tswingwalking

So here I am at 2500 AGL, flying across the country on a three day quest, under the gun to get to my next air show in a bright red, seventy year old Stearman piloted by my trusty friend, Marcus and yep….you guessed it, I am bored. So bored in fact that I am writing a bleeping blog about it. There is obviously no pleasing me. I could name twenty people, right now, who would sacrifice all and others to be in my place. Colour me impatient.

Seems like as good a time as any for a catch up and update, for those who might care. Marcus and I just did our season wrap on filming with Historia for an upcoming show that will air in May of 2016. The previous show that we filmed with: Airshow, featured on Discovery, has had it’s run. Airshow aired in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Arabia. It’s a weird feeling to know that aviation fans in Egypt and Iceland alike now know my name and follow me on social media. The world is truly a smaller place…..unless, of course, you are trying to get across it in a Stearman.

I saw a lot of dedication, commitment and frustration during the making of Airshow and I learned much about this new industry that my toes were dipping into. Plenty of lessons learned on the saga. I was disappointed to see that it was not renewed but nothing ventured equates to nothing gained. Several will view our non renewal as a failure but at the end of the day I managed to place Wingwalking in front of seventeen million worldwide viewers, every week, for twelve consecutive weeks. Several of the characters managed to form an actual fan base that transcended both events and the industry alike and several of us became draws for the events that hired us. I would be lying if I said that I had expectations that were not met but I still feel like Wingwalking got a heck of a showcase out of it. I would venture to say that it has never had a broader audience.

Looking to the future, Airshow will start to air in Quebec, in French in a week. It will be followed by the new show that I am working on for the History channel, in the spring and Third Strike Wingwalking will make a rededication to Wingwalking that I hope the industry will welcome. Third Strike will be branching out into different forums and as usual, I will keep doing exactly what I love doing: Wingwalking on my pretty red mistress.

I also decided that it was time to start passing the torch. I have been hesitant in this for several reasons. The most obvious is that once I have given someone the ability to be a wingwalker, I have also given them the ability to enhance or hinder the art form and the industry. I only get to find out which one later though. I am also faced with the reality that my protege could go against my teachings or worse, they could die. That is a big bullet to own. The most prevalent issue however is much more pragmatic. How do I offer my students an environment in which they can thrive or at the very least, not compete directly against me, their tutor? The drive to compete in order to remain fiscally viable in this industry can seriously affect operational safety. As an industry, no one really wants to acknowledge this but I am pretty conscious of the phenomenon. Once you know something, it’s pretty hard to unknown it…
I decided that I could at least avoid some of the pitfalls simply by adding a position or two to my team.

Dual wing acts have been seen before but not quite like this. Third Strike will continue to offer the best entertainment that a dollar can buy but we will be forging a future for Wingwalking. At this point, there are so few of us and frankly, our best days are mostly behind us. Wingwalking features mature aerialists accompanied by an aging pilot base. Third Strike is motivated to ensure continuity in the art form through hands on training programs accompanied by the dissemination of a profound knowledge base. We hope to offer a training environment that offers security, safety, peer assessment and review and a frank sharing of knowledge that is inclusive of all aspects of operations.

My fingers are icing up as I tap out this message. It is pretty chilly up here today. I also find myself gazing out at that big red wing to my right and imagining a slight figure moving in and around the wires with nothing more than a tether and a smile to keep the danger at bay. I’ll be darned if it isn’t scaring me a bit. It’s going to be a great year. I can feel it in my bones!

Throttle it up, a Baby!

Superman or Batman

So the argument was made that Superman was the best of heroes because when all the other super heroes were too busy running around being their alter ego, secret identity, human selves ….. all that he had to do was be Superman, Kal El, the alien.

I rejected this argument completely. Not only was Superman trying harder than anyone to have a life, he based his entire existence upon the family values instilled in him by the Kent’s. His love of Lois Lane was only acted upon once that he was reassured that Lois chose Clark Kent over the man of steel. His secret identity may not have yielded the most complex of disguises yet there he was, an alien, the only one of his kind with unmatched powers, more concerned with being Clark Kent than the saviour of the world. He came from a loving family, grew up in the security of a small town, held position as a respected journalist and eventually married the woman of his dreams. All very human aspirations…specially for an extra terrestrial. Maybe he was overcompensating?

This brought Batman to mind. A man determined to exact revenge on crime over the death of his parents at a young age. Devoid of super powers, armed only with a working knowledge of the martial arts and a stubbornness that knows no bounds. He dedicated his life to becoming the worlds foremost detective and crime buster. Some would argue that he was Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne was merely a mask. The man was the bat. He was devoid of parents from a young age, he rejected love and chose a life that removed him from humanity. His only precarious ties came from his unidimensional relationships with his butler and series of side kicks that eventually moved on or died. He was a man, determined to live larger and die harder than any before him.

So who was the greatest hero? Was it an alien who embraced humanity or the human who rejected it? Both arrived at the same place, more or less with the same result by making decidedly different life style choices. Does one decide that Superman wins based solely on his invincibility and strength or do the honours go to Batman for being absolutely vulnerable and mortal?

Hard to decide but I will take The Bat every time. That dude is tougher than wood pecker lips!

There are only two responses to fear. You can face everything and rise or you can bleep everything and run. I am no stranger to fear but this year has handed me more than my fair share. This has been the season of uncertainty if ever there was one. It seems that every facet of my existence has been a big old question mark at some point this year; physical, financial, emotional….nothing has been spared. The uncertainty and the fear that accompanies it has run the gamut of distracting through debilitating. A little background intel might help clarify things.

The start of the season saw me confronted with the worst physical injury that I have ever sustained during my entire stunting career. I suffered from restrictive movements in a shoulder which was accompanied by chronic pain. The biggest issue was getting an accurate diagnostic. Once this was done, 90% of the battle was won. With some persistence, intensive therapy and by changing the entire routine to accommodate the injury we managed to work through it. As I write this, 95% of movement has been restored and the associated pain has completely abated.

Another source of uncertainty hails from earlier when in January of 2013, I was invited to sit through a character development reel. This interview led to Third Strike Wingwalking becoming one of three main characters in a reality documentary series that is set to air on Discovery Canada in January of 2015

The last two years have seen me surrounded by a group of dedicated, eclectic and outright awesome individuals, following my every move, seeing me at my worst yet striving to portray me at my best. Since we are admittedly talking about me, you can imagine that I have given them no easy time of it.

This documentary, this series, this monster that we have all conspired to birth sits waiting in the wings. My part is done, others are finishing theirs. Now, we wait. What we wait for is the real mystery. The show is the show and a reasonably good one at that but what we are really waiting for is the world’s reaction to it and how these reactions will affect us all. I feel like I am sitting on the edge of a cliff with my feet dangling over the abyss…..I would say that I’m getting ready to jump but it is more truthful to say that I will be getting pushed. No parachute, no wing suit, no tethers. Just acceptance or rejection and whatever party they bring in tow. I have discovered that putting your life out there for others to judge is pretty darned scary.

On a personal level, I have been dealing with a changing at home business and a family that has been acting in unprecedented ways. Nothing bad….just different but difference from the one source that you expect to be constant is disconcerting. The last eight months have also seen me acting as one half of a not quite whole, entirely unstable, romantic liaison which has recently resolved itself into nothingness. Third Strike itself may also be on the verge of morphing into something different. The jury is still out on that one. Yay for more unresolved stuff!

While I have never feared an honest stunt or even a close call, I readily admit to harbouring a healthy dose of fear about my future and all the unknown, unqualified and unaccountable gremlins reeking havoc within it lately. In the midst of all this newness and unwelcome change, I was decidedly feeling lost and uncertain ….then it happened. I lifted my head up out of my own self absorbed little world for a fraction of a second. That milisecond was just long enough to see someone who I respect and admire make a horrifying decision. He chose to bleep everything and run. I watched him do it. I could not stop it. In that instant, my heart broke into a million pieces for him. I was hit with the stark realization that this choice could never be mine.

Although I am afraid, alone and devoid of control, I am still very fortunate that fate can favour me the odd glimpse of what I could lose : Everything that makes me, me. Sigh! Whatever tomorrow brings, wether I like it or not, wether it scares me or not, wether it terrifies me or not,
I will face everything and rise
I will face everything and rise

Throttle it up, Baby!

*Author reserves the right to bleep everything and run if bats are involved.

I have pretty big concerns about CFR and their roles in our industry. I also have some very serious concerns about how some of my colleagues have been publicly responding to fire threats recently. Let me supply a bit of information to catch you up. Our industry has recently lost an individual, who was nothing short of iconic, due to the most inexcusably botched CFR response time in the known universe. Someone bleeped up to the point that it cost another human being his life when he could have so easily survived. Needless to say, the issue now has our attention.

Before this all transpired, I had been known to stand down on practice day at several events that did not have CFR in place on practice day or that did not have prepared CFR on site during the show. I have been doing this for a while. I have also been a lead tattle tale for CFR crews that are in different states of unpreparedness during events. This has not always made me the most popular chick at the show. More performers have been choosing to stand down in similar instances since the recent accident. Excuse my bluntness but there is nothing new here. Performers have been burning in their air planes since there have been airplanes to burn in. We can all probably name at least 20 accidents from the top our heads that have involved fire. Some died on impact, some died afterwards due to sustained injuries, some even died before impact due to fire. Wether fire is actually the cause of death or not, you can rest assured that it is usually there with bells on. Because of this, I have a marked respect for the possibility of conflagration.

All this being said, CFR is not required on site by CARS or the FAA on practice day. I do not like flying without CFR on site, therefor I do not. At some point it is like biting off your nose to spite your face. What is more unsafe? Flying in a new box without the benefit of dress rehearsal or flying without the protection offered by CFR? The answer is obviously flying without rehearsal. No one has ever become a better performer by practicing less.There is something else that I know. I know that I have 1 to 2 minutes to get out alive if I survive an impact. It’s doubtful that I can do this without assistance. The implications are sobering.

Most events do have CFR in place on practice day. Others do not. Our industry leaders should be requesting that changes be made to require CFR on practice days. This is a no brainier. It needs to be done. The fact that performers are still quite willing to fly without CFR in place only ensures that we get to keep burning in our aircraft. If a behaviour does not change, can one wonder at the results?

Shortly after the accident, I witnessed performers, air bosses and event support services offer up suggestions to shows of localizing a ready to roll CFR truck at center stage with engines running. This truck would respond solely to air boss command. Every single event complied without hesitation. This is a great start on the road to proactively insuring our own protection.

Some performers are going another direction. They are suggesting that we collectively arm ourselves with fire extinguishers and plan on rescuing ourselves/each other. Again, excuse the bluntness but there is nothing new here either. I have always had a fire bottle within reach and I have always been prepared to come to the rescue. I have never known a performer to not be ready to assist another in need yet, surprisingly, the saves have been few. The reasons for this are obvious: no access, no awareness, no time. We are not there to be CFR. We are there to be performers. This one single role can fill up a day pretty fast …..to the point of not even knowing who or what is flying let alone who is in distress. This is not a solution. We are already doing it and it decidedly does not work.

Do not misunderstand my intent. I will continue to look out for my fellow performers, as I always have but this is not, by a long stretch, a suitable solution to the problem. What we need is for events: military and civilian alike to espouse a much deeper understanding of our needs. We need this same understanding from CFR as well.

Please consider the following : it is entirely possible that the best protection that a performer can offer him or herself and his or her colleagues is to simply say ” No! I will not fly in my prescribed time slot as I feel that CFR is not adequate to the intended flight”. At the end of the day, we need trained professionals with the right equipment doing the jobs that they are qualified to do. Anything else falls woefully short of the mark.

Sequestration: Where the bullet meets the bone.

While this may seem like the end of the world, it is nothing of the sort. Now hear me out on this. I’m not talking from the hope and moon pony’s camp. I’m coming to you live from the inside of the air show equivalence of Zombiegeddon.

A reality check of the industry will validate that there are probably only a handful of air show performers on the circuit who actually earn a living doing shows. For some, it’s a break even venture but for most it’s a lost leader. The industry has always been full of the “I’ll do it cheaper because I want people to love me” bleeps that make earning a living next to impossible in any walk of life. The industry has done nothing to address this by calling it the free market. So be it. It has only led to the degradation of a quality product but we do love us some Walmart bleep, don’t we?

For the guys and gals out there who blazed the trail with sponsorship deals, this will indeed hurt both our industry’s credibility and their individual livelihoods but when you build an industry platform based on the premise of free stuff instead of sustainability, you can expect exactly what is happening because free stuff is, at best, unpredictable. Our failing was in not recognizing and addressing the situation much earlier. No one is to blame for our fiscal dependence on the military save ourselves. We were never entitled to it to begin with.

I’m hearing rumours of performers and service suppliers throwing themselves at a shrinking number of shows, way under market value since sequestration has come into effect. I sustain that this is merely another day at the office as exercised by the same above referred to bleeps. In other words…seems like more of the same to me.

There simply comes a time when you need to cut expenses and get your spending back under control. I personally did it last year. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t like it. It was downright humiliating but you know what? My aircraft is paid off and I can meet my fiscal obligations now. It’s called being responsible and sometimes…you just have to do it…. no matter how much it bites. As we speak, every military demo out there is being paid for by money that is borrowed from China. I for one would rather go without my entire industry than live with that knowledge.

Air shows may be different for a while. Heck; they may disappear altogether for a while but at the end of the day, the future will only bring something better because it will be ours: Paid for and debt free. I’m building it as we speak. My friends are building it as well. When the time is right, the military will rejoin us. This is where the bullet meets the bone. It’s going to hurt but it’s not like it’s a vital organ or anything.

The military has enough to deal with right now without all the incessant whining and finger pointing. It’s time for us to act like the patriots that we claim to be and to start reciprocating all the support that we have received from them in the past. Each man and woman in service has been willing to sacrifice their lives for my freedom and in return, performers risk ours for the success of their open houses. It’s time to remember that bond and to start acting with the integrity that such a bond demands.

Strive for it!

The Art of Crazy:

After years of being told that I might be crazy, I had a bit of an epiphany. It occurred to me that I may well, indeed be nuts. As a matter of fact, I may be insane….well, antisocial at the very least. Accepting that my own sanity could be problematic, I decided to try and figure out where it all went wrong.

As a kid, things were pretty normal. We spent a lot of time breaking into my Dad’s stash of Dynamite, setting the local forest on fire, building soap box cars and then crashing them and having monster spaghetti and meatball wars when my Mum was remiss enough to leave us alone with a full pot of sauce. All systems clear…smacks of normalcy.

Once school started, I remember becoming a little withdrawn until I hit grade three and discovered that I could be smart. The rest of my academic career saw me spend as much time on the honour roll as it did in detention hall. In grade 7, my Dad refused to continue signing my report card and told me that I would be signing it from now on as I would be responsible for the rest of my education. At that point, my parents were only ever called if someone required medical attention, property had been damaged or if it was honour roll award time. I had a great circle of friends consisting chiefly of my pony and a falcon that was rescued at birth. My teen years were obviously quite balanced.

Early adult life was a blast. As soon as I kicked my first real bf to the curb I developed a surplus of funds. First thing on the shopping list was a car; the second was my first aircraft. Traveling, flying, parachuting and driving way too fast took up my early adult life. A bit adventurous but still all quite normal and acceptable behaviour.

I saw wing walking, fell in love, and became a wing walker. This could be the turning point but many individuals discover passions that they wish to explore. Wing walking on a jet air craft and wing walking in the dead of winter are things that I can’t easily justify but one was for love, the other for money but maybe it was already too late by then.

What I do know is this. Once you are willing to step outside of your comfort zone, a toggle in your brain switches over and it opens up a whole new world that beforehand, existed in fiction only. Things that seemed impossible simply require forethought and things that had previously seemed death defying become life defining.

I may well be the definition of crazy or maybe I’m the end result of daring to dream and then getting it done.

Hey, Honey, have you seen the sex appeal anywhere?
Yeah, it’s in the top drawer.
Top drawer in the chest or in the closet?
In the chest.
Are you sure? I’m looking right in here and I can’t see it.
Wait a minute. I’m coming. Maybe if you picked up around here sometimes, you might know where to find stuff. Move over. It’s right over here. Uhhh…. Well it was here the last time I saw it!
Are you saying that you don’t know where the sex appeal is? This is not good. The air show is next week. We can’t possibly have a show without it!

*Insert theme music from the Twilight Zone*
*Using best Orson Wells impersonation…*

“…Or can they? Stay with us during this intrepid quest to find out what happened to sex appeal at Air Shows because it has surely gone missing!”

I have only one really clear moment, dating back to my youth, when I remember being exposed to capitalistic sexuality. It was during the Calgary Stampede Parade, when I saw the float that housed the Playmate of the month gal along with her gal pals. I remember telling my step Mum that they were real pretty girls. After all, they did have pink cowboy hats and everyone knows that there is nothing cooler than that!
Urgh! My step Mum? Not so impressed! Here is the real equalizer though…Me? I could care less. Following their float was something as equally inspiring, awesome or incredible as a matter of fact…it was the upside down clowns.

So how much does sexuality affect youth during festivals of this type? I dare say not much at all. Had it not been for my step mother’s reaction to the Playboy float, I doubt very much that it would have had any effect on me worthy of remembrance 30 years after the fact save for the pink cowboy hats of course.

Here I stand, so many years later, in my tight spandex/leather costume wondering where in the heck all the girly girls have gotten off to. Every other sport has the girl power front and center section. . Nascar has the trophy girls. Every convention ever has booth babes. Boxing has its ring number girls. Football has the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and every other cheerleader that wants to work for them and air shows have what? Me? That’s gotta hurt!

When and why did the pendulum swing so far off center? When did cute little girls trying to earn an honest buck become the bad guys? There is surely a place for the Hooter girls, the paddock girls, the sunscreen sampling girls, etc in our industry.

Women have come a long way in aviation as in every other motorised sport. We can drape ourselves over the hood as well as we can race it on an international course. We can pose in front of it dressed like a parody of a commercial pilot in boy shorts or we can fly it for a living, for warfare or, like me, walk on it to entertain. We can compete on the world scale for notoriety. We can design, test, repair and build the future flying machines that will out perform all. You would be hard pressed to find offence with a girl using her good looks to represent a company, sell a product or hand out samples on the air show circuit. For us gals running with the big boys… we know who we are, what we want and where ours lives are headed. We actually look forward to meeting some of these young girls because a few of them may well become some of us one day if given the chance to see our world. It should also be noted that we encourage young guys too look good as well. We don’t even mind it if the old boys are looking good….Or, you know….That may just be me 

4:11 am, in a hotel room that looks exactly like any other hotel room at 4:11 am when you can’t seem to get back to sleep after that suspicious bump in the night has roused you. It is not a good place to be on the Friday morning of practice day of your last show of the season. This is an hour at which all good little wing walkers should be curled up in bed, sound asleep.

I could at least understand if concerns for my aircraft, my pilot, my health or my routine were keeping me awake but a quick mental check insures me that none of these oft time distractions are the guilty culprit. So what is keeping me awake, you ask? The future or, more likely, the end…. and everything after it.

I sit here typing these words with the knowledge that I am in my mid forties and that I am the second youngest wing walker on the circuit. This does not bode well for my industry at all. The very simple truth is that we, as an industry, have absolutely failed to supply any future generation of wing walkers with even the remote likelihood of a sustainable industry let alone one that they can earn a living from. When faced with the ongoing struggle of keeping your own team afloat, there is little left to pass onto future generations save the stripped bones of the meager carcass that you started with.

When did it become acceptable to pay upwards of a quarter million dollars for a ticket sales program while the talent that graces the sky (and hurls their pink bodies along with millions of dollars worth of aircraft straight at the ground) isn’t worth a fraction of this cost? How do I explain that I’m taking a financial loss even while I’m charging double what performer X is charging? Why do events subsidized by my own tax dollars insist on hiring those who operate below cost and thereby undermine the entirety of the industry?
Why have we done nothing to address the issues and the behaviors that prevent us from becoming a truly professional industry? My predecessors have gifted me with this impossible stage from which to try to extort a livelihood. What remains to be seen is what you and I will leave in our wake.

Once upon a time, someone tried to convince me to work for free by stating that we would set a record and that my name would be carved into history. Little did he know that I could care less for history and that my name need only be whispered by those that loved me for me to be content. I told him that my goals in life were much loftier than my name in a book. My goals were to leave behind me a place were wing walkers could not only survive but thrive. Where they could teach, learn and soar. Where they could have a reasonable expectation of earning a living and where they could perfect their craft. That place can only be built upon the actions that I take today as a responsible performer and the actions that the industry takes to support the right decisions, at the right time.

This is not a problem relegated solely to the wing walking community. I have had the opportunity to closely follow two air show pilots through their ACE accreditation to surface over the past two years. I have seen them take more abuse than a gimp breaker in a roller derby. Not only do they not get paid a single dime to perform in aerobatic boxes before an audience, they also get sent fuel bills after the fact. This, after hopping more media flights than any sane performer would think of.
Although it’s out of my realm, I have also seen event producers struggling in this new economy as well. I see them struggling to make the responsible choices that will benefit the whole of the industry. I see them being valiant when it would be so easy to take the cheap way out. They are the true leaders that we need to espouse and emulate because they have understood that the future is as important as the present. They have understood that there is a bigger picture and that for one of us to prosper, we must all prosper. These people are not happy to simply exist, they, like many of us, want to build something bigger and better for tomorrow.

Try as I might to leave this industry better off than when I arrived, I feel that my efforts have been for naught. The onslaught of fly by night producers and performers who come wanting all and giving nothing back is as steady as the sun rising and setting. I don’t know where they come from. They never last for long but they are there long enough to mess it up for everyone else before disappearing as effortlessly as they came.

It’s 4:11 am and I can’t sleep because when I close my eyes, I am plagued by the vision of wing walking coming to an end in my generation and the thought of this happening on my watch is a notion that I can not tolerate.

Tetherless in Wonderland.

Pride before the fall

I was once told by a proponent of tetherless wing walking that the foremost reason for not using safety cables was to authentically reproduce the genuine wing walking techniques of the barnstorming era. I kind of rolled my eyes into the back of my head upon hearing this response. If authenticity was such a valued asset, I wondered how the use of metal stanchions and supped up 450hp Stearmans was excused but then again, who was I to judge?

I thought that I might go and try to educate myself further on the matter and this is what Charlie had to say about it:

“The day I stood on top of an airplane while it looped, I was tied on as safely as thought I had been strapped in my cockpit. Dangerous as that stunt seemed to the man on the ground, there was really little danger involved. I had rigged up my own harness with several times the safety factors needed. I made metal heel cups. Like those on roller skates, with straps to hold my feet in place. I wore a heavy leather belt around my waist, and attached it to four strong cables which ran to the wing-hinge pins. I might fall down (I did as we came out of the loop), but I could never fall off”

Charles A Lindbergh – The Spirit of St-Louis

Photo by Vuelo Libre

I’m no expert and would never claim to be but my friend Slim here, claims that wing walkers of the original barnstorming era did, for the most part, indeed wear tethers and safety harnesses. I’m inclined to believe him as he was actually there and as no one else has come up with a better explanation of how a full grown man can hang from an aircraft in flight, by his teeth, in a non fluoride age.

I have spoken with several tetherless wing walkers about their choice and when confronted with proof that authenticity has nothing to do with it, they revert to “personal choice” as a valid reason for not wearing safety cables. Even when faced with one of their brothers impacting the ground, at center stage and bouncing back 15 feet, they still refuse to even consider wearing a safety cable. Wow! It must be really hard to work with a safety cable and that might explain why those of us working with safety cables seem to always charge a couple of thousand more per show than our unbound counterparts. Hmmm! I wonder what that’s about. *Insert sarcasm, she said*

I have spent over a decade “respecting” these personal choices but that respect has not been reciprocated. There is no mutual respect shown when their failings negatively affect their colleagues on a business level or when they adversely affect the whole of the industry; my industry. Sponsors run away from us, almost screaming, some event producers still view us as amateurish meat bags with nothing better to offer than a scare and the military still refuses to even recognize their own heritage…the wing walking world. Who can blame them when faced with such selfish, narcissistic and vainglorious behaviour?

I have persistently sought to encourage growth and change within the tetherless community but my efforts have been useless in converting even one single wing walker over to a saner world.

Air show producers are being called upon more and more to make responsible selections when recruiting performers. I think that a simple place to start would be to ask if a chosen wing walker wears a tether and then to act accordingly.

The truth of the matter can not be escaped. The only motivating factors in choosing to not use a tether are pride and vanity, neither of which is a good companion on a wing. The only thing served by not wearing a cable is ones own ego and individual egos do not serve the event, the spectator or the industry. Being a wing walker is not about ones self, it’s about being responsible…responsible for yourself, for your pilots, for the spectators well being and also for the next generation, the generation that will be forced to live with the consequences of our mistakes. Personally, I think it would be better if they could benefit from our forethought instead.