2010 East Coast Trip

Hello all.

More stuff here...

Mary Elizabeth and I had a business trip (2 actually) this month and we have hardly been home at all. Since the first trip was to the Boston Area, we took advantage of the fact that I had never seen where she grew up. So here is sort of a highlighted play by play...

April 17th first stop Newark NJ. We flew in from LA and rented a car for our journey. I opted for flying into Newark because that was our final destination, so the rental would be more reasonable. If you ever rent a car from one Airport and try to return to to another Airport be prepared for some serious sticker shock!!

We upgraded to a Chevy Malibu which was a very nice car. I drove us up the 9 from Newark and over the George Washington Bridge and onto the 87 then to the 84 eventually ending up at New Fairfield Conn. This is the area where Mary Elizabeth spent her childhood and while we have seen Manhattan together before and she has taken Paige and Jelly (our girls) there before, I have never seen the lake or the isle. What isle? Candlewood Isle and WOW what a beautiful place. Idyllic. Peaceful and quiet. There stands at the entrance to the isle, a guardhouse. Mary Elizabeth had not been there in years, so she started throwing out her old neighbors' names and most of them have long since left the isle. She was so persistent though he let us pass and said "now observe the speed limit signs" to which she responds... " Yeah I saw them posted at 20 so I'll keep it under fifty!!". We drive away with him chuckling and muttering to himself "typical woman driver". This cracked me up.

I took a picture of almost every house on the isle. Maybe if I can doctor them a little I will attach an updated flickr post to share them. Let me know if you want to see the pics of the trip. If no body responds, you all lose, as I will not post them. SO let me know. dglosup@sbcglobal.net

We visited Danbury, New Fairfield, and Squantz Pond in Connecticut. We finally got hungry and passed a joint called Jim Barbaries for some fish and it looked good. Funny part was this was a restaurant my wife never ate at when she was living there as it was "too fancy" back then. I said what the hell, lets give it a try. We loved the food, she later got sick though. The next day she calls her mother and someone else (don't remember who) and they BOTH said "did you get sick?" and of course she had. I didn't though!

We spent the night locally there and set out the next day for Boston. Well it was now Sunday and the Boston Marathon was Monday... We had not planned on that. The trip was great though. We stayed in the 'burbs of Boston and drove into town for a meal at the Post 390 which was FABULOUS. The Boston area was a-buzz with excitement for the upcoming Marathon, but most were sad that the what-ch-ma-call-it Icelandic Volcano had prevented many of the hottest European Runners from coming. Oh well. We then drove around town and on home to the hotel.

Next day we took the train back into town and walked most of Boston. It was great, we saw all the cool stuff and the area was packed with people from the Marathon. The next day we wrapped up the business meeting we made the trip for successfully and we were off again.

This time I wanted to take the 95 and the 1 down the Eastern Seaboard the weather was beautiful and we stopped at Mystic Seaport. Again a fun place rich in History. But I was getting bored. I was ready for some Times Square Action!! We DID travel a few miles on the "1" and saw the quaint towns like New London etc, but our next stop was New Haven and YALE!! WOW Yale is a sight to behold. These almost Victorian buildings right in the town were fabulous. I got some pictures but unfortunately it was pretty much dark by the time we got there. We sneaked into the parking lot of the local Mariott Courtyard Hotel and snuck next door for some Pizza. And what pizza it was!! We met this colorful Turkish young man who was the manager. Seems the old owner killed himself and this fellows father knew the family of the old owner and his son had some restaurant/pizza experience and voilla! Manager. The pizza joint is for sale if anyone is interested. It is called the Pizza Empire at around 12 Whaley Ave. New Haven Conn. Just so you know...

We looked for a hotel in Manhattan and Mary Elizabeth talked to her brother Mark, who said the SNL guys have out of town guests stay sometimes at the Paramount Hotel on 46th St right off Times Square... Not only was this one of the most reasonably priced accommodations near Times Square, we ended up staying there an extra day we loved it so much.

Ahh to be back in Manhattan. I have only been twice before. But now I feel like I know the joint. We walked, and walked and walked and walked some more. We walked down to the meatpacking district, we walked up to the center of Central park, we schlepped around the subway, we lounged in the Times Square seating area. We just had a stinking ball. So many lights So much ACTION WOW. What fun.

Lastly we went to visit Mary Elizabeth's Family in Bayonne New Jersey. Man did I get lost!! I was looking for a Starbucks for the morning coffee and found one at the Jersey Gardens Mall, but the Mall was already closed. So I depended on the Google Maps in my Driod to get us back to the Hotel (the Hampton Inn accross from the Newark Airport.) Well no easy task to begin with, but realistically I really lost it. Being from Los Angeles, I have no truck with TOLL ROADS, but they are a part of Bayonne life. Anyway I get lost on the express lanes of the 95 and the 78 and going around and around and finally I get onto some surface streets in Newark and was able to navigate back to the Hotel.

April 23rd 2010, The last day we spent with Aunt Anne and Aunt Gertrude. Both living close by each other in Bayonne, which is a postage stamp of a town. Anne took us out to lunch and we had a great visit.

We flew back home just in time for another business trip to Bentonville Arkansas, but that is another story...

How do we sift through the crap to find the Gold?

This problem plagues me.

We see all these people apparantly making all this money and saying they will help others but what we mostly find is false promises, lies and misrepresentations all over the Internet.

What I want to see is something of actual value. AND I want to be ABLE to see it immediately for what it is worth, not what it appears to be worth.

I was a Hard Money Mortgage Broker. (def: Hard Money Mortgage: where a Broker arranges a loan between a property owner and a PRIVATE INVESTOR, where the private investor puts up the money for the loan, usually made as a Small Second Mortgage) I got into that field in 1983 and it was cool. There were not many regulations then and we found people who were having trouble paying their bills due, usually, to some temporary situation.

California law required a rather quick "remedy" for lenders if their borrowers did not pay. It was (and is) called Foreclosure and it took 4 months to complete.

So in 4 months a fellow who lost his job and who owed maybe 1/2 of what his house was worth, stood the chance of losing it to the bank. That sucks. And that is where we came in. We would make a small 10 to 50K loan to the guy and prepay all his monthly payments for up to a year. This would give anyone a "Second Chance" to get back on his feet.

Our loans were considered "expensive" as we would usually charge 10 plus % of the loan amount with a minimum of like $3,000.00 to just do the deal. He had no real other options except to lose all his equity.

Over the next 10 years, I saved hundreds and hundreds of homeowners from foreclosure. Only maybe 2 or 3 ended up losing their houses anyway at the end of it all as they refused to get another job or sell their house for full value. I cannot help people who refuse to contribute to the help flow. Fortunately there were only a few true losers.

Then the damn "regulators" decended upon the "Hard Money Loan Business" with "Predatory Lending Laws" to "protect" homeowners for unscrupulous lenders. (meaning my company and others doing what I did). Problem was, as usual, the regulators "through the baby out with the bathwater" meaning that all those hundreds of homeowners I was able to offer a solution to, now had none.

Then the "banks" came to the rescue. They saw that Hard Money Loan Brokers with private money seldom if ever lost $$ and they wanted in on the additional interest we charged. So they set up shop and created the "sub-prime" loan market. They charged more in dollars but less in % as they would always refinance the first mortgage rather than make a small second mortgage. Because they "charged less" (not much less) they had cornered the market.

The PROBLEM was that the large lenders started making loans TOO EASY to get (as Hard Money Loans seldom required more than simple equity in the Real Estate to qualify), and they could not think with making a 60% loan to value loan and would go to 80-90-125% loan to value.

The result was that the loans got out of hand AND the Real Estate Values shot up like a rocket resulting in the highest gain in the history of Real Estate. We all know what followed as we are still embroiled in it. A MAJOR CRASH. One that anyone (especially me) could see. This is why I sold all my Real Estate by 2007.

In the next two to ten years, when everyone is saying how awful it is to buy Real Estate, THEN I will re-enter that market. Meanwhile I have launched into another market. The Internet...

I see a similar problem which resulted in the Real Estate (and the Stock Market) crash with the Internet and the Marketing of money making schemes and get-rich-quick deals offered today. There are so many replicated websites that you do not know who you are even dealing with. It has gotten crowded. Just like the bankers and their crap loans crowded the market with crap loans.

Fortunately the Internet is still somewhat self-regulated. This is good. I see this as a hopeful land of opportunity still.

I am researching the field and will report here on this Blog my results. I intend to find a simple fair and workable method of making a living on the Internet Through Marketing.

I will let you know, so stay tuned...