Imagine

kissing and hugging your child every morning before they go to school and you go to work because you don't know if you will be rounded up for deportation during the work/school day?  Imagine being deported from a country you have lived in for 20+ years, that your father brought you to because he was being targeted by Mexican cartels, but your family never went through the official channels to claim asylum because it didn't seem necessary when you arrived, and now has become impossible.  Imagine being forced to leave a home you own, a community and country you love because the GOP decided to use immigration as a wedge issue to get DJT elected so he could enrich himself with a meme coin and stay out of jail.  Imagine not knowing if or when you will ever seen your son again.

Imagine supporting policies like that.

ICE is in the roaring fork valley

 I am not sure if I should be sarcastic or not---given the lovely people at risk I am going to play it straight.

The roaring fork valley (Glenwood Springs to Aspen) is not know for lots of violence, or crime, or pets being eaten by anything but coyotes (the 4 leg kind).  But ICE is here and rounding up illegal immigrants many of whom have lived here for decades.  They work in restaurants, construction, house keeping etc.  This is an area of the country where there is huge demand for workers and these HUMANS fill that void.  If you think the Aspen area is dysfunctional and expensive, just wait till ICE gets through with deporting a huge chunk of the workforce.

PS if you are in the farming or construction business you are about to be fucked by MAGA/Trump.  I guess Trump was smart to get out of the real estate business and into Crypto and digital media.

arg Trump has brought me back.......

 sometimes you gotta be careful what you wish for.  Mr. Musk wished for Trump to be elected president and spent a 1/4 of billion dollars to help make that wish come true.  Yesterday I was listening to Trump's inaugural speech and just after saying drill baby drill he said something to the effect that he was going to get rid of electric cars.  Wonder how Elon fares if Tesla is put out of business by Trump?

While we are at it, do you really want Elon to get rid of all regulations around ohhh lets say car safety.  Given his history of cutting corners and moving fast and breaking things etc you might say to yourself ---I am not going to buy a Tesla.  They probably are not safe.  But here is the thing, what if other folks do buy Teslas only to discover they....aren't safe and their technology results in the Teslas running into you.  And then that Tesla catches on fire, and there are no fire fighters around to put out the fire which is gonna burn hot and long and spew toxins in the air.  Ohhh yea and turns out you don't have health insurance because of a preexisting condition.  And, and , and well you get the point.

The world sure isn't perfect, and I hope DJT doesn't make it worse, but hope really isn't a strategy...and if you want a lecture on tariffs, the effects of cutting taxes on the deficit, and eliminating vaccines on public health and the associated expenses--feel free to reach out to this CO based economist for a lecture.

PS Donald--a quick investment suggestion ---threaten Musk with nationalizing X and force him to sell it to your media company along with TicTok and Metagram.  Why share the stage with Elon and Zuck when you can have it all for yourself?

Aspen SKI CO bankrupt

 Figure that headline would grab some eyeballs.  There IS something weird going on in mountain towns.  Was the start of the snow season so bad to crush interest in skiing?  Has it just gotten too expensive?  Are the wealthy feeling poor?  I don't know, BUT

Aspen Ski Co has shut two lifts (gents ridge, and Coney).  Why?  They say not enough skiers.  I
 would guess that is partially true but the real answer is money.  If Ski Co was flush they would run the lifts.  If there were a lot of skiers they would run the lifts.  

Seeing a bit of the same everywhere---the energy and volume of skiers is why down, hotel capacity down, retail down, restaurant revenues down.  Aspen does seem to continue to lead the way in non skier visits who just want to party and post on insta, but wouldn't have a clue how to put on a ski boot.

Fun fact, a friend of mine worked coat check at Caribou Club all presidents day weekend.  Total tips for 3 nights---$36.  Do the ultra wealthy not carry cash (possible) or are just cheap (very likely) or a bit of both.  Either way Caribou has lost a coach check employee.

some fun lines

 1.  riding the chairlift the other day with some 20 somethings---they were enjoying Aspen and thought it was awesome we lived here---then the guy asked "Is it worth it?"  My wife and I are both still chewing on that question and wondering about the answer

2.  friend who manages high end short term rentals---the Kardashians asked if they could send someone over to remove the deer poop---to which I wish she responded 'shit happens' but instead said "ok, but more deer will poop there tomorrow'

3.  my son was crossing the street at a cross walk in town (slowly pimp rollin it) and someone in a rental car got very upset with his pace.  The guy honked, rolled down his window, flipped him the bird and said " go back to where you came from"  pretty rich from the guy in the rental car to the local

4.  speaking of my son--he is going to work at the newly opened Mollie hotel.  Check out the outfits the valets wear.

Someone clearly had a thing for Jim Carrey in the Mask.

That is it for now---seems all the POW is at the Caribou Club and sadly not on the hill.

Merry X mas

its like that and thats the way it is (getting cold in our casa)

 We moved to the Aspen area about 8 years ago.  We have rented 6 homes during that time.

First house---boiler failed in a shaking smoking is it going to explode mess.  Took 3 weeks to get heat back.  Daughter's room never had heat--property manager said ' I didn't have heat in my cabin growing up what is she complaining about'

Second home--we only lived in it for 3 months---their version of 'furnished' channeled the furniture found in delta house in the movie animal house.

Third home---dear lord.  When we moved in it wasn't clean the the closets and drawers were full of their stuff, the pantry was full of their stuff (7 coffee machines) the WiFi lighting system didn't work (no lights in rooms under ground---yea we used head lamps) the heat broke and took weeks to be repaired, the roof needed to be repaired and the AV system was so screwed up that while watching Avengers End Game the audio from the TV was from little fires everywhere.  It was amusing for about 5 min and then annoying.

4th home--- not too bad.  WiFi didn't really work during COVID with kids doing class online and the property manager tried to kill one of our bunnies but aside from that we had heat (and everything else was ok)

5th home---total shit or as my bro in law said 'this house has a lot of deferred maintenance'.  Example--the front door was stuck shut for 3 weeks, the washing machines didn't work when we moved in, the master bedroom didn't have heat, the lights in one bathroom didn't work, the window hardware on casement windows was broken AND best of all the grill wasn't installed to code in exploded resulting in the gas line rupturing and spraying flames everywhere.  The house and the neighborhood almost burned to the ground.

6th home (current)  heat pump failed.  Its cold.  Heating guys said they can get to it in a week.

Is this normal?  Is construction that bad in the valley.  Are all home owners too cheap to do maintenance and get work done right?  Is it even possible to get work done right.

The view sure is nice though.

PS its not just me---the Burlingame project was supposed to have move in this week.  Now that is TBD on cert of occupancy --end result is 100s of people who don't have a place to live.

expect up to 3 hour delays

 I was driving my wife to the hospital (a colonoscopy don't freak out) just before 6AM and was greeted with that message.  Luckily this early the drive from my house to the hospital took about 12 minutes.  We were smiling about how nice Aspen can be when there are no people.  But a 3 hour delay to get into town for paving roads.  WTF.

The drive from my house to Aspen is about 10 miles.  Given that there won't be any traffic for the first 3 miles or so of that drive they are suggesting that it could take up to 3 hours to drive 7 miles.  I struggle to get my head around that.  And this is for repaving---which seems to be an annual thing.  Again WTF

Other things I struggle to get my head around:

Snowmass Village roads have been under construction for about 3 months with no end in site.  The drive from my house to the post office has gone from 2.5 miles to 4 miles.  There are sink holes appearing all over the place and it seems that all the roads are collapsing.

The woman who cuts my sons hair had her rent go from $700 a month to $6,000 a month.  That is an 850% increase.  I guess to keep her margins the same my son's hair cut would go from $75 to $650.  I struggle to figure out how much to tip on a $650 hair cut.  She no longer cuts hair.

I had to put down one of my dogs (Wiggins) recently.  The costs around it were very high.  Why?  Well when vets' rents and vets expenses in Aspen Snowmass are sky high they gotta charge sky high rates.

Everything around here costs an arm and a leg and yet we still live rural AF (as fuck).  Grocery shelves are often empty (finding lime seltzer is like winning mega millions), the emergency vets office only had a vet, no technician,  no front desk person because they can't find labor.  A friend of mine had a weird growth on his ear, took 3 weeks to get it biopsied, and 10 days later he still hasn't heard from the doc if its cancer (but heck not to worry, when the doc did the biopsy after asking him why he waiting so long to come in she said 'it looks like cancer').  Aspen and the roaring fork valley is broken.  I am not sure there is a fix.