Brown Motion

These days it is amazing what Wall Street hustle can produce.  Today a stationary cycle company called Peloton (meaning a group of cyclists in a race) hit the stock market in debut trading and attained a valuation (or market cap) of $7.5B ... Put that in perspective it is 20% the market cap of Ford Motor company.  Imagine that. For little over a million people who own this so called stationary bike the confusing world of valuations believes that they are worth a fifth the value of Ford Motor that has been moving people all over the world for the past 100+ years. Dang.  Henry what were you (not) thinking back then? LOL. The world today is made of whatever pipe dream you can sell to consumers of all kinds.  Whether it is to those that are vain and will pay up for any trick that promises instant weight loss and a jealousy inducing gram on Insta to those salivating on the idea of making quick bucks trading anything that IPOs on the exchange. I for one am clu...

It is said one must focus on what one likes and have a positive outlook about life in general.  I say its worth trying.  In the spirit of that concept below I will share some of my simple joys that I can partake as I go through life. These also tend to actually improve the quality of my life.  In no particular order these are things I see, read or do.  Food or Drink I consume or people I meet.  I must say the latter is a relatively low percentage in attributing to quality of life but that's just me. I am sure people can figure out a similar matrix for themselves and figure out how to boost the engagement with things that matter to them most.  Perhaps we will all be happy that way! Humor is a big part of my life and I seek it out in many ways - sometimes it just happens to be in your face when you least expect it... While Bourdain is gone he left an amazing legacy behind.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching him delve into a new frontier using a...

Selling anything requires new tricks.  After all everything on sale is already a commodity.  So creativity rules.  Moving three tons of steel on wheels is no small feat. I was wandering in search of food as I am prone to on any given weekend.  This time the wandering was happening on the old El Camino Real.  While nothing spiritual moved me there was one item that did catch my eye.  To the point that it moved me. On a used car sales lot I spotted the below.  Not sure if this was a clever prank by the dealer or some passerby hobo had had his fill of the voluptuous beauties but certainly did not hurt that the soul lingered longer than it would at something as cheesy as a used Chevy truck with garish decals sitting in the heat.  Perhaps the models were of the same vintage.. After all any model year is good if it stimulates you enough to make that purchase.  Foot traffic is king in retail.  Subsequently I found what I was reall...

I have gone round the earth 20 times in as many years of being in the United States.  That is 1 trip round the planet a year on average. Okay I have driven that distance using an automobile to be precise.  How you ask?  Well simple.  I have owned several vehicles during the two decades of being here and I noted the odometers when I sold them.  Add them up and I get a number.  Add to that all the vehicles I rented for short duration to make many trips criss crossing the continent and then some (drove 150 miles in New Zealand once). Grand total is just north of 500,000 miles driven.  That is 20 times the earth's circumference for those of you keeping score or vaguely aware of what a circumference is. So the perspective is that given a propensity to drive a lot you can easily cover the distance equal to going round our planet in a years time.   That comes to around 70 miles a day of driving every day assuming you take Thanksgiving and Xmas off...