Saturday Dad Reads Week of August 23

Welcome to this week’s edition! Here’s what we’ve got lined up:

• 📕 This week’s Book Summary and Review: One Rough Man

• 🧑‍🦰 Author Bio: Brad Taylor

• 💣️ Dad’s Knowledge Bomb: A Notable Quotable

•  📣 This week’s Dad Rant: Traffic Woes

 Summary

📕 Review 

I enjoy a good fiction series. Always have, always will. A lot of times I use them as a way to break out of a reading slump or as a palate cleanser after a slog through a heavy non-fiction tome. However, if I’m going to read a series, I have to do it in order, starting with the first book. There’s no starting at the most recent installment or jumping around out of order. I can’t. I won’t.

Given that, it’s taken me a while to get into Brad Taylor’s Pike Logan series because I just had to track down the first installment, One Rough Man. Traveling to three local libraries, I finally got my hands on it (I noted a similar experience when I started CJ Box’s Joe Pickett series).

At first, I was skeptical. As a family man, I don’t typically do well when a book’s main protagonist is a father and something happens to his family that ends up becoming his call to action. So, when Pike’s family is murdered early in the book, I very nearly abandoned it. However, while still brutal, that scene was over quickly and there weren’t an overwhelming number of flashbacks over the rest of the storyline.

Outside of that initial skepticism, I began to make progress. I was into the unconventional settings of cities like Tbilisi and Sarajevo along with various locales in Guatemala. The chapters were short and I would quickly blow through 50-100 pages. I also liked the shift between first and third-person perspectives, the narrative shifting to first person when Pike is front and center.

After building momentum, I knew I was enjoying the storyline, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that I liked most. Now, looking back on the book, I think what I appreciated most was how Pike’s default baseline as a person and special operator was “SNAFU,” meaning Situation Normal All Fucked Up. I also loved how Taylor made Pike an expert in operating in VUCA conditions (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). Just when you think Pike is absolutely cooked, he is able to extricate himself from the situation utilizing whatever is at hand. He is always able to think fluidly, analyze quickly, and react to his situational context. Honestly, Pike Logan is a more sophisticated MacGuyver with a espionage, spycraft, and special forces background.

I also enjoyed the fact that Pike has a female sidekick who I initially thought was going to be a burden and a drain on the storyline. However, I love what Taylor did with Jennifer Cahill as a character. Like Pike, I realized early that she had the raw talents to be an asset to the Taskforce without necessarily being a special operator. Pike and Jennifer find themselves in positions where they have no choice but to trust each other under pressure. This ends up being a really unique feature of the book and a case study on trauma bonding.

If I had one criticism of the book is that it seemed to get bogged down in the end after the terrorist plot to release the toxic “Mayan powder” in Sarajevo had been foiled. After that, it felt like it took too much time to wrap up the “Lucas and his mercenaries” subplot. However, I also understand why it’s there because Taylor needed to build in an opportunity for Pike to reconnect with his old team in an authentic way.

In the end ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️cups of coffee for this one. Hell of a start to a series!

🧑‍🦰 Author Spotlight: Brad Taylor

💣️Knowledge Bomb: A Notable Quotable

📣 Dad Rant: Traffic Woes

America has an aging infrastructure in need of major repairs. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Pittsburgh, PA where the geography of rivers, bridges, and tunnels dictate one’s day to day life and every season is construction season.

Because of Pittsburgh’s unique geography, getting anywhere in the city limits or the suburbs takes time. A 6 mile trip to the Ross Park Mall from my house will take roughly 30 minutes. A 12 mile trip to my job just outside of the city in the friendly confines of Homestead, takes anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour.

It used to take 20 minutes.

Traffic I can deal with. Traffic because of construction I can deal with as well. But traffic caused by construction at major choke points on my commute? That, I’ve had enough of. On a good day, I leave my house at 7:00AM and I’m at my desk no later than 7:30. This was before the construction onslaught.

Now, I leave at 6:55AM and I’m lucky if I’m at my desk by 7:45.

Currently, there are 3 major construction projects and one consistent traffic nightmare, all impacting what used to be a fairly average daily commute:

1. Veteran’s Bridge Repair - Route 28 South is a major feeder into Pittsburgh from the northern confines of Allegheny County. The on ramp to the Veteran’s Bridge from 28 South is closed, meaning all the traffic heading down 28 South to downtown Pittsburgh, or points westward and eastward is being detoured onto the Fort Duquesne Bridge, creating its own separate nightmare.

2. Fort Duquesne Bridge - The Fort Duquesne Bridge is a hellscape of merges under the lightest amount of traffic. Figure in the thousands of extra commuters taking this route because of the aforementioned Veteran’s Bridge work and it becomes a complete clusterfuck. On the bridge, four lanes come together where inevitably someone has to move from the far left into the far right lane and vice versa. It’s supposed to operate under the “zipper” merge principal where the merges come together like the teeth of a zipper, but no one in western PA has any idea how that’s supposed to work, nor will they ever. Instead, everyone will go every direction at any time.

3. Squirrel Hill Tunnel Widening - Having successfully navigated the above obstacles on my daily commute, I am then faced with the “tunnel monster.” On the best of days, everyone, for some unknown reason, slams on their brakes on the approach to the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, creating back-ups that last for miles. No one has seen the tunnel monster, but we all brake in fear of him. Add in what will be a years-long construction project to widen the tunnel and replace the bridge on its eastern side and you have the makings of yet another clusterfuck. Now, everyone headed east, must merge into one lane to make it through the tunnel. I do not have to go through the tunnel, but alas, my exit is the last one before it. I inevitably get stuck in the line of cars behind the wonderful souls who choose to come to a dead stop in an attempt to merge before the merge point.
   

4. Brown’s Hill Road Drain Replacement - On the last leg of my journey, I come down the hill on Brown’s Road. I can see my office at this point, but yet again we’re down to one lane because the drains on this road are all in need of replacing.

I normally enjoy my commute under normal circumstances and am perfectly fine with my tax dollars being spent to upgrade infrastructure. Nevertheless, I have to ask: “How is this all happening at the same time?” Planning does not seem to be PennDot and Allegheny County’s strong suite right now. Maybe in the future the road construction powers that be should ask ChatGPT to assist with their scheduling. Or at the very least let’s stagger these projects out.

Thanks for indulging me in that one. Just had to scream it into the void.