Birds June 27th
Dwayne Vinck – Rode in the MS Ride to raise funds for MS research – windy as all get out on Saturday, but they managed to avoid getting wet all weekend. Great experience, well organized. His and Brad Pachal’s 10th or 11th year.
Other than that, an old crew of guys who’d hung out and graduated as CA’s 23 years ago got together for a reunion. Hadn’t been together as a group for 23 years so it was a lot of fun.
George Doherty – tipless. However, in a follow up to last weeks “frosted cottage” story, the cottage kitchen sink wouldn’t drain..thought it was frost-related. Turns out, nope it was just plugged, so they called a plumber. When the plumber saw the plumbing George had done 30 years ago etc, he asked “who the hell did this?! Not sure if George copped to it or not. In any case, the plumber made all sorts of repairs and fixed them right up. If there WAS a tip there….it would be: hire an expert.
Dave Hicks – winding down in Maligne Lake after 8 months. About to come home when the client pulled up and asked for more work to get done. Not just “more work”, but more “WORK”. Dave said he’d get back to him. Great as the project has been, everyone’s looking forward to being home.
Headed to Cape Breton most of July with family.
Finally Dave’s Tip – “…#3 on lamest tips of the year” – Fountain Tip pen at Staples. Photo below.
Tony Fisher – Out the other night – town hall meeting for Jeromy Farkas. 200-300 people. Lasted 90 minutes. Tony remains impressed with Jeromy. Thinks he’s got a good backbone to do what he’s doing. Seems to be fine taking on the council, admits when he’s wrong. He added that there’s an interesting dynamic between him and Sean Chu at Council. Farkas’ motions are usually seconded by Chu to help give him a voice on council.
Gord Forsyth – At Rotary last Wednesday (26th) – one member praised BBQ Galore. Barbecues Galore is getting good things from all directions. Sure Ross would say “…just throw money…” but grateful for all the nice things people have to say.
Gord and golfing tips: In radium $48 Mountainside , $53 at CopperRidge and $65 at the Springs. No problem getting tee times. Empty until after 3.
Michael McLennan – June -was a great month for the business.
Michael and Maria’s personal project in Portugal is approaching completion after a lesson in patience, Or 3. It will have taken almost 4 years from start to finish. While the property is “idle” the owner still gets taxed…BUT…tax is $110 a YEAR – they’re on the hook for all the property tax accrued while it sits. Michael will be starting a Go Fund Me campaign for the $440 sometime soon.
Henry Heuver – not much to report this week except for this observation: some businesses seem extremely busy and others not at all. Of course, the one he needs for a repair is forcing him to wait 3 weeks for a repair. Don’t they know who he is?
Matt Dart – Jordan Peterson – 12 Rules of Life – gets his vote at least as “interesting” so far. A few other Birds have read this one and opinion is “mixed” in the sense that on the one hand, some have found it a slog – others have found it great to hear a proudly broadcast, politically incorrect perspective on nearly everything, and others think the guy’s started to believe his own press. I think it was Matt Litke who chimed in that the audiobook version makes it easier to get through. The author narrates it and he’s a great speaker and practised narrator. Among the discussions the book has prompted at Matt’s house is whether grit is more important than IQ as a determinant of success. Peterson says IQ. Matt’s wife Irina, a teacher, thinks persistence and hard work (grit) does it better
Brad Pachal – Reminiscing on another great ride for MS. 640 riders – raised 716K for MS research. Forgot all his electronics and the ride was better for it.
On another note, he had to fix plumbing for a client – it was a DIY disaster. Sometimes YouTube is too much of a good thing.
Sean Baylis$ – Exciting week in news because of G20 happening in Japan. “Trump Truce” with China – typically short of detail – still an empty boast at this point. He’ll be focused on politics at home soon. Democratic debates have started. Turning to investment in Canada – a nice spike in oil prices. Might feel it at the pump though. More talk about gold since it broke $1400 an ounce last week. Again a potential rate cut in July in the US could see the US dollar drop, but gold might go up.
RBC is advocating a defensive stance in portfolios – moving fixed income out of corporate bonds and in top government bonds, looking for good dividend companies to insulate portfolios. If you’ve made a lot of money in small-cap companies, it’s probably a good time to take profits.
Ross Mikkelsen – Happened into Aleppo Soap. Great post-Syria story. The owner runs a soap factory not far from the south Barbecues Galore store. Great soap – a nice story about a guy who’s come from a terrible place, adding to the community. You can click here to see their two locations in town and learn more about Soap from Aleppo.
Ross is a big fan of author Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball among many others). He’s been listening to the new Michael Lewis Podcast Against the Rules and happened on a particularly good episode about the role of referees and arbitrators not being given enough room to work in society. It sounds like this episode: Ref, You Suck! https://atrpodcast.com/episodes/ref-you-suck-s1!c5106
Don Davis – kudos to Jim Bladon for his TV interview – great interview, good speaker.
He then went on to mention that most people don’t think about negotiating at a department store – but at Home Depot they had an artificial hedge for $57. Don asked him what he could sell it for. Sales guy offered it to him for $30 – then the manager said: “Nah, let’s give him 50% off…”. Gord had a similar experience. A few others echoed that with Home Depot in particular (Ross hung his head). Dave Hicks had a similar experience with hard to find LED lightbulbs (no longer stocked). In that case, the store employee told him to just take the bulbs (10 LED lightbulbs. The TIP : You have to ask .
Mike Mikkelsen – In Medicine Hat on a tour of the Cannabis plant down there. It’s a massive building 1.6 million square feet. It’s hard to conceive the size of the space until you’re actually in there.
Jim Bladon – Homes by Avi are the builders of the 2019 Rotary Dream Home for Stampede. Beautiful ranch style with a nice western feel to it. 2500 sq feet. Goo set of pictures in this Herald article: https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/photos-calgary-stampede-unveils-1-8-million-in-lottery-prizes.
Jim continued by saying that prizes will be outstanding this year at Stampede. They anticipate the 50/50 could hit its 2.5 m cap. Stampede is offering prizes online for the first time. Raptors did the same thing during their championship run and they had payouts of 800K from time to time.
This is also the first year Stampede gone to e-tickets. Jim has trained 1300 volunteers on the new process.
Final notes from Jim last week: Kananaskis Golf in great shape.
Pedal Pub now has its liquor license. This looks like a blast! It’s literally a pub on wheels. Book through Pedal Pub or YYC beer pub.
And finally from Jim, if you’re looking for something different to do during Stoo-pede – Cowboys is hosting Guy Fieri second Thursday of Stampede. Toolshed beer infused brisket, Eau Claire gin infused ribs and other distillers working on pork. Looks like a messy, good time!
Matt Litke – Tip – Strathmore golf and country club – great shape, took his dad out there a couple of weeks ago and had a great time. Pretty impressed.. $55 a round, or $65 with a cart.
Then he underplayed his biggest news – he and Ashley are expecting, so he’ll be a dad in December! Congrats all around.
Andy Lockhart – Not an awful lot – spent the early part of the week on the gold course navigating around guys pumping out bunkers. TIP via Susan: if you mow the entire lawn with a lawn tractor having a flat tire – you WILL spend money on a new tire. At least.
Camping TIP in response to something else said during the meeting: Keep your boots inside your tent – porcupines love leather
Dan Kenelly – PBS doc – Humanity from Space, about 2 hours, but the 1st section is remarkable for showing the development of human-related traffic (planes trains and automobiles – and boats all over the globe). Worth watching: http://www.pbs.org/program/humanity-from-space/.
Noted more on the impressive Russian development in the Arctic. They have 10 nuclear icebreakers to help clear the arctic – can slice through ice close to 10 feet thick. One of the new icebreakers is the largest of its kind in history. You can read one take on these icebreakers here in this article from Popular Mechanics , or here from a site that’s generally grumpy about the fact that the Russians or ANYONE can do ANYTHING in the Arctic. https://interestingengineering.com/russia-unveils-new-nuclear-powered-ice-breaker-to-force-open-warming-arctic
Final word from Dan on the world of energy this week: Do you know what the #1 fuel in the world is?
Coal.
Dwayne – 30th Anniversary of Tianamen – If you want to see how Canada could fare – take a look at how China. One of Ross’ people is from Beijing and he had no idea what was going on until he left the country.
2nd Round
Ross – in Alberta Boot to get boots for his daughter— great spot for boot. Smith built hats in Inglewood another good place for Stampede.
Don Davis – asking about Lithium from an investment standpoint. Sean’s response was to “basket” Lithium mining companies and Battery companies.
George Doherty mentioned that his accountant bought a Tesla. George was impressed!. Self-driving pickup in the rain. Sadly, that little function (unsupervised Fetch-the-human autonomous driving) isn’t allowed in Canada. Yet. Someone also chimed in that they’re great cars…if you DON’T run the heater. Apparently, that kills the battery way faster than it should. Handy for Canada.
