My father loves working on elevators. It's a very active job, but it requires lots of troubleshooting and innovation. You have to be able to troubleshoot OLD

My father loves working on elevators. It's a very active job, but it requires lots of troubleshooting and innovation. You have to be able to troubleshoot OLD relay based switching equipment, tape reader programmed controllers from the 80's and fancy new digital controllers. He has to be able to engineer support and rigging systems to move old/new equipment out of tight spaces, knocking out walls, contracting out metal workers to add in support beams (elevator generators and motors are very heavy and big). I got him setup with autocad to draft some counter weight plates he had cut via a fire cutter (laser cutter but with cutting torch). Lots of fun projects, lots of problems, lots of solutions. It pays $55 an hour i think, top scale, and you get something like $15 an hour in benefits. It takes around a year to get called off the bench (it's a union job, but not a shitty union like teamsters. People can and will get fired for not doing their jobs). Finally, for the workaholic, overtime is always available and it's double time. $110 an hour an extra 2 hours a week can really add up. Basically, if I wasn't programming I'd be making elevators go up and down. Another option I have considered is an arborist. Kinda funny, but I love rock climbing, and being an arborist is basically "the same thing", in that you get to harness up, jug up some fixed lines, rig up lowers (can't always drop branches), etc. Looks like alot of fun at least for a while!