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This week the wingmen are logging sea miles instead of flight hours. Commander Drew and Dr. Paul are aboard Virgin Voyages’ Brilliant Lady for a passage through the Panama Canal, and they’re taking you along for the ride. Two retired jet pilots finally get to watch a feat of engineering unfold without being responsible for the checklist, as locks lift a cruise ship about 85 feet up to Gatun Lake and back down again. Along the way, they tip their caps to the workers, many of them recruited from the Caribbean, whose hands built this highway between two oceans.

Back on dry land, Drew is closing in on paying off his house and wondering why the property tax bill didn’t get the memo. The guys sort out what ownership really buys you, why renting isn’t throwing money away, and why “I can afford the payment” and “I can afford the house” aren’t the same sentence. Then a birthday reminder that you’re still becoming at any age, and a Jet Jolt on the Boeing 777X, whose wingtips fold up so a bigger wing can still fit at the gate.

In the Frequent Flow-Line, proud parents from Pittsburgh ask how to help a good son leave a very comfortable nest without making independence feel like punishment. Ace takes on the customer-service phone maze in The Gouge, and the show closes with a Wingmen story about an old squadron crew who kept showing up for a friend until he could stand on his own porch again.