Road Trip! What is it about some people that they have wanderlust? I think it must go back to the Hunter/Gatherer psyche that arrayed early man. Some people settled and were happiest when they were putting down roots that bound them to a place on the earth as though to not do so would leave them free to spin off the planet into the ozone. Other people would sooner spin out into space than be…
Get Away Day In this year of broken plays, where whatever we were all planning to do, we have had to cancel, postpone or modify, Kim and I proposed to our dear friends Frank and Lydia a celebratory road trip to the Columbia Gorge. We proposed it for the second half of summer, feeling that by that time we would have this nasty Coronavirus thing, whatever it turned out to be, well under control as…
It’s All About Soul Yesterday I was taking a motorcycle ride on a sunny Saturday and chose to head inland towards the mountains. The Mount Palomar Observatory is forty miles away and while I rarely actually go up to the gated observatory at the very top of the mountain, I do regularly ride the switchback road up the mountain from the West and ride down the sweeper road that heads south to Lake Henshaw (or…
Amazon on My Mind It is said that when Jeff Bezos was taking his now-famous cross-country trip to move to Seattle, he wrote the business plan for his new business idea. That idea was to build the world’s biggest bookstore using this new concept that was gaining traction in 1994, the Worldwide Web. The internet and its packetization of information across large and remote data networks had been building in the defense and academic worlds…
A Good Day Fridays are most often good days. I believe that gets a bit blurred by both my partial-retirement status and the Coronavirus situation that has one day flowing into another with much less differentiation between weekdays and weekends. To be honest, this year it is hard for me to even realize this is summer versus any other time of the year since the weather out here in San Diego is nice all year…
Strawberry Trees Forever I am currently sitting in the shade of my garage on this lovely, sunny 73 degree San Diego day. Both doors and the side door are open, so the breeze from the Pacific Ocean might make this the loveliest spot on earth right now. There’s a big window in the garage facing West and I must admit, I always assumed someone had an extra window when building the house, so they said,…
What Comes Around The year 2008 is often referred to by many in the markets as the ultimate ”annus horribilis”. That is a bit hard for me to reconcile because where my personal “annus horribilis” was rightfully 2007 based on the the disastrous episode with the Bear Stearns Asset Management hedge funds that hit the wall of the CDO (collateralized debt obligations) and sub-prime mortgage crisis, that was also the joyous year (earlier in the…
Normal Wins Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was a strong candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President for many months and through several multi-participant debates. She did not stand out much as a candidate but always comported herself well and with aplomb. Her strongest attribute was her moderate posture on many of the more controversial issues of the election. In a word, where others were flamboyant or charismatic, still others were fiery and strong-minded,…
Passing Through Portland At the end of next week, Kim and I and our friends Frank and Lydia, will be passing through Portland, Oregon as we escape the confines of the Coronavirus for a road-trip holiday up through the Northern Coast of California, where the Redwoods proliferate and into Oregon. After Goos Bay, we are going to the mouth of the Columbia River, where Lewis and Clark ended their transcontinental journey. That expedition started in…
The River of Dreams Some of the best song lyrics out there were written by Billy Joel, who, God knows, doesn’t seem like a spiritual man (to paraphrase his own lyrics), and yet they are hauntingly universal the way things like rivers and fruits are universal. When I was in Guatemala and we were trying to connect with the indigenous, mostly Indian, people, the common point of connection was favorite fruits. The Africans, the Bedouin,…