Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

At the Airport !

Funny, as a frequent leisure traveler, I haven’t been anywhere on a plane, and really only a rare occasion outside a range of 2hrs from my home, in a year.  All the annual rituals - the holidays of course with family, but also the yearly sojourn to NYC with my son we’ve pulled off since he was 2 months old, the Stowe trip, the vacations and jaunts and weekends and plans - all cancelled.

So I step on a plane to St Petersburg Florida to check out a city I’ve never been but have heard great things about, I feel a sense of something - relief, maybe - as life seems to be about turn that corner into the home stretch of return to normalcy.  We have a sane president, Trump fading from view, government acting responsibility and marshaling the full extent of American talent to pull us to safety, with none of the day to day counterproductive nonsense.  The Democrats are certainly taking advantage of the old adage of ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ with their passage of that $1.9Trillion stimulus, investing and supporting much more than that impacted by the Pandemic.  I’ve found the same to be true - when shit hits the fan and chaos ensues, look around and see what else you can fix that isn’t directly related to the root cause of the disruption - you are already disrupted, what’s a little more?  Truth is, all of us shy from upsetting the apple cart, even when it’s clear the apples are rotten, since it just invites misery, but once already slathered with a little misery, a little more hurts less.

I’ve been so single-minded I’m worried about the process of turning it off.  Astonishingly, single-minded and wholly effective, summoning talents and resources and depths that go unnoticed and untested during the normal course of events.  Coming out the other side twice the man I was going in, which is really unfair to the ladies to be honest.

I was standing waiting in line, and it occurred to me the feeling I'm feeling, and I felt a phrase turn come to mind.  Emotional Hibernation - all of us shut down, hunkered down, repressed, deflected, reasoned and waited our way through a wholly unpredictable and wholly unexpected and totally disruptive life event.  I feel we all need a big cry when this is over.  It’s been real and we all did our best.  It feels like WWII is ending, and we are all ready to hit the streets and celebrate.

And sometimes that’s what you need - an event so big and traumatic and disruptive that you have no choice but to pay attention.  It triggered a change of the presidency, it demanded and accelerated change in the work place, it pushed the skills and talents of all our gov’t, corporate, business and educational in ways unimaginable.

Those of us running things - if we survived, our skills are 3 fold what they were a year ago.  You reacted and acted or you went out of business.  You looked into the abyss and mapped a course forward, a course shrouded in fog the entire time, every assumption truly untested, every decision a best guess. And the one thing that really helped in this regard was there was little distraction from working - single minded focus wasn’t some heroic accomplishment - there was nothing more to do.   Kids activities cancelled or curtailed, among the hundreds of life events that suck and compete for our time were not competing.  You could dial in, stay close to home, focus in, think and strategize and work.  Traveling takes time and effort over and above the actual travel and ‘time’ is a zero sum game - what use at one place is not available for another.

The old patterns are returning, but like anything you’ve missed, they come back better appreciated and sweeter.  The kiss, the rendezvous, the sporting and concert event, the meal with the grandparents.  (me wearing my flamingo shirt my son gave me in front of a bunch of real life Flamingos in St Petes).

My flight routine is familiar - headphones and a newspaper and normally some writing.  I always listen to Buenos Vista Social Club, and I only listen to it while flying, so like the music is closely associated with flights, travel, and going in and out of naps on a plane.  Sometimes I’ll move onto George Harrison’s early 70’s All Things Must Pass, and sometimes Mark Ronson light and groovy bits.

The flight was full, middle seats used up, lines at security and onboarding the plae, so I guess covid restrictions are only being enforced with schools and other things where the little guy can't fight back.  The fucking guy sharing my row in 1st Class definitely didn't spend the weekend respecting covid rules, I would bet on that as a sure thing.  

Most excitingly, when we landed, there were 5 police cars  waiting, and they called a name and guy walked forward and got arrested - not for not wearing a mask, though he wasn't - but for something a lot more serious it appeared.

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While we all recover from the PTSD of the Trump years, I'm noticing the relief in small ways.  For instance, I'm now finding myself listening to long Audible books while driving instead of circling around news and talk news radio stations for the latest outrage, source of comfort, hope for the future.  I used to devour long history books on tapes, starting with the 50 hour Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich back in 2013.  The narrators voice on that one became as familiar as my wife's (and since I still look for books he speaks, and my wife and I are long divorced), his voice proved to have more longevity.  The current book I'm listening to in on Roosevelt and mostly the war years.  Fascinating guy and times.  And writer Doris Kearns Goodwin, of Team of Rivals (lincoln) fame and others, writes well, and interestingly.

That's not fair though. I hear my ex's voice all the time.   How my lunch packing skills and choices are bizarre, how the lost socks mystery that surrounds Lucas is somehow my fault, how the movie we watched over the weekend was inappropriate, etc....   I'm just joking - we have a great and valued relationship that we work on daily.

I'm also reading Britian at Bay, which is a story of Britain from 1939-42.   One of the things it tries to do, as least over the first 150 pages, is give the Chamberlain as an appeaser and failure another look, and recast him as a more 3 dimensional character

A lot of you close readers are probably remarking about how 'wow, looks like Chuck got the picture thing figured out'.  That would not be correct, I'm posting in my old blog and copy and pasting in my new blog, because my new blog hosted on my new website doesn't upload/fancy the HEIC format that is automatic on Iphones.

That's right, I paid $15k for a fancy new website which I love and I go to blog and celebrate my victory, and, boom, issue with photo uploads.

Couple of drone shots -

One would think that would turn me off to my web designer, who is locked down outside of London somewhere with his girlfriend and baby.  But no way, in my business, life ain't perfect, and since I deal with literally 100 vendors a week, results that aren't what I wholly expected are par for the course.  Vendors coming up short is par for the course.  Shit not working the way it's supposed to is par for the course.   But anyone in my position knows that even the best laid plans don't always work out, and typically you aren't working with the best laid plans, so the idea that it's not working out how you had it pictured in your mind's eye, well, that's just something you get used to.  The real trick is not letting it go too far, calibrating the anticipated imperfection so it actually works, maybe just not exactly how you thought it might.  And giving your partners a break - christ, they are a hardworking bunch.   Of all the attributes that help vendors make the cut with Catskill Farms for mutual benefit, hardworking is at the very top.  Everything else comes after that.

My baseball coach growing up (ages 8-14) told me that my competitive advantage will always be that I know how to work harder than other people, inherently, because coming from Lancaster PA, you are surrounded by hard-working people, small businesses, etc...  Everyone seems to be industrious, and have a side hustle.

I've been also having fascinating conversations with leaders in their field this week - my bank president and I caught up, then a super interesting conversation with a client we are building a home for who is a producer at a well-known news program.  Perspective and insights from a broad range of people has always kept us safe from -'owner knows best' trap many small business get caught in.  Though, I do think that I know best, it's just that I know best because I'm tapping into and listening to a very broad range of market participants.

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Typically, a group of 10+ of us go to Stowe over President's Day weekend.  We leave mid-day Friday, land at the Courtyard Marriott in Burlington by early evening, and gather at the hotel bar by happy hour for drinks, giddy exuberance, some Connect Four, and then dinner.  Started out with my sister, nephew and myself 8 or 9 years ago, and has been ongoing and growing ever since.  And can get super cold up there, with skiing below zero degrees is not unknown.

Well, didn't happen this year but my friend John and I snuck out this past week for a mid-week jaunt up north, with 1 day in Stowe.

Vermont in general, and the slopes, in particular take their Covid prevention pretty serious.  This lodge is typically shoulder to shoulder hot mess of parents, kids and friends all in the full spectrum of fun and ill-temper.  The lines for the food, always pretty good, are hunger games like in the need for strategic aggression.  Not this year.  I guess like 5% occupancy rules, strictly enforced.  Eerie.

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And 1 day in Killington, cut short cause our legs were screaming.

Good days for skiing.  Got 3-5 inches of fresh powder on Monday and temperate temperatures for Tuesday and Wednesday.  While the lift lines were unpredictable because of Covid (2 people on a lift or gondola slows things down regardless of the slope crowds), the slopes themselves were somewhat clear sailing, or clear skiing in this case.  If you do much social media, there are some very frightening photos of lift lines out West.

I had never been to Killington, which I liked a lot.  Big mountain, and a lot more 'easy' slopes, which I think would benefit our team a bit more - kids and some of the less adventurous skiers.

I'm surprised this picture below isn't blurry cause of the speed I was clocked at.

Time to think about breaking out the golf clubs for what I hope is a return of my mental health Monday where I social distance from the Office.  As I have reported.  I had to come out of retirement/pasture this past year in order to keep the ship upright, avoid the icebergs, and shovel in the coal to keep her moving full steam ahead.

And another in Killington.

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Farm 59 left the Ranch today, to a sweet couple whose male component had been searching and pecking and almost buying for 8 years.  Then he found us, and we found a way to make it happen.

This house's first version was a cottage, over on Tuthill Road, back in the late aughts I believe, but we found a way to turn it into a 1500 sq ft 3 bedroom 2 bath farmhouse a few years ago, and then selected it for this plot back last summer.  

It's fun pairing homes and land.  Some land is quite versatile, and some land is quite specific.  Not specific in a bad way, but just requires a certain home to really work well.  And some homes need something specific to make it work to, like a sloping grade for ranches in order to make the ground floor feel well-lit and liveable.  If it feels like a basement, we've failed.  And we don't fail.  We might get knocked around, but we get back up.  I always get back up.

A few of the homes over on this section of Maple Lane are more or less sitting on rock, and are somewhat flat, so we opted to use crawl spaces instead of full basements.  Worked out pretty good - still room for all the mechanicals and even nice storage, but you don't have to do that man vs rock effort that isn't fun for anyone - not the excavator who has pound through it, not us whose every move is complicated, and not the client who ends up paying for a lot of it.

It's our 3rd closing in February, and we just consummated I believe 5 new deals and 2 more in the hopper.  Since my office team is so excellent, I'm focused on scouting and hiring, and my new floor scrubbing detail of punchlist and warranty stuff - 'keep you honest and humble' exercises.  Plus, who knows, maybe I'll find unexpected fulfillment in paint touchups and leaky faucets and poorly installed toilets rather than selling a million dollars of real estate a week like I have been doing.

New house that just went up. You may be thinking, "Wow, I guess Chuck figured out the picture thing he was going on about in the last blog'.

That would be incorrect - I have to write this somewhere else, import the photos to that blog post, then cut and paste it to this one. Yeah, I know, you'd think I would have the ability to hurdle this one, but not yet. Still trying...