August 16th 2016
Yorktown Heights, NY
I went to visit Elana again today. Arlene drove me there just before lunch and I found her alone in the dining room eating – ice cream. She didn’t like her lunch and had previously told me she hates the food there. She only eats the dessert. Sure enough, that is what she was doing. I joined her at the table and she remembered me right away; in fact, too well.
As soon as I said Hi and asked to join her she said sure and then said; what questions are you going to ask me today? I laughed and said, we’ll get to that later. Tell me how you’ve been since I last saw you. We chatted for a bit about what’s been happing in the Nursing Home, but she was anxious to get to the questions. I told her I brought more pictures for her to look at so I took them out and showed them to her.
She remembered the older pictures very well, but the more recent ones, that is, those in the 80’s and 90’s weren’t sparking any memory, though she did recognize the pictures and the people, she had not connection to them or why they would be there. For instance, I had a picture of her and her brother (now deceased) at her father’s funeral. She recognized her brother and the location, but didn’t know her Dad had passed. On the back of the photo it said: Dad’s Funeral. I don’t lie to her when she asks me who is alive or passed, but she was surprised to learn her brother passed. She said she though he would have outlived her.
We had a nice time going through the pictures and I explained to her that I was going to be going away for a while and I showed her pictures of the kayak and different places I’ve gone. I promised her I would write, as she gets lonely. All the letters she sends out get returned and she’s got no one to write to or talk with. So I had an idea. Would you like to write to Elana? If so, let me know in the comments and if you are on FB with me, you can message me there as well. Her birthday is coming up in October and I’ll be looking for people willing to send her a birthday card as well. I’m not sure how much time she has left with us, but I think we can make her remaining time less lonely, don’t you? I promised Elana that I’d come back and visit with her again.
Before I left, I introduced Arlene to Elana and then we gave her a gift. The last time we spoke, she told me she loved Chess. So I gave her a Chess Set and said that when I come back, she was going to have to teach me to play. I gave her a hug Good Bye and we headed out.
Back at Arlene’s house, I unpacked all my dry bags and reorganized them. I didn’t like how I had packed them the last time and felt the kayak was out of balance too. This time, like the first time, I weighed out everything and then set to packing it into the kayak to assure I had a well balance load with equal weight distribution. I was even able to get more food on board. I’m now running 60 lbs of gear up front under the hatch and 74 lbs in the rear. As I use up my food in the rear, that will deplete 14 lbs of gear every week so at the end of each week I’ll be nearly balanced and then when I transfer food from my “store” (front bag) to the “galley” (rear bag) it will redistribute nicely and the kayak will be trimmed in the water much better now.
This morning I had posted this little teaser on Facebook:
On this day in 2010, I released to the public this little contraption.
I didn’t invent it. I simply saw a need, saw a design and saw an opportunity.
More about this in tonight’s blog.
Back in 2009, things were not going well for me. Though my Real Estate business was doing well, the Real Estate market was tanking. Unfortunately for me, I had bought a nice house in 2006 – also know as the Peak. I’d been watching my home depreciate in value year after year. I had also bought a used 1999 Harley Davidson Electra Glide Ultra Classic. I had always wanted a Harley and I saw this one for sale on the side of the road and snatched it up. I hadn’t ridden since my motorcycle accident in 2002 when a car crossed a double yellow line and drove straight in front of me. As much as I liked the Harley, it was breaking down a lot and I wasn’t use to a bike needing so much work to stay running. I was also facing a big problem with my home.
We had these wonderful Mortgage programs back then. Anyone who had a pulse could get one and they would give you a mortgage for anything you wanted. Didn’t matter if you could afford it or not. This was done through a product called “Interest Only” As it says; you only paid your interest for a period of time. Home prices were skyrocketing so you would get an Interest Only mortgage and in 4 years when the Principle kicked in, the home would be worth a lot more and you’d refinance it. At least, that was how it was working and I, like just about everyone else, had jumped into this game, only I jumped in too late and the homes were no longer appreciating, but for the first time since the Great Depression, they were depreciating rapidly. In just 3 years, my $400k home was now worth $300k and dropping. Refinancing was not an option.
By the middle of 2009, with just one year left before my mortgage would more than double, I knew I was sinking fast. A new phenomenon appeared in the mortgage world now too. Short Sales. Never heard of before, homeowners that qualified, were able to sell their homes for less than what was owed and not be held responsible for the balance. Unfortunately, at this time, they did attribute everything that was written off as income to you. Never the less, I saw it as an opportunity to escape a train wreck headed my way and I put my house, motorcycle and everything else, up for sale.
2009 was a disaster for me and I was losing everything, just like I had lost everything during the Stock Market crash years before. The funny part was that I was so close to buying a sail boat to live on and everyone was telling me what a waste that was. It’s just a big hole in the water. People don’t live on sailboats. Invest in a home like everyone else. These were just a few of the many comments I’d get daily as I pursued the sailboat back in 2005 and 2006. Now here I was, a homeowner and I was loosing everything I had. I would have been in much better shape if I had bought the boat instead.
By winter of 2009, I rented an office for my Real Estate business, which I had been running from my home. I still needed a place to live, but now broke, I had little options ahead of me. I came up with an interesting solution. I repurposed some of my home furniture to use in the new Real Estate office. I turned my Living Room set into waiting room furniture. I had my office furniture, but I needed more office furniture if I were to hire agents now. I also converted one room downstairs into a Shop for my Property Management business so I could keep my tools and still do repairs in-house if needed. I had sold my motorcycle too, but another had caught my eye on-line. It was in Boise, ID. A used Honda ST1300 that the owner could no longer ride as it was gift from his wife who had passed away. He had other motorcycles, but could not bring himself to ride this one. He didn’t need the money right away so the owner (whom I had not met) and I struck a deal. He was letting me make payments on it. Yes, this was a Craigslist deal and one that anybody else would have run away from. It took two honest people to have faith in each other and we made it work. Once paid off, I had it shipped from Boise, ID to NY though it would not arrive till January 2010.
There was one other thing I did in my office. I built two secret rooms. Well, one was very secret and sat behind a set of locked double doors. On the other side I made a little garage for my new motorcycle to sit. The other secret room was in my “Executive Office” I set it up so that I had a private bathroom and hidden in that bathroom was a closet for my clothes and I bought a long leather couch to 
sleep on at night. Eventually, I grew tired of that set up and moved my office to another room and turned the old executive office into an actual bedroom. For the next three years I lived secretly in that office and something remarkable happened. In one year, I managed to recover from a huge debt and suddenly I had money in savings.
Something else happened in 2010. A fellow motorcycle friend I had only knew on-line, made a bracket to hold a GPS on top of the dash of this motorcycle. He posted it on-line and a bunch of people asked him to make it for them. He declined and told them how to make it. I contacted him privately and set up a meeting.
We met in Mystic, CT that July and struck a deal on a napkin. I would take ownership of his design and pay him a Royalty. A few weeks later, I had a prototype and manufacturing was about to begin. It was on this very day that I launched it to the public. A simple bracket I called a RBIS short for Ram Ball Installation System. Within weeks, orders were rolling in and a month later I was shipping it worldwide. Overnight, I became a manufacture and on-line retailer. I started to add additional items to my inventory and soon this little part became a big part of my life. No, this business wasn’t big, it didn’t require a lot of work and my retail background enabled me to source out parts, negotiate with vendors and keep just enough inventory on hand to fulfill orders.
This business wasn’t making anyone rich by any means, but it gave me something better. Within a year, it was producing enough income to completely pay for the operating costs and all travel expenses on the motorcycle. This enabled me to travel anywhere in the country with all my expenses covered by this new business. Within two years, the business had generated enough income that I recouped my initial purchase price of the motorcycle. This little business gave me opportunity.
In 2013, while on a Cross Country trip in a 1978 VW Bus, I ran into another friend I made on-line, Steven K Roberts. Steven is quite the character. I can’t even tell you what it is he does, but what he does is amazing and well beyond my grasp. One thing he did do was to write a book about working from anywhere, back in 1984. Telecommuting was just catching on then and he was well ahead of the trend. The book titled: Work at Home? Work Anywhere! said it all. In this book, he talked about creating small businesses. Businesses that would not necessarily support you fully, but if you had enough small businesses or if you had one or two to coincide with your other jobs, it could really make a difference. He coined the term Nickel Generators and when he told me about that term, I told him about my motorcycle parts business. It was exactly what he described.
So what’s my point? Far too often I see people pass up opportunity because the opportunity isn’t big enough. I see people struggle to stay afloat because doing something else is unfathomable. People like to feel secure, but opportunity does not come to those who are comfortable. Opportunity comes to those who seek it. I was as down and out as one could get. I’d lost my home, lost all my savings and living secretly out of a room in my office. By all accounts 2010 should have been a horrible year, yet if you look back at 2010, it was one of the greatest years of my life. Lexie and I traveled all over the country.
We’d take off every 
weekend to go somewhere for two reasons. 1) It was easier than hiding in the office all weekend. 2) We had the opportunity because I jumped on opportunity when I saw it. I started that business with nothing, making deals and scraping up nickels and dimes to get the prototype produced. I started off small and allowed the business to grow as it had the ability to grow and soon it turned into a business that supported my travel habit.
So next time you hear a knock, pay attention, that just might be your opportunity knocking.
Day 46 Done.
PS: We leave from Sandy Hook tomorrow morning. I’ll be launching Thursday morning.
