My Semi-Annual Bourbon Excursion to Louisville

The Graceland of bourbon distilleries.

I'm not the kind of guy who doesn't take advantage of any opportunity to sip some good bourbon. In fact, I deem it more of a calling than an opportunity. At least that's what I'm telling myself as I sit in the afterglow of a day flitting from bourbon bar to bourbon bar in Louisville. It's a good thing I no longer live in the Derby City. Drunk and broke is no way to live out my remaining years. No, I just swoop in every six months or so, visit friends and put a dent in the local bourbon supply.

Let me set your mind to rest, we do have a designated driver for these little bourbon-infused excursions. Also, most Louisville joints seriously pouring bourbon are attuned to the needs of folks who just want to sample this or that. Many have price lists including half-ounce pours. So, we aren't tossing back bourbons two ounces at a time. 

No serious bourbon drinker can live life without at least one visit to Louisville's Whiskey Row.

Earlier this year, I made a half-hearted attempt to put together a group of friends to spend a weekend in Louisville on a bourbon-tasting adventure. Because I just came off one of the worst earning quarters in the past several years, the Great Louisville Bourbon Gathering of 2019 was postponed – perhaps until 2020. When I visit Louisville on my own, I stay with friends and my only costs are an occasional meal out and the cost of whatever bourbon I consume. The GLBG would have entailed renting a house, securing transportation, meals and on and on and on. I simply couldn't justify it with the uncertainty of revenue-producing work this year.

I firmly believe that to be a member of the pseudo religion of bourbon, requires at least one pilgrimage to Louisville. It is, in fact, where bourbon was elevated from glorified moonshine to the wonderful elixir we know today. To turn distilling bourbon into a money-making enterprise required a broader audience. This audience was accessed by shipping bourbon south down the Ohio River to ports in New Orleans. Louisville became the obvious jumping off point for a bourbon's journey to world fame. (During your trip to Louisville, be sure to invest an hour in the tour of the Evan Williams facility on Mains Street. You will leave there with a rich education in Louisville's contribution to launching bourbon.)

Although my first attempt at organizing a GLBG failed miserably, I have not given it up. I want my fellow bourbon travelers to experience Louisville's bourbon scene as I have. I want them to belly up to the tasting bar at Liquor Barn, gaze, open mouthed, at the scores of bourbons and ryes lining the shelves spread across the wall behind the bar. I want them to be able to thumb through the 40-page booklet of available brands to sample. And, this would be just one stop on the agenda.

No, I haven't given up on the GLBG.

On these forays into bourbon country, I usually have a wish list of difficult-to-find brands to purchase. Elmer T Lee always tops this list that also includes Wild Turkey's Forgiven, Col. E H Taylor Small Batch, Weller 12-Year Old and others. One can dream, right?

Driving up to Louisville from Greenville, SC, I had mapped out a number of liquor stores in the Frankfort area to visit as I made my way to Buffalo Trace. A fraternity brother of mine in Ohio had texted me the week before to report that a buddy of his had visited Buffalo Trace that day and was bringing him bottles of Blanton's, Eagle Rare and (wait for it) Col. EH Taylor. I was stoked. Visions of hard-to-get bourbons danced in my head. I was convinced that all I needed to do was get myself to Buffalo Trace and bottles of Eagle Rare and EH Taylor would be mine.

Tell God your plans and watch him laugh, right? Just outside of Frankfort proper, Buffalo Trace is easy to find and to get to. It's not officially on the Bourbon Trail, but is surrounded by distilleries that are. You must look for it separately. Anyone investing the time and effort to follow the Bourbon Trail is missing out if he/she doesn't add Buffalo Trace to the itinerary. It is, after all, the Graceland of distilleries. It's a tourist trap of the first order. I have no clue how much revenue it generates annually, but I've never been there when it wasn't packed with tourists eager to plunk down hard-earned dinero for a tour, tee-shirt, set of coasters or some other trinket emblazoned with the Buffalo Trace logo. The only thing missing is a photographer set up in front of the huge bison sculpture, snapping photos of mugging tourists with the iconic sculpture and selling them for $20 a pop.

On the plus side, Buffalo Trace offers one of the better distillery tours I've ever experienced. And, if you are lucky, you can buy one or two of its hard-to-find labels right out of the gift shop. I was not so lucky. After parking in the sprawling parking lot and hiking to the gift shop, I found shelves lined with a Bailey's-like beverage. “Hey, where's the EH Taylor? Where's the Eagle Rare?” “Not here,” the ghost of the Great Buffalo taunted me. Nuts!

Yes!

Foiled in my plan to buy at least some of what I was searching for at Buffalo Trace, I fell back on my liquor-store list. I visited three Frankfort liquor stores before getting on I-64 to continue to Louisville. I did manage to find a single bottle of Eagle Rare at my last Frankfort liquor-store stop. Twenty-or-so miles west of Frankfort is Shelbyville. I like Shelbyville with its historic downtown. I had some time to burn and decided to take its exit and search a liquor store or two in the area. As soon as I exited, there was a liquor store. I wandered in with low expectations, but, what do you know, I found another bottle of Eagle Rare. 

I was on a roll.

I found my way to State Route 60 running parallel to I-64 and headed west. The friends I stay with in the Louisville area live off of Rt 60 roughly 15 miles west of Shelbyville. I Googled liquor stores near me and found two on Rt 60. In the first one, I found a bottle of Col. EH Taylor for $49. Trumpets sounded, a flock of white doves ascended and angels wept. Once again I was little Rusty falling to my knees in awe of the mountain of gaily wrapped presents under the Christmas tree. Wiping the tears away, I climbed back into the Kicks Nissan provided me for this extended trip and moved on to the next liquor store on my list.

I walked in the store and found a second bottle of EH Taylor. Here it was priced at $65. Having just bought a bottle for $49, and thinking if two stores each had a bottle, others must, as well. I passed on the $65 price tag. That may have been a dumb thing to do, but I couldn't justify spending $15 more.

This a liquor-store tasting area done Louisville style.

That was Friday. Saturday was our day to wallow in the bourbon experience. We visited a couple of big liquor stores where we sampled a few bourbons and I found a couple of new bourbons to add to my stash at home. Then we hit downtown Louisville's Whiskey Row. This is an 8-to-10-block stretch of Louisville's Main Street that is almost entirely devoted to all things bourbon. There are bourbon distilleries, bourbon bars and bourbon restaurants operating in what used to be a warehouse district just a couple of blocks from the river. Although two or three bourbon joints we visited had Elmer T Lee on their bourbon list, they didn't actually have it to pour. Elmer T Lee is an elusive label distilled at, you guessed it, Buffalo Trace. I have unsuccessfully hunted it for the past two or three years. 

Two birds, one stone: This is a stout-barrel-finished bourbon aged and bottled by Goodwood craft brewery.

We hit a couple of joints, had a sip of bourbon in each and then headed for home to rest up for dinner and then post-dinner bourbon sipping. Dinner was at Eddie Merlot's, a steak house in downtown Louisville. There I found another bourbon I had never heard of called Wathen's. It will be on my list to buy on my next Louisville junket. After dinner we stopped at Checks BBQ and Blues for a nightcap. Running my finger up and down the columns of bourbons in its whiskey list, I discovered Elmer T Lee. With absolutely no expectation of them having it, I asked the server for a pour, neat, of course.

Imagine my surprise when she returned with it. Not only did they have it, the bartender told me he had three more bottles in the back room. What? I know where my first stop will be on my next Louisville visit.

Finally, a pour of the highly prized Elmer T Lee! I can now die happy.

 Cheers! 

Bend Over. It's Income Tax Time

I'm not the kind of guy who thinks we as individuals shouldn't have to pony up some small fraction of what it costs to maintain the federal government each year. The term “fair share” is bandied about a lot. I'm not sure what constitutes fair share. No one seems to be able pinpoint it. Here's my take: I'm just one person. It would seem to me determining fair share would divide what it costs to run the country by the number of people sharing the protections of the national government, and that would be my fair share. It would be the same from diapers to the grave. Choosing to have a family would put the head of household on the hook for picking up the slack of those in the household too young to work.

Radical; I know. But, apparently, truly fair is a radical concept in our society.

Instead we have a progressive income tax system in which an individual's share is determined by taxing net income. The final income amount can be manipulated by capitalizing on loopholes and deductions within the U.S. tax code that's so thick you could stand on it to change an overhead light bulb. If you are clever, or well off enough to be able to afford someone really clever to put all those loopholes and deductions to good use, you get to pay less. If not, you are left to pay more, but certainly not a fair share.

Of course, the rate at which that net income is taxed is based on an arbitrary sliding scale. The higher the net income, the more tax is paid. In other words, the more successful – as measured by net income – an individual is, the higher rate of tax. Maybe I don't understand what “fair” means. I looked it up in Webster's dictionary. It defined fair as “marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism.” Wait; I did know the definition of fair.

I grapple with this whole income-tax thing about this time every year. Every April I spend two or three hours filling in blanks on some online tax program to come up with what I owe for enjoying the protections of our national government during the previous year. It almost always seems like a lot. It seems excessive. It seems punishing. It never seems to fit within the definition of fair.

My situation is different in many ways from the typical citizen filing a 1040. For one thing, I'm over 66, and treated somewhat differently than a younger person working 8:30 to 5:00. I work for myself, which adds yet another twist to the process. After investing all this time filling out all the required information about my income and expenses, I am usually facing some amount to pay. Sometimes it's a shock and sometimes it isn't. It never seems quite fair.

People receiving a W-2 are in a different boat.

To avoid trying to collect a lump sum from everyone at the end of the year, the federal government forces employers to take money out of a employee's pay every pay period and loan it to them. Every April those employees must go through hours of paperwork to, in effect, petition the government to repay that loan minus whatever tax was owned. The government does so, but without paying any interest on that money. That doesn't seem to quite fit the definition of “fair,” either.

After filing federal taxes for nearly half a century, one thing I do know: There's nothing fair about it.

From AT&T to Spectrum: I Never Thought I'd Write That

I'm not the kind of guy who has historically acted on his knee-jerk reactions. Yes, there are times I act impulsively, as when I bought my house in Boynton Beach, Fla. in 2001, and especially when I bought my house in Greenville in 2006. In my defense, I made out like a bandit on the sale of my Boynton home when I sold it in 2006. During the housing boom, it more than doubled in value in the five-or-so years I owned it. Too soon to tell with my Greenville home, but I certainly won't sustain a loss.

Removing those two decisions from the averaging, I usually think things through. I may still not make the best decision, but it isn't because I haven't thought about it. It's taken not one, but several factors to nudge me into changing gyms. It's been a progression of smaller things that have morphed into an avalanche of reasons to move on after 11 years. Some are almost insignificant, like changing the music played over the sound system from various satellite-radio stations alternating from classic rock to current pop, to permanently turning to some head-banging station where screeching and hollering pass for music. They have been torturing the membership with this for nearly a month. It's like a Chinese water torture: drip, drip, drip. Why not just waterboard us as we enter and get it over with? Other deciding factors are larger, like the machines not being maintained. I haven't pulled the trigger on the change yet. That will come sometime on Monday, but the decision is made.

You may well be thinking where in the hell is he going with this? Stay with me.

Also early on Monday, if Comcast/Spectrum is on schedule, I will replace my AT&T Internet connection with Spectrum's Internet. At least I hope they are on schedule; AT&T will terminate my service at midnight on Sunday.

The reason I am penning this entry to Clanging Bell today (Saturday), rather than my usual Clanging Bell day (Sunday), is that I've been knocked off the Internet twice already this morning. And, it isn't even 9:00. I will be at home the next two weeks and have a ton of work to do before returning to the road in mid April. I have some big assignments to knock out. Today was to be a research day for a couple of those assignments. I can't research if my Internet isn't performing. 

A little background. Because of the treeline to the south of my house, satellite TV doesn't work for me. I have two choices for TV content: AT& T Uverse or Comcast/Spectrum. I had Comcast when I first moved to Greenville, but it has positively the worst DVR in the industry. It is severely limited in the number of channels it can record simultaneously. I dumped it after a year for Uverse. When I switched to Uverse, I also changed my phone service from Verizon to AT&T. My Internet service had always been with AT&T. Yes, I bundled. Perhaps the biggest scam in the digital universe.

At the time I started with AT&T Internet, streaming still wasn't much of a thing. Also, I wasn't uploading videos to Vimeo or YouTube. The 12 mbps (Laughable, I know.) I originally purchased gave me all the steam I needed for what I was doing. Even when uploading my short 3- to 5-minute just3things videos to Vimeo, upload time was reasonable. Once I began BEER2WHISKEY, which has segments running as long as 30 minutes, suddenly it was taking five, six, even seven hours to upload to YouTube. I mitigated that by uploading over night. I was unhappy, but making do.

I recently stayed at a Ritz Carlton. While there, I finished editing a 20-min B2W segment and went about uploading it. It uploaded in about 90 minutes. This was four hours less than it would have required at home. I took a giant step in making the decision to switch.

In the past couple of months, streaming at my house has taken a nose dive. Often the picture quality is like watching an episode of "Bewitched" on a 1969 Admiral table-top TV with rabbit ears. There were times I couldn't even get Amazon TV to come in. This issue became progressively worse to the point that between 4 pm and 8 pm on weekdays, I can't stream at all. I suspect it has something to do with kids being home from school and gaming or whatever. AT&T's broadband during those hours apparently is something akin to the Blue Ridge Parkway during fall-foliage season: stop and go. As I say, in recent days on my PC, my Internet drops two or three times an hour.

I returned home from my Ritz Carlton stay, and checked on my current Internet plan with AT&T. This was when I realized the $64 a month I was paying was only giving me 12 mbps. But hey, they had another plan that, for $2 more, I could get up to 24 mbps. I “upgraded” to that two or three weeks ago. Clearly the key phrase in that upgrade offer is, “up to 24 mbps.” There was not a prayer that I was going to actually see 24 mbps or anything close to it. I did see it up to 10 mbps while I was streaming something from Amazon TV, but on a good day it hovers around 6 mbps. During peak times, it was more like 2 or 3 mbps. Two bucks doesn't buy you much in the world of broadband.

Early last week I checked out Spectrum. I receive solicitations from them like I owe them money: often two per week. Normally that would be enough to prevent my reaching out to them, but, as I mentioned above, my choices here are limited. The offer I found and picked is 400 mbps for less than $50. Seems like a bargain, right? I took it and made an appointment for 8 am this coming Monday to have it installed.

Now came calling AT&T to cancel my current Internet service. I got Paul from AT&T's customer service on the phone. He's located in Dallas, he was quick to tell me, letting me know he wasn't Bob from New Delhi. To his (and AT&T's) credit, he didn't try to keep me on the phone for 20 minutes attempting to talk me out of canceling the Internet portion of my service. But he did tell me he wished I had called before taking the plunge with Spectrum. You see, he confided to me, my area qualifies for an upgrade to 100 mbps that only entails an AT&T tech showing up and attaching some sort of box to the side of my house. Oh, and the upgraded service would cost $14 less than I am currently paying.

Are you kidding me?

Rather than instilling some degree of buyer's remorse in me, the double-secret-probation offer ticked me off. If this upgrade is available in my area, why was this the first I had heard of it. When I upgraded a few weeks earlier, this 100 mbps option wasn't on the list of available services. I never received an e-mail nor a snail-mail letter notifying me of the 100 mbps option. Nope, apparently this is something they keep in their back pocket as a hail Mary to try to retain defecting customers. It would have worked on me had I not already scheduled new service. Problem was, I was already over the wall. I had already defected.

So, beginning Monday (fingers crossed), I will have new and much improved Internet. I am stoked.

I Stumbled as the Technology Around Me Crumbled

I'm not the kind of guy who embraces a lot of change. Yes, there are things that need changing; I get that. However, rocking the boat just to see who or what falls out, isn't something I do for kicks.

Last month I was on the road for two straight weeks. Well, I was back in Greenville once for a whopping 11 hours and home for about 9 hours of that. It was long enough to unpack, do a load of wash, repack, grab six hours of sleep and get back to the airport. Sometime between that brief home stand and my final return three days later, all hell broke lose.

Maybe that's being a little too dramatic.

For the couple of weeks I've been back, I've been in connectivity/technology hell. I'm ready to gut punch a kitten. I've had it with computers, printers, personal devices, AT&T, whoever the jerks are who make GoPro, Apple, iTunes, and the list goes on and on. My head is pounding just thinking about it.

I get alerts from Duke Energy whenever there is a significant power outage in my area. Apparently there was one during the three-day period mentioned above. The lights went out at my home. I have no clue how long the house was without electricity, but it was long enough that I received two messages about it over a 24-hour period. If I lived in Wisconsin, a 12-plus-hour outage in February might have meant frozen water pipes, as well as other catastrophes. But, that's why I live south of the Mason-Dixon line.

No, what I did come home to was all of my digital clocks flashing, and all the timers controlling lights when I'm out of town turning those lights on at 2:30 in the afternoon. I reset all of those only to have Duke Power, the next day, intentionally shut down electricity in the area to “make some improvements.” Whatever that means. I got to reset everything all over again. (Oh and then the time change: another round of resetting it all.)

It wasn't until that afternoon that I finally fired up my PC to do a little work and found my Wi-Fi wasn't working. I couldn't connect to the Internet. I rebooted everything. I unplugged my ATT gateway and plugged it back in. Nada. My network didn't even appear when accessing available Wi-Fi networks. I was on the phone with the AT&T robot three times trying different troubleshooting solutions. By now, I had burned through more than two hours. I was steaming. You see, I can't make phone calls from inside my house with AT&T without Wi-Fi calling. Each call entailed me heading out to the carport in 40-degree temps to make calls.

Eventually, I got a human being on the phone. Although English was obviously not her first language, I had her repeat things until I understood what she was saying. Sometimes I got the gist of what she was saying on the first repeat and sometimes on the third or fourth. For some reason known only to the gremlins constantly attacking our technology, during all of the power outages, my Wi-Fi network reset itself to the factory network name and password. The technician I spoke with couldn't explain it, or if she did, I didn't realize it. There was a lot of chattering going on. We reset the password and I had Wi-Fi again. Of course, that meant going through my long list of Wi-Fi-connected devices, including outside security cameras, and reconnecting. Another 90 minutes up in smoke.

While in Florida during my two-week sabbatical, I decided the issue with my phone signal reception was due to the phone. I was having the same problem making calls and sending texts where I was staying as I was at home. Because one of my friends I stay with works for Verizon, he was familiar with the closest AT&T cell site, which also happens to host a Verizon site. They have no problem with their cell-phone signals. Although my phone was only 13 months old, I decided to pull the trigger and replace it. I ordered a new phone, which was waiting for me when I returned at the end of my trip.

Of course, signal reception isn't any better on the new phone. I'm keeping it, however, because it's a little smaller than the phone it replaces. It's easier to slip in my back pocket. When I bought the phone just over a year ago, it marked a switch from Apple to Android. After nearly 14 months, I am still not an Android fan, but I stuck with Android because for the last 12 months of using my third iPhone, it was updating twice or more a week. What a pain. Finally, somewhere in all that updating, it caused the GPS function on the phone to quit working. The phone knew where it was as long as I was stationary, but the moment I began to move, it had no clue where it was. I couldn't use Google Maps or any other direction app. That was enough to finish me with iPhones.

Since I've been with Android, I've been trying to figure out a way to move all of the iTunes music I've purchased over the years to my Android phone. Last week I finally broke down and spent $40 (annual subscription) on an app to transfer iTunes music from my iPod to my PC and then back to my Android phone. I'll eventually cancel the subscription. I have been able to make the transfers, but rather than playlists, the songs have transferred in file folders. I struggled with being able to get the phone to play songs in succession. I had to click on each song to play it. Another blood-pressure raising task.

I'm please to report, however, that I finally overcame the song-transfer issue. For the first time in 16 months, I'm able to share my entire music library with my Android phone and play songs in whichever car I am driving. A small victory, but I'll take them as they come.

Over the Christmas holiday, I bought a GoPro on a site called Daily Sale. I get an update of new sale items each day. I really have never had an interest in GoPro. Recently, though, I've been thinking about doing just3things car reviews from behind the wheel. As I was scrolling through the sale items one day I came across an $80 deal on GoPro Hero 3+ cameras for $80. I couldn't pass it up. I ordered it. It's arrival required about two weeks. Once delivered, it sat, unopened for another month. I finally got around to opening the shipping box since returning from my two week trip.

Once I had the shipping box open, I discovered the GoPro in a plain white box. Somehow I totally missed the fact that this was, in fact, a refurbished camera. Had I realized that, I would have opened it sooner. Once open, I had to buy a mini SD card. I got on Amazon ordered that, as well as one for my new phone. I also bought a couple of other GoPro accessories like a mount and spare batteries. A couple of days ago I watched a YouTube video on the subject and then set up my Hero 3+. I also downloaded the App allowing me to perform some basic operations on the GoPro through my phone, as well as use my phone as a monitor. Of course, the phone and GoPro wouldn't automatically sync. No, I need the serial number to do it manually. Where's the serial number? you may ask. It's supposed to be in the battery compartment. Fat chance. The serial-number sticker is missing leaving behind some glue residue in its place. Had the phone not been sync'd previously, I could do it with the factory settings, but that's not an option either. I reached out to Daily Sale. More on this in a future Clanging Bell.

As part of my Wi-Fi fiasco, the Wi-Fi connection between my PC and Canon printer was severed. I couldn't get the printer back online. I attempted to delete it from my PC, download a new driver and whatever else I could think of. After fooling with it for more than an hour, I was well over my tolerance threshold. I sprang a gasket. I was fed up with fighting technology. I got on Amazon and ordered a new printer. Of course, even though the new printer is from the same Canon line as the old one, it takes different ink cartridges. They looked the same in the online photos, but they are different. Consequently the box of spare cartridges is worthless to me. I'm hanging on to the old printer. It will rest in the upstairs spare bedroom until I have put enough distance between my breakdown and recovery to attempt to get it up and functioning again.

I am fed up with AT&T. I'm going to have to live with its lack of cell coverage for another year. I'm not going through all the crap associated with reconfiguring my phone for a new carrier. But I will be shopping for a new broadband provider. I am too exhausted to lay it all out here, but even after doubling my broadband with AT&T, I still can't stream anything between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. I assume it has something to do with kids being home from school and, en masse, logging on to game or whatever. All the extra traffic on AT&T's system knocks me off. It's fine earlier in the day and later in the evening. So, I'll waste more time and expend more energy (physical and emotional) addressing this issue.

Oh, the humanity.....

Super Bowl Blues

I'm not the kind of guy to cry over spilled milk. As I prepare myself to attend a Super Bowl party later today to watch a game in which I have little interest, I can't help but think about how the Steelers squandered yet another season with a team that should have, at the very least, made it into the playoffs, if not the Super Bowl.

When a team begins its season by being played to a draw by the less-than-dynamic Cleveland Browns, you know there is a problem and it originates at the top. I have always been a fan of Mike Tomlin, but how can you explain fielding a team brimming with talent to so little effect, if not an issue of coaching?

I can't.

Sure there was some drama within the Steelers ranks. Bell sitting out the season in a snit for one example. The front office miscalculated when they supposed he would eventually show up for practice rather than lose nearly $10 million. Clearly he is willing to sacrifice short term-money for long-term wealth. Or, maybe he just doesn't really want to play football anymore. That's a possibility. In either case, his talent was missed, particularly in the scramble in the season's closing days to squeak into the playoffs. Then there was Antonio Brown who may have so poisoned his relationship with the team that he can't effectively come back.

But, historically, these sorts of troubles aren't reserved just for the Steelers. Every team has its drama.

Nope, the Steelers missing the playoffs is a failure of leadership plain and simple. And because it is, I don't see a way through. Next season will be a repeat of this season. Talent and opportunity wasted.

Now I find myself forced to pull for the Rams today, if I even pay any attention at all. What a waste.

Most Problems Begin at the Top and the Steelers Are No Exception

I'm not the kind of guy who is so invested in a team that its fortunes in any way impact my mood. I don't pay much attention to college football. I know it's out there. I live in South Carolina for crying out loud. After people here ask which church you attend, they ask whether you are a Clemson or South Carolina fan. “Uh, n-n-neither,” I stutter. I then receive a look as though I had brought a cat box to the pot-luck supper.

Now, I must admit, if I were someone at least somewhat interested in college football, I would have watched the championship bowl game between Clemson and Alabama. I don't care about either team, really, but I'm a bit sorry I missed the smirk being knocked off Nick Saban's face. I lived in South Florida when, as coach of the Miami Dolphins, he fiercely denied he was leaving to coach at Alabama and two weeks later wound up in a press conference in Tuscaloosa being presented as Alabama's new football coach. I have no feelings one way or the other about Alabama, but I have a strong dislike for Saban. What a cockroach.

But I digress....

If I were someone who got all lathered up over a sports team's fortunes, I'd be positively inconsolable regarding the Steelers missing the playoffs this year. For the second year in a row, this highly talented team won't be in the championship game. This year it even managed to miss getting into the playoffs. With more than half the season behind it, it looked to have its division sewn up.

What in the wide, wide world of sports went wrong? Oh, let me count the ways.

Actually I won't bore you with my armchair analysis other than to say, at its core, it's gotta be a coaching issue. I am a big supporter and fan of Mike Tomlin and always have been. But there is something basically wrong in Pittsburgh.

Week after week, game after game, this team only played to the level of its opponent. Only three games were decided by more than one score – win or lose. The trend was set with the first game's 21-21 tie with the Browns...THE BROWNS! From there, for the next 15 games only four were decided by more than one score – several by a field goal.

There were only two real bright spots in the season: The 52-21 win over the Panthers and the 17-10 win over the Patriots. The Panthers win because it was the only game where the Steelers were firing on all cylinders on both sides of the ball, and the Patriots because, well, it was the Patriots.

After four games, the Steelers record was 1-2-1. At that point, I thought Tomlin might be coaching his first losing season. I didn't miss it by much. It wound up being 9-6-1, with the 1 being the tie with the Browns that had the deflating impact of a loss. Of the actual loses, three were by a field goal. How is it that one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL can't muster at least three more points against teams like Oakland and Cleveland?

There are those who argue the real issue was the turnover ratio: The Steelers lost the turnover battle in a very big way. I agree, but I argue, that really boils down to a coaching issue. Now it looks as though the Steelers will be coming back in 2019 without Bell and Brown. That's a front-office/coaching issue, too.

It's the coaching, stupid.

Can't Get into the Groove

I'm not the kind of guy who lounges around contemplating his navel. I may well be a slacker, but my strong sense of self-preservation is a constant angel on my shoulder whispering, “Get off your ass and do something to make some money.”

December is always a slow month for assignments and revenue. I don't embrace this forced vacation with a happy heart. We all have a finite number of productive days in us. The difference for me is that I'm closing in on the end of mine. I hate wasting nearly a month of those days each year sitting on my dumper.

I've ranted about this before on these pages. Nothing new here. But other fallout from my annual December sabbatical is trying to get myself back in gear. Although assignments aren't exactly flowing to me – it's more of a trickle – I do have some work to do; but motivating myself to do it is proving a real challenge this year. As I write this, it's January 6, and I have two assignments partially written. I can't seem to screw up the motivation to finish either. Both deadline in less than a week.

The issue is I have work to be completed, but not enough to put me in the groove. I'm sure it's some law of physics that once an object is in motion, it takes less energy to keep it in motion. That's why car transmissions have a first gear. When there isn't a flow to assignments, I have to gear back up for each separately as they trickle in.

I am currently slogging through the trickle. Psyching up oneself to meet the challenge of the occasional assignment is tougher for a slacker. It requires drawing on energy that, by nature, simply isn't there. Attempting to generate that energy after a 30-day shutdown is a monumental task. It's probably similar to a climber gazing up at the peak of Mount Everest before grasping that first handhold. It seems almost insurmountable.

Today is Sunday. It's my beer-drinking day. (You may be surprised that I have a designated beer-drinking day. In fact, unless I'm out of town with the opportunity to visit an unfamiliar brewery or shooting a brewery segment for BEER2WHISKEY, I rarely drink beer other than on Sunday.) Because it's Sunday, I don't have to face my demons and try to coax myself into finishing one of the soon-to-be-due assignments. I get to put that off until tomorrow.

But tomorrow will come. And then what.....?