Italy, part 3

I seem to be in Sardinia and soon Corsica before the summer travel season really hits.  I guess the season here in Northwest Sardinia is quite condensed to July and August and definitely doesn’t extend to the first part of May.  When my nephew and I visited Nice and related areas two years ago, I think it was late May and Early June, and when we hit the French Alps last year to ski it was the middle of April, just as the ski season is coming to an end.

While there are some inherent risks for visiting outside the most common dates, mostly weather related, if the weather cooperates I’m a big fan of the vibe.

Currently, at the W at Poltu Quatu, the hotel on a small short inlet just off the Tyrrhenian Sea, the place seems fully staffed but the guests have not yet arrived.  It’s a nice hotel, and has pulled off the art of luxury well in both the accommodations as well the attentiveness of a well-trained staff. So you have a perfect mix of lots of help, well-trained, and a lack of guests.  While that could be overshot in terms of helpfulness at every moment of need like a Stowe ski slope, they are restrained.  While you can hardly go into the pool without your lounger towels being swapped out, hardly turn a corner without a friendly face, you can also sit quietly without a constant stream of helpfulness effort.

In the Alps, in Mid April, the vibe was decidedly end of season, with lots of skis and boots being cleaned on the sidewalks outside of the ski rental stores, and with stories from the service workers on the slopes of their plans to head south to the French Riviera, the Côte d’Azur, for the summer.  That’s why when we got hit with 20” of snow a lot of places were a bit surprised and were caught off guard in terms of food on hand and staff on hand as a late rush of skiers converged.

And Nice in late May was just nice.  Perfect really.  Crowds picking up, sun warm, but again not the hordes you read about.

So early in the season even the mannequins are undressed.

In the little towns I’ve been to in Sardinia that must explode in the Summer, it’s hard to imagine the chaos of traffic and guests.  It must really be a scene.

I’m trying to leave Sardinia today after 12 days but it looks like that might be difficult since the high winds are preventing the ferries from running from Santa Theresa to Bonifacio, Corsica.  I was thinking about staying a few days in Bonifacio and then heading to Mainland Italy via Milan or Rome, but now I think I might just stay put and play some golf.

Sardinia in early May, at least this year, has been a varied and turbulent weather situation.   Chilly, rainy, windy, less sun than you would expect.  It’s fine for me, and hasn’t really impacted my travels, but if you were coming for a sunny warm-me-up holiday, you would have been disappointed.  While not unheard of, I think the last few years have been warm and calm in early May, setting up some short-term memory loss of how it can really be.

I can’t imagine a life less like residential home building in the USA than shepherding sheep in Sardinia.  We passed a lot of sheep, and a lot of sheep dogs and a few shepherds.   Most of the cows, goats and sheep wore bells around their neck I suppose to help keep track of them and in the country-side, when the motorcycles were turned off, the sound of hundreds of bells broke the arid, hilly countryside silence.  It was soothing, hypnotic.  Anyways, the shepherd’s life is a quiet life of roaming grazing sheep.  Even a farmer’s life has exponentially more must-dos and anxiety than a shepherd.  And compared to the endless lists and expectations of a builder, literally nothing seems more opposite.  For us business-owners, whose obligations are not always self-imposed, self-initiated or voluntary, and can come at you for years and decades like water from a firehose, the idea of following sheep around is both abhorrent and attractive.

Was also, on my solitary motorcycle seat following a gang of 12 up and down and in and out of the incredibly varied countryside, contemplating the black sheep that every flock-fold-mob-band of sheep had.  One can see the where the saying came from, since I guess the black sheep is 1, quite infrequent, and 2, stands out.

From Claude, who has replace Chatgpt for me.

The "black sheep" in a flock comes from genetics — specifically a recessive gene for dark pigmentation.

Here's how it works:

The genetics — Most domestic sheep carry genes for white wool, which was selectively bred over centuries because white wool can be dyed any color (making it more commercially valuable). However, some sheep carry a recessive gene for dark (black or brown) pigmentation. When two sheep that both carry this hidden recessive gene mate, there's a chance their offspring will express it — producing a black lamb, even from two white parents.

Why it's rare — Because the dark-color gene is recessive, both parents must carry a copy for it to appear. Since white wool was heavily favored by farmers, the gene was largely bred out, making black sheep uncommon but not extinct.

It's essentially random — A white ewe and a white ram can produce a black lamb with no warning, which is why the birth of a black sheep often surprised shepherds. This unpredictability is exactly what gave rise to the idiom "black sheep of the family" — someone who stands out unexpectedly as different from the rest.

Interestingly, black wool was historically considered less valuable (harder to dye), so black sheep were sometimes seen as a minor nuisance to shepherds, reinforcing the negative connotation of the phrase.

I don’t mind Chatgpt, but it was annoying how before every answer it felt the need to editorialize and contextualize what it was about to report.  For awhile, that was actually helpful, but then it got really annoying.

To kill some time I uploaded all my weekly financial reports I get from John in finance, and after some very smart questions and clarifications, Claude reported the following, about my overall financial picture -

"Overall, the combined picture is that of someone who has built substantial, well-structured wealth with almost no leverage. Very solid." I could not have said it better myself, even if the day to day still seems more tenuous than it should. Kind of like a zebra in captivity - never really loses the fight or flight instincts. They are backed at this point.

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