Five - O, Book'em Dan-O

At long last it has arrived, the big Five –O, the start of the second half of that great adventure called life! Some scientist’s theorize that for a male the 40s can be the most depressing decade in the cycle of life. If that is scientific fact then I can hardly wait for what is in store for me, the last 10 years have been a blast!

It really doesn’t seem any different today, the alarm seems early, and it is, going off at 5 a.m. so I can slip in a ride before work – no rest for the birthday boy. Nothing special on this one, nice tempo riding while my mind melts away listening to tunes on the Ipod and watching some teleamark ski porn.

The office is the office, nothing more and nothing less, which is just fine with me for today. I don't anticipate anything out of the ordinary but one never knows. Just sitting watching the clock going round and waiting for the end of the day.

Tonight Beth is having a dinner party with close friends and we plan on enjoying good food and lots of good wine. Thank both god and allah that when I wake up tomorrow it is only a few short hours until the weekend and I can kick back and watch movies, drink wine, eat a great dinner, drink more wine and pass out on the couch watching more movies.Hey it's the F-You 50s and I get to do whatever I want.

Wall Street Bonus Pools Fall on Sub Prime Sword

Another hard year with the nose to the corporate grindstone has come to a close and with it the time of year that, as adults, we all wait for with greater anticipation then Santa's arrival when we were little rug rats ........... bonus time!

For those that don't work in the financial markets this is the reward at the end of the rainbow for all of those long days, high stress levels, endless hours meeting client demands, deadlines and time away from riding. Of course along with this time of the year comes the stories of McMansions, private jets/yachts, ski chalets, trophy mistresses and of course the waiting lines at the local Ferrari dealership where people don't blink an eye at dropping a quarter million on the trophy car.

Over the last few years these buyers of luxury have been the wizards that figured out how to get anyone into a house cheap, then structure up an exotic collateralized loan with the junk mortgages and sell these off at a handsome profit. This year thanks to these masters of the universe, we are all feeling the pain - plummeting housing prices, loss of net worth and the fears of recession - and for some of those that pound it out in the trenches of Wall Street a pummeling of the annual bonus pools as firms have to put aside billions in reserves for current and future losses.

Well none of this was going to stop me from finally securing that trophy vehicle, so with bonus number in hand I raced off to the dealer to make the upgrade. Arriving early I was able to avoid the lines and decided it was time to trade in (aka give away) the trusty/rusty '91 Chevy pickup with 176k for that top end '97 Dodge (sans rust) with only a scant 123k on the odometer. Hey if I slap a prancing horse sticker on the sides of the fenders and play some Pavoratti maybe in my own mind I can convince myself it's a Ferrari (probably gets better mileage too). At least the glass is half full ......... I can haul the trash to the dump and carry my bike to the races, bet you can't do that with a 599GTB!