Deadliest Catch

Now that we are official grandparents you probably thought that this blog would migrate from cruising-sailing-around-the-world to all cute grand kid pictures, all the time. Wrong – not a single picture of the grandkid in this entry. We’ve been hanging out in Ferndale, Washington, just north of Bellingham, for the last few months. Mostly doing the good grandparent thing, although Chris now is on her second trip to Tanzania working on a maternal-neonatal HIV prevention education project for local midwives.
In the photo above I’m headed out with son-in-law Tyler into the rough and tumble Puget Sound to set crab pots in the desperate search for Dungeness crab on opening day of the season.

Here’s the pull of the first pot. It was lunch-bag-let-down. They are all Rock crabs. Too early in the season to set the pots this far north for Dungeness.

Here’s the view from ‘Baker Farm’, Meghan and Tyler’s (daughter and son-in-law) front yard of Mt. Baker. The property is about 5 acres and we have 21 foot travel trailer on the property that we live in while here. Can you say trailer-trash?

Life in the country…To keep busy I’ve been taking care of the pet Nigerian goats. The green platform is the fine goat furniture that I built for them. They like to sleep on something high to protect themselves from the predators.

Here’s a couple of the coyote predators caught eating the dropped pears and apples in the backyard.

Gotta water the gardening each evening too. The vines on the right are hops for fall beer brewing.

There are other animals here besides goats. This is Bubba. Bubba is an adopted ex-tomcat – well not really. Bubba is actually a dog who was born in a cat’s body. He is the only cat that I have ever had a real, meaningful relationship with. he loves to hang with his humans and comes when he’s called… sometimes.
This reminds me of some of the jobs I worked on in the past.

Making gallons of pear juice for cider, starts iwth the wood chipper...

Then to the press to produce the raw juice.

Boiling the juice before the yeast is added and fermentation begins!

More critters- this is a Pacific Tree Frog guarding the flower basket on the front porch.

The next project to take on was rebuilding this long abandoned out- building on the property. The initial job was to tear out all the rotting and smelling insulation. A dusty ugly job, which required wearing appropriate protective gear.

Behind the walls and insulation were some odd fellows. This possum must have climbed into the wall as his last rights.
Progress is being made on the bloke shed. Love those air tools.
I promised that this post would not have any grandkid pictures and this is not a grandkid pic. This is a picture of the interior of our land home, the travel trailer, with paid models in the foreground to spice it up. This shows pretty much all the living space.

OK, I lied. Here’s one more grandkid picture. We’re here for a few more months to watch her put on some more pounds, then its back to New Zealand…

Paul

Updated Crew List

This is the small family business we had to deal with in Washington this season. Baby girl Quinn joined the crew with a swaggering weight of 5lbs 7oz. She’ll be swabbing the decks in no time.

Paul & Chris

More Great Investment Advice

                        Marijuana shop                                                    Coffee shop

About 18 months ago I wrote about traveling up in the States and I let on to the next big investment opportunity -- hot showers. I predicted back then that they would go viral and this trip we’ve seen convincing evidence in all 5 states we’ve visited. After spending sometime in Washington state, I think I’m on to the next big investment opportunity. Washington is the home of Starbucks. There are Starbucks stores all over -- it’s common to see them across the street from each other in busy city areas - block after block. The new sign on the street in Washington is the green cross, signifying a Pot Shop. In my somewhat unscientific sampling there are now more pot shops than Starbucks in Washington. Starbucks is really a real estate company placing their coffee shops where people are standing or driving. They need to be on the corners for maximum exposure. The pot shops have a more motivated customer base and can locate more mid-block. The Starbucks real estate is owned by Starbucks corporate, the pot shops are mostly leased from lots of different private owners.

To show the demand for Pot Shop real estate in Washington you just have to look at some of the easily understood ratios. First you have the Starbucks per corner ratio. In a particular area if you have a corner that has has two Starbucks on it then the S/C ratio is 2/4 or .5 Starbucks per available corner. The other important ratio is Pot Shops per block. If you have 2 Pot Shops on one side of the road and 3 on the other then you have a 5 Pot Shops per block ratio. If you take these ratios and apply them to each you (5/.5) you can clearly see that investing in Pot Shop Real Estate is a far better deal than buying a daily latte. The place to put your capital is into a PSREIT - Pot Shop Real Estate Investment Trust. Find one that is consolidating property on a cash basis and pays quarterly dividends. You heard it here first.

The next culturally insightful thing that stands out from our visit back to the states is that black barbeques are now in. When we left here you would enter a Home Depot and be greeted by rows of shiny stainless steel barbeques. Black BBQs were old school. Not now, they line them up in black. Not sure that this is a very useful observation.

We travelled through 5 states on our 2016 Tour de Family. The economy looks like it is hopping in 3 of those states: South Carolina, Washington and California. With California being the standout -- tons of new housing construction and the mega-stores’ parking lots jam packed on weekday mornings with expensive cars, restaurants with waiting  lines…... Florida was a little hard to read the economy as it lives on tourist dollars. Where we were in south Florida they were doing their normal dig up the roads during peak tourist season, so it was hard to tell if the traffic was due to all the tourists in town or the fact that all the east-west thoroughfares were down to one lane in each direction. What we saw of Georgia, which admittedly did not include Atlanta, just looked like the rural economy that in general was hurting. Signs of a divided economy.

That brings me to more insight into the presidential elections. The old saying going back to the first Bill Clinton presidential campaign is “It’s the economy, stupid” -- not sure if that will hold this time. I am actually surprised by how little people seem to care about the presidential party primaries. It seems like most people just can’t quite believe the system has really degenerated to this. Either way, I promised this wasn’t going to turn into a political blog.

                            Cyclone Winston- a record breaker for the Southern Hemisphere

We head back to New Zealand early next week. The plan is to do some touring of the south islands with friends coming down from the states, then go into panic mode to finish up a long list of boat projects. This should get us ready to head back to the islands in early May with Fiji being the main place we want to explore. Unfortunately cyclone Winston has done some serious damage to Fiji this week. Hopefully they will get some quick aid and be able to get the islands back functioning for the locals soon, and the yachties soon after that.

Paul