Visible progress? The slow upgrade of the ebike continues. Can you spot the improvement this time? Say no. The clue is the air pump. If you peer close, you’ll see the new front rim and heavier duty tire. These replace the cheap original and the slightly fatter tire gives a better ride. The back is next, due for the largest tire that will fit in the space. But the electric drive means that is a major undertaking for later.
Further, the new inner tube is an over-inflated Hutchinson racing model reinforced by the factory rubber which leaked slowly from day one. This double shield has always served better than either slime, which costs as much as a new tube, and so-called heavy duty tubes. However, boo to Hutchinson for packaging their special-use (racing) tubes in a misleading manner. Careful folks, don’t mistake Hutchinson “universal” tubes for regular universal tubes, like they hope you will.How is that ebike doing, anyway? It has certainly paid for itself a few times over but it isn’t perfect. I estimate 1,800 miles on it, nothing compared to the 7,000+ on the pedal-driven Jamus. As a matter of fact, the ebike has probably paid for itself alone in saved parking fees, wasted time and gas looking for parking, and repairs. True, I just sank $65 into a $400 bicycle, but that represents a material improvement. Besides, my system can easily absorb that level of expense, unlike a car that drains the bank account even when sitting parked.
My next stop was Burger King for coffee and inflation weighs in at 31%. The dollar items on the value menu have leapt to $1.29. Before you say that is a different percentage, are you forgetting the higher base adds two more cents sales tax? The fries and the spicy chicken have quietly been dropped. For those on a coffee budget, that’s 7-3/4 fewer daily cups per month. That will give many time to sit at home and ponder how for years they ignored the warning signs and smugly bragged a mortgage was like a little piggy bank that only good people deserved.
I’m reminded of my crazy landlady near Doral when I was recovering in 2004. She sat around in the dark burning candles and wouldn’t run the A/C on weekends. She talked incessantly how the only important thing was paying off her mortgage and how wonderful life would be after that. She had it all figured out. If I recall, that area was one of the hardest hit for price drops. Her plan was to remortgage the house and live good forever and ever. I hope she took out a mortgage because she was nasty and looked at everything the wearisome way you’d expect from the uneducated.
Morgan Stanley says the shadow inventory of US homes (repossessed, foreclosed, reo, but not on the market for sale) is 8,000,000. The market value of all this property is $1,680,000,000,000 (1.68 trillion). Do the math. The average price of each house is still $210,000. There are not eight million jobs in the USA that pay enough to buy such expensive places. I say even if there were such jobs, people have lost confidence in homes as a store of value.
If I had 200 large right now, I’d buy precious metal and wait. I’m waiting anyway. One of the neatest parts about investing is the waiting, because most people can’t. Like my family, they lack the concept of delayed reward and are thus speaking the truth when they make excuses for not putting money away. Hell, according to them, I “decided” not to finish school in my early twenties and take six years off and go work for a living “to see what it was like”. They’ll swear to that under oath.
More revealing yet is the typewriter listed below as a favorite toy. All eight people in my family had access to that it. For all the squealing they did that we were "equal", I am the only one who ever learned to type. So, I won't mention the encyclopedias, the piano, or the other things that really make them look bad. Not a peep out of me.
No replies on my ad for a shift-driver to Colorado, but I’ve got inquiries from others needing the same, If I get three total, I’ll suggest we rent a car one-way (around $90 per day) and drive non-stop. I can understand the aversions to the bus and what the authorities have done to air travel, but strange how many people want to go to Denver that need a ride.
The list below contains an item that is no longer available, which is a pity. Those interlocking soft red plastic bricks from Playskool. The canister also contained plastic windows and doors and cardboard roofing, which I never used. Here’s a model hotel showing what could be done. I always liked these bricks better than the Lego junk, which is brittle and harder to work with if you ask me.I don’t like those figurines that Lego uses, the ones that all look like the Mario Bros. Plus, Lego has too many specialty kits that don’t require imagination. It took brains to visualize and build the model hotel, whereas Lego would just market a hotel kit, complete with a little doorman who needs the Atkins diet.
Note that Lego paid the original red brick factory a fee which is rumored to have included the condition never to refer to the red bricks as “pre-Lego”. But that’s what they were. There was a slight flurry about choking danger which Lego was quick to point out did not apply to their larger product. The red bricks were discontinued in the late 70’s when the toy market changed to what toys will do rather than what the child does.
Mecanno Set
Typewriter
Bicycle
Firecrackers
Red (toy) bricks
