (we go through Pamplona) and make for a long day. I am already wondering how I will advance the expert witness cases while on the road. I’ve already sorted out the two lectures I will have to conduct starting at 4am local time.
As I was pondering all this and my two new assignments, Kim asked me from the kitchen (I was in the living room) how I felt about it. All I had to say was that the juggling I would have to do sure beat becoming irrelevant. Her puzzled comment as she returned to the Living Room was, “what do you mean you’re becoming an elephant?” Now Kim likes to say, “Not just a hat rack,” so I didn’t feel it would be right to jump on her question as my sense of humor was screaming at me to do. Instead, I just said I would skip breakfast today since I had so much work to do….