Book review: "The Greatest Beer Run Ever" by

All Chick Donohue wanted to do was bring some guys beer. It shouldn't be a big deal, right?

Except in this case, with Donohue in New York City and the intended recipients of his beer largesse in Vietnam, it was a big deal. And it was an especially big deal since the men Donohue was looking for were a little bit preoccupied fighting the Vietnam War. 

It all started in 1967 as Donohue was sitting in his local bar — Doc Fiddler's — in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. The bartender and some patrons were talking about how many local young men had gone off to fight in Vietnam. They worried that, given growing public resentment over the war, that the soldiers didn't feel supported. 

So the bartender suggested that someone bring those guys a beer to show them that their home neighborhood was thinking about them. After a little pressure from the bartender, Donohue volunteered to do it.

This is the opening of "The Greatest Beer Run Ever," Donohue's 2020 book. It is a story so incredible, so preposterous, that it seems impossible that's it's actually true. Yet it is.

Even as Donohue volunteered for the beer run, he doubted it was possible. "Some authority figures will probably stop me, but I have to try," he recalls thinking. 

Donahue was in the Merchant Marines, so he managed to get himself onto a ship delivering ammunition to the troops in Vietnam. Once there, he heads off to deliver beer.

The story takes a series of surprsing twist and turns. Donahue travels around with U.S. troops and gets shockingly close to the front lines. Despite his prediciton, no "authority figure" stopped this civilian from traveling around a war zone trying to deliver beer. In fact, Donohue was surprised how readily he was able to get rides on U.S. military planes and helicopters and was even treated with deference by Army officers.

Finally, a buddy explained why:

"Don't you get it, pal? They think you're CIA! Because why the hell else would you be here? In jeans and plain shirt, no less."

After successfully delivering some of his beer, Donahue ends up in Saigon when the Tet Offensive breaks out. This opens up a whole new chapter of the adventure. Frankly, Donahue was lucky to get out of Vietnam alive.

I don't want to give up too much of the story, but this is a book you should read. It's fun, it moves fast and you'll learn some things about the Vietnam War.

You may wonder, as I did, whether this story is just too good to be true true. Could Donahue have just made it up? So I was pleased to discover that a professor at Columbia University closely fact-checked the story and confirmed its authenticity. 

There are three "bonus" chapters tacked awkwardly onto the end of this book. One is a "Where are they now?" section, another describes the neighborhood of Inwood, and the third recounts a quirky Vietnam War story, but not one involving Donahue. Each of these might be of some interest, but they don't mesh well with the rest of the book. The "Where are they now?" chapter, in particular, goes on too long.  

Your Big Mac now costs more

There's been a lot of discussion about how California's new $20-an-hour minimum wage for workers at large fast food chains will affect prices. So I decided to check if the prices at my local McDonald's changed after the law went into affect on April 1.

I checked the prices of more than 25 different items on the McDonald's menu both four days before the law's start date and then two days after.

The prices of all the items increased. The increases ranged from 2% (McCrispy) to 12.6% (the 4-piece Chicken McNuggets). The average increase was 5.6%

To be clear, each McDonald's franchise owner is free to set prices as he or she sees fit. So the price changes at your local McDonald's may be different.

	March 28	April 3	% increase
Big Mac	$5.89	$6.19	5.09%
Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$6.89	$7.19	4.35%
Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$5.69	$6.19	8.79%
Double Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$8.29	$8.49	2.41%
Double Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$7.29	$7.59	4.12%
Cheeseburger	$2.89	$3.19	10.38%
McCrispy	$4.89	$4.99	2.04%
Spricy McCrispy	$4.99	$5.39	8.02%
Deluxe McCrispy	$5.59	$5.79	3.58%
Deluxe Spicy McCrispy	$5.89	$6.29	6.79%
Large Fries	$4.59	$4.79	4.36%
McNuggets
10 pieces	$5.69	$5.99	5.27%
4 pieces	$2.39	$2.69	12.55%
6 pieces	$3.59	$3.69	2.79%
20 pieces	$7.49	$7.99	6.68%
40 pieces	$11.29	$11.89	5.31%
4 spicy	$2.49	$2.69	8.03%
Meals
Big Mac	$9.99	$10.49	5.01%
Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$10.69	$11.19	4.68%
Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$9.89	$10.39	5.06%
Double Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$12.19	$12.69	4.10%
Double Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$11.79	$12.29	4.24%
Meals
McCrispy	$8.99	$9.49	5.56%
Spricy McCrispy	$8.99	$9.49	5.56%
Deluxe McCrispy	$9.39	$9.89	5.32%
Deluxe Spicy McCrispy	$9.59	$10.09	5.21%
Meals
McNuggets
10 pieces	$9.79	$10.29	5.11%
6 pieces	$7.19	$7.69	6.95%
Average			5.62%

How we bought a car in 2024

My wife and I had been considering buying a new car for about five or six months, and come early 2024, we decided the time was right.

We wanted a hybrid, preferable a small SUV. We also didn't want to spend too much — my target was to get a car under $30,000. This was hardly an easy goal in an environment where car prices have been rising much faster than inflation.

All those things, combined with a positive review by Consumer Reports, eventually led me to the Kia Sportage Hybrid. There are cheaper hybrids, but they're smaller. There are fancier ones, but they're pricy.

The retail price for this car sometimes showed up just below $30,000, whcih was encouraging. But in the strange world of new car shopping you don't really know what the price is until you try to buy one. In a buyer-friendly market, dealers will sometimes find rebates or other discounts to take the price well below MSRP.

2024 Kia Sportage

But as I was to discover, this was not a buyer-friendly market. 

The car hunt began in earnest on a Friday, when I requested price quotes via the Consumer Reports and Edmunds websites. Very soon, my phone was ringing, texts were arriving and emails were tumbling into my inbox. 

Usually, the first question of each salesperson was "When can you come in?" They want you to come in immediately, get you on their turf, and make a deal right away. Experienced buyers know that this is exactly the opposite of what you want. It's best to stay off the dealer's lot as long as possible. I wanted to do as much of the deal over email as I could. 

That said, I do understand that salespeople want to know if you're a serious buyer — not just someone trolling casually for prices — and also that you're a real person. I don't doubt that there are bots out there "shopping" for cars. So I was willing to take one call from each saleperson early the process, to prove I was a genuinely interested buyer. But I tried to keep it short.

On the other hand, I did get a couple emails from bots, like one that said, "Hi Scott! I'm Diana, your virtual assistant at Garden Grove Kia. You've got an eye for excellent vehicles!" These seemed to be quick-response messages in advance of human contact..

Early on, I questioned my willingness to accept phone calls from dealers when I had an unpleasant conversation with Keenan, a salesman with Kia Glendale. He kept badgering me to name an exact day and time to come to dealership, while I kept telling him he needed to send me an offer by email. He eventually sent me just one email with only his contact information, but he never sent an offer, even after I specifically asked.

Some salespeople texted, but I tried to quickly steer them to email. This worked for most, but not all.

One of the stranger meanderings of negotiation was with Zammy of Kia of Carson. She emailed me early in the process on Friday.  It took 10 emails back and forth but she soon offered a price of $37,331 "out the door."

I realized in this process that the out-the-door price —  or "OTD" —  was the best way to negotiate. If you only look at the base price, you're not just ignoring the sales taxes and registration fees, but also the many "accessories" and extra fees dealers will pile on.  

I knew the sales tax and registration fees we're going to add around $3,500 to the purchase, but I was dismayed that a car that with a list price in the mid-$29,000s would actually cost run $37,300. I started to wonder if I should start looking at other models.

But I was encouraged when Zammy called and suggested a different car, one with a "base price of $30,000." OK, I thought, that might be around $34K OTD, which is getting closer. But when she emailed the offer it turned out to be $36,564. The base price she showed was not $30,000, but almost $31,000 ($30,988) and she added $895 for "accessories," which she said was Lojack.

I emailed her back, expressing my disappointment with the price. She said the only thing she could do was lower the price by $200. Hmmm. That's where we left it on Friday.

I mostly took the weekend off from car negotiations, but on Monday, Zammy and I again exchanged emails. Her new offer was $35,894. Then later the same day it was $35,675. It was nice that it was going down, but it was still far from what we wanted to spend.

There was a strange Groundhog Day aspect to communicating with Zammy. Even though we exchanged dozens of emails, she also sent six texts, four of which asked the exact same question, "Are you still in the market or do you have any questions?" 

 

Then there was the confusing approach of the sales gang from Huntington Beach Kia. Over five days, these guys sent me 20 emails and a dozen texts. They came from an array of names: Christian, Cristan, Gustavo, Mario, Zaid. Just when I thought I knew who I was dealing with, a new name would pop into my inbox.

 

They may have all been the same person. A message from Zaid's email address was signed by Christian. A text from Gustavo Gutierrez said "I go by Christian." 

It was pretty amateurish. One email sent to me was just blank. In another, Kia Huntington Beach alerted me to a newly priced Sportage, but the car actually was in Glendale, not Huntington Beach.

 At one point, Cristian emailed me saying he had "great news" and I should call him. But when I called him, he had no news at all, just a question: When could I come in?

In all this time, they sent me exactly one offer: A $36,900 offer bloated with overpriced accessories. I rejected it quickly.

 

On Tuesday, Christian even called to try get me to send him the offers I was getting from other dealers. Sorry, dude, I'm not doing market research for you. 

Then there was Sergio from Kia Irvine. Sergio texted me on Friday as I was launching my car hunt. I told him right away, like I did with the others, that I preferred email. He never seemed to get that message, continuing to text me even while I was responding by email.

I had to prod Sergio a little to send me an actual offer (his early promise of "we can do Invoice price for you" was pretty vague), but when he did send one, on Monday, I got pretty excited. It was the best offer yet, at $32,400

Then I took a closer look. Even though I had told Sergio that I lived in Long Beach and he should base the sales tax calculation on that, it was quickly apparent that he had used Irvine instead. The difference is significant — the sale tax for us poor Long Beach residents is $700 more than if I lived in Irvine (don't get me started about the unfairness of that). 

What's more, his offer didn't include all the required state registration fees. Sergio fixed the sales tax amount, but when I pointed out the incorrect registration fees, I got an abrupt response of "Those fees are generated on your zip code, those are non negotiable."

I wasn't trying to negotiate — if anything, I was pointing out that the dealership seemed to be volunteering to pay part of my registrations fees. If they wanted to do that, it's fine by me. 

His response to this was, oddly, to send me an offer on a different vehicle. This was the best price yet, but had one problem: It was not a Kia Sportage Hybrid. Sigh.

With so many high-priced offers early in the process, I was getting discouraged, so we decided we would look at Toyota Camry Hybrids, too. But this just produced more frustration. Low-end Camry Hybrids were impossible to find and the models that were available were priced even higher than Sportages.

I also learned that the skill-level of the Toyota salespeople was no higher than the motley bunch from Kia. An email from someone at Beach Cities Toyota Westminster offered this eloquent message: 

"Hybrid Camrys we sell before car hit over ground and we charge over MSRP. But if car stay on my low for few days , I can make you a deal. We will contact you when its happen." (All those typos are genuine.)

Would you really give $30,000-plus to someone who can't write a coherent sentence?

Fortunately, my experiences weren't all negative.

 

One early responder on Friday was Eddie Favela of Kia of Cerritos. Eddie's first question was, like most, "What day/time are you available to come to KIA of Cerritos?" But we quickly moved on. We talked on the phone, and that same day he offered me an out-the-door price of $34,102.

Eddie's offer was the best on the first day but still high for me. I waited a couple days until Monday, and then made my counter-offer: $31,500 OTD. I winced a little as I sent it, fearing that Eddie might just conclude we are too far apart, and stop responding. 

But Eddie responded in less than an hour with $33,102. That was getting better. The same day, I asked for a "breakdown" of that price, and on his next email the OTD price became $32,992. (I liked that Eddie was the only one I dealt with from this dealership during the negotiation.)

That was good for me. And when Eddie agreed to take part of my payment — $2,900 —  by credit card, we had a deal. (Eddie said that their maximum for credit cards was $2,500 but they'd allow the $2,900. Later, the finance guy told me their limit for credit cards was $5,000).

Still, there was one little wrinkle: My money. I had started moving money for this deal on Friday, but it takes a few days for the dollars to become available in my bank account. This deal had come together so fast that I didn't have the money quite ready. I was scrambling to get it in place.

While that was happening, I asked Eddie to email me a copy of the contract. He said he couldn't do that but sent me a picture of the financials from his screen.

He assured me, after I asked, that there would be no extra fees over the amount we'd agreed. Even so, I was skeptical. In my experience, car dealers always include extra fees at the last minute. 

By Wednesday, my money was in place. I wanted to pay by bank transfer, but Eddie had told me already that they preferred cashier's check. I didn't love that, in part because I have to pay $15 for cashier's check at Bank of America, but but bit the bullet and got one Wednesday morning. 

In the afternoon, my daughter and I drove to Kia of Cerritos. We met Eddie, who was friendly, and immediately suggested we drive the car around the block. As we did so, a seatbelt alert buzzer went off and, for a while, none of us could figure out how to it turn it off. In an instant, I wondered if this car was a lemon while Eddie (he admited later) saw his commission vanishing. 

Then it turned out that Eddie, sitting in the back, was slightly sitting on the middle seat, setting of the alarm. That solved it and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

After the drive, we went back into the showroom and Eddie started bringing us a mountain of papers to sign. I gave credit to Eddie for having asked me email a photo of my driver license and my car insurance information ahead of our visit —  this allowed them to input the info before we arrived and save us time.

Still, there were countless pieces of paper where I had to write down my name, address, phone number and email address. Why couldn't these have been pre-filled to save time? 

After a bit of a wait, we were ushered into the office of Luis, the finance rep, to complete the deal. In my experience, this is one of the least-pleasant parts of the buying process, since it's the finance guy's job to try to squeeze a little more money out of you.

Luis wasn't particularly friendly, but not really unfriendly either. He asked for some information and had me sign a few more papers. 

Then he got to the pitch for the extended warranty. I politiely declined, and he tried to goad me into a discussion. "Not for any amount, even just $500?," he asked. "Is this just a principle thing, or you don't like to save money?" 

I could have taken the bait and explained how extended warranties are a bad deal for consumers (and almost pure proft for the dealership), but why even go there? I was under no obligation to justify my spending decisions to him. "No, thank you." I said. He grew cool, but we finished the paperwork and left.

In the end, the price was exactly what Eddie had said — there were no last-minute fees. Thank you, Eddie Favela and Kia of Cerritos.

We were ready to go. But the car wasn't. Eddie had sent it to get washed and gassed up. We  had to wait about 25 minutes.

Eventually, the car showed up. My daughter headed home with our other car, while Eddie gave me a last rundown on key features. He nicely connected my phone to the entertainment systems, and answered a few more questions. And then soon, it was time to go. And I drove off the lot with our new car. 

Book review: "Independence Day" by Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is such a good writer he could probably make a refrigerator repair manual into a page-turner. 

In his latest book, "Independence Day," Lopez's topic is retirement, specifically his own. Lopez explains that at age 66, he was wondering if it was time for him to exit the working world, so he decided to give himself one year to look into the pros and cons of retirement. The result is this very readable 2022 book.

Lopez recognized that retirement would be a major change for him. An award-winning columnist with the Los Angeles Times since 2001, he has worked as a journalist all his life (he also wrote the best-selling book, "The Soloist"). 

"I left college on a Tuesday night in 1975, started work the next morning, and I haven't stopped. It's all I know and what's more important, it's a big part of who I am."

Was it time to give it a rest? Or would he miss his work, which gave him the opportunity to go places and meet people he otherwise never would?

On his one-year quest, Lopez talks to people like 102-year-old Hedda Bolgar, who continued to work as a therapist because she felt her services were still needed. "If there's an unmet need in the world, you try to meet it," she said.

He also talks to a California couple, Joan and Ted, who retired at the ages of 53 and 58 then spent 30 years happily traveling the world on their boat. "I would say don't wait," Joan advised. "Do it now. Do it while you're young."

He talks to TV producer Norman Lear and movie-maker Mel Brooks, both in the never-retire camp, though Brooks suggests that Lopez could cut back a little."I'd say keep doing what you're doing, but don't do as much of it," Brooks said. "But always look forward to waking up with something that you do well."

He talks to Jane, who retired but then missed working, so she went back part-time. "It was great!" After three years of that, though, she was happy to retire for good. 

Some of Lopez's interviewees retired and struggled to keep busy, others had an armful of tasks. One couple retired with optimism but financial issues forced them back to work. 

He talked to Maurice Kitchens, who retired from the insurance business as soon as he could, then launched a bountiful second act, directing, producing and acting in community theater.

In short, Lopez talks to all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions on retirement. 

Lopez is such as smooth writer that the book flows easily. He emphasizes personal stories — his own and others' — and his conversational style makes it feel like you're just sitting across from him chatting.  One chapter passes easily into the next. Even if you're not that interested in retirement, you would probably enjoy "Independence Day."

Lopez does veer off the topic once in a while, talking about such things as his diet, TV drug commercials, or his daughter's search for a college. You could strain to find the connection to retirement in these passages, but frankly you'll probably enjoy these stories as much as the others.

I won't spoil the ending by revealing what Lopez ultimately decided. But he's not recommending people imitate him anyway. The main takeaway from this book is that everyone is different, with different needs and goals, and each person must make his or her own decision about retirement. 

Identity thief "Alice Lipski" is Krista Dawn Ainsworth

It's bizarre that writer Doug Shadel would choose to hide the name of an identity thief who defrauded numerous people and who upended lives by stealing names, social security numbers, and financial account information.

Shadel wrote about the identity thief for AARP Magazine and Reader's Digest, but gave her the pseudonym Alice Lipski. But why conceal the identity of an identity thief? Was he concerned about invading her privacy?

So, just for the record, Alice Lipski is actually Krista Dawn Ainsworth. She was convicted in 2015 in King County, Washington. Her two accomplices, also referred to in the story, but not with their full names, were Brian Fisher and Kenneth Reep.

The pros and cons of composting — or not

Yesterday, Spotify recommended to me a podcast addressing the question, "Is composting worth it?" I was delighted and excited. What an interesting question! 

My family and I do not compost, but we've been considering it. You might say we are composting-curious.

While there is no doubt in our minds that composting is good for the environment, I wondered whether we would make enough of an impact to justify the cost, time commitment and inconveniences of the practice.

So a podcast asking "Is composting worth it?" seemed right on the nose. To be sure, it's a complicated question. Composting helps keep greenhouse gases out of the air, but how can you possibly measure how much carbon is sequestered or methane not released due to the actions of a single household? And even if you can figure that out, how do you determine how much that one household is doing to limit climate change?

On the other side, you would have to consider the cost of buying composting supplies like bins, buckets, even odor-preventing products. You would have to somehow measure the loss of a portion of your home's space for composting. Then there's the time commitment to separate and handle compostable items and perhaps even drive your material to a drop-off spot (and remember that driving itself releases greenhouse gases).  

Most of these elements will be small, but they're not zero either. And they vary greatly from household to household.

Still, the complications of the cost-benefit analysis made the question of whether composting is worth it all the more intriguing. I could imagine a podcast like Freakonomics breaking down the question to various parts, interviewing economists, scientists and other experts for thoughtful dissection.

Alas, this podcast was not Freakonomics. It was something called the "Anti-Dread Climate Podcast" and, boy, was it a huge disappointment.

First, just 53 seconds into the podcast the two giggling hosts announce, without explanation, that composting is "totally" worth it. This is even before they've introduced the listener who actually asks the question about composting's worth.

The show goes on to interview a composting advocate who —  surprise — also says that composting is worth it. The show shifts to a discussion of the mechanics of composting, but never even slightly considers how to weigh the benefits against the costs. 

They should have just called the episode, "Composting is great."

Book review: "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing

If there was a museum of survival stories, the featured exhibit, without a doubt, would be Ernest Shackleton's failed Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916. No other story comes close to Shackleton's in terms of the number of obstacles overcome, the suffering endured by the people involved, and the group's stubborn determination to survive despite the longest of odds.

I'm a not newbie to the Shackleton-verse. I've read articles and a short book about it, and watched a documentary and a TV mini-series. So I hesitated before starting to read Alfred Lansing's 1959 book, "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage," Would this just be a repeat of what I already knew?

The answer, I'm glad to report, is a resounding "No." Lansing not only covers little-known parts of the story, he tells the tale with riveting page-turning intensity.  I could feel the suffering of Shackleton's men as they persisted through freezing temperatures, miserable condition and sometimes torturous physical strain.

Shackleton and 27 other British men headed to Antarctica in 1914 intending to launch the first-ever crossing of the frozen continent. They never made it. Instead, their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in ice near the Antarctic coast. 

The entire crew was forced to over-winter aboard the ship through the 24-hour darkness of the Antarctic winter. When spring came, the crew hoped to be freed from it's frozen captivity, but instead the ice only squeezed harder. The Endurance was crushed and the men had to abandon her and set up camp on the floating ice.

Lansing is a top-notch writer who has done his homework. For this book, the author said he read the diaries of "virtually every expedition member who kept one." In addition, he tracked down almost all the members of the expedition still alive in the 1950s and interviewed them for "long hours, even days." 

What's impressive is that, even with clearly a wealth of information available, Lansing smartly and selectively chooses the details to include. He knows that he doesn't need to include every fact in his notebook to tell a compelling story. 

For six months, the men lived on the ice, their clothes and sleeping bags constantly wet, their food supplies dwindling. They hoped the currents would take their ice slab to land, but fickle winds kept them at sea. When their ice floe broke up, Shackleton and his men were forced to try to ride their three small boats through stormy seas to land — any land.

It is here where the men suffered the most. For two days, the men fought the seas with crude sails and oars, only to find they had gone 20 miles backward. They fought on for three more days — with almost no sleep and little water, their hands blistered upon the oars, their clothes thoroughly soaked with near-freezing waters. Finally, they arrived at the uninhabited and bleak Elephant Island. The men tossed themselves onto the solid ground as if they had reached Mecca.

As much as I liked this book, it has a weakness. Lansing largely fails to delineate the different men. We get to know Shackleton, of course —  he's a taciturn and sometimes stubborn leader — but aside from a occasional reference to one man being lazy or another grouchy, it is hard for the reader to discern much difference between them.

Still, once you're engaged, you'll find the story compelling.

No one was going to rescue the men from Elephant Island; they needed to go for help. So Shackleton and five others took to one of the boats in a long-shot attempt to reach a whaling station on South Georgia Island.

Many other accounts of the expedition focus only on the boat trip, skipping over the plight of the men left behind on Elephant Island. But Lansing fully describes their marooned lifestyle, a mix of boredom, squalid living conditions, unrelenting cold, and helplessness as they wonder whether Shackleton's boat had made it. Lansing's description of the amputation of one of the men's toes, lost to frostbite, at their primitive camp is one of the more memorable scenes.

On board the ship Caird, Shackleton and the five others fought through high seas. Lansing's account of this trip is riveting:

Here was a patched and battered 22-foot boat, daring to sail alone across the world's most tempestuous sea, her rigging festooned with a threadbare collection of clothing and half-rotten sleeping bags. Her crew consisted of six men whose faces were black with caked soot and half-hidden by matted beards, whose bodies were dead white from constant soaking in salt water. In addition, their faces, and particularly their fingers were marked with ugly round patches of missing skin where frostbites had eaten into their flesh.

Amazingly, they made it, but they arrived on the wrong side of South Georgia Island. The only option was to climb over the rugged and enormous snowy peaks of the island. And that is exactly what Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Thomas Crean did. They nearly froze to death, and had close calls with steep cliffs and icy crevasses, but they made it to the whaling station.

The three men left on the other side of South Georgia Island were rescued quickly by boat, but the misery of those on Elephant Island would endure for several months more. The first three boats chartered by Shackleton could not reach Elephant Island due to ice or vessel problems. 

Finally, on the fourth attempt, he made it — and found all the men alive. Lansing's description of the island's inhabitants, hearing of an approaching ship, then literally stumbling over each as they burst from their crude quarters, is both funny and touching. 

If you like this sort of book, you might also enjoy "Alone on the Ice," a tale of a different Antarctic expedition, and "The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic," a story from the other end of the globe.