A Year of Change

Nice outside this morning. A lot less smoke in the air, so it seems. Dinner was fun as Gerry and Marci are always a hoot. After dinner we drove to an art gallery in Edwards as we have a big art festival going on up here this weekend, all over the valley. I read an article at breakfast about this rancher/cowboy that had bought all the old glass negatives of a photographer who traveled the west photographing various tribes, in the early 1900’s. He now reproduces the photographs, from the original glass prints and frames them. They’re really amazing as it’s like looking back into life 120 years ago.

The gallery owner represents Clyde Aspevig, who mom and dad bought art from when he was really young. He’s one of the most revered American landscape painters in the Country. Bill, the owner of the gallery, said he doesn’t get the credit he deserves as he’s still alive, ha. We have I think 7 or 8 of his pieces, some from Mom and Dad and the rest that we acquired directly from Clyde. We struck up a relationship with him some 10 years ago. He lives in Bozeman Montana.

We made it home by 8:30 or so. Jag and Ava are coming up today, so I am skipping the cigar festival down by Boulder. Jeff is going with Shultz in my place. Ty’s off today and Lori and I will head to the gym. Not sure when the kids will get up here.

Lori is cleaning up right now so I should get moving. Have a great Saturday! Broncos are on tonight. Won’t be long until the regular season starts, God Bless.

Great cigar night last night. Ten of us got together and the girls also got together in the house. We made it home around 8. Tonight, we have dinner with Gerry and Marci. We’re going to Makoto, our new fave restaurant here in the valley.

Ty’s already out the door to work and we’ll be following soon to head out to the gym. Tomorrow is the Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival. Shultz gets two VIP tickets and invited me again this year. If Jag comes up, I’ll probably bag out. It’s down by Boulder and is a hike.

The house cleaners came yesterday and while we didn’t remember they were coming it was good to have them here. They’re not very good and I think we’ll stop using them.

I have a call at 9:15 this morning and then will do some stuff around the house. I’d love to take a load to the dump if I can get it together. It’s a little less smokey but there are actually more fires in the State. Our hunting trip might get postponed as there are fires down where we’re supposed to go. I’ll know more today.

Only a couple more weekends left of summer. Could get cooler up here pretty quick, but right now, it looks like the heat is still here. We need rain up here, especially west of Glenwood where the fires are. Nature is doing its thing.

Time to get moving. Have a great day, be well, stay safe and God Bless.

I picked James up at 7am and we headed out for Frederick, about 30 minutes north of Denver. On the way, we stopped at Tommy’s old house as he had one of my old Nextheater DVD/Karaoke machines from a company I had some 25 years ago. He didn’t want it so I grabbed it for posterity. We still made it up to Mile High by a little after 9am.

We were there for almost an hour as I had some new glass put on a rifle that came in a couple months ago and we had to finish our paperwork for our cans. When walking out, a police officer pulled up and walked in. We were still outside my truck smoking one of my little Cuban cigars from Duty Free in Germany, when the cop came back out to get in his car. He looked at me and then looked at James, then back at me and then back at James, and I finally said, “you all good”? He then figured out that in fact, it was James and put his hands to his head saying “oh my God”! He was beside himself and was clearly star stuck. James realized this and walked towards him and stuck out his hand and said “hey bud”. The young cop was still in shock. He said he wanted to go to the concert but had to work, and that his sister had gone, and mumbled some other stuff as he was at a loss for words. James and I kind of laughed as the kid was so worked up. I asked him where he was from, meaning what town, to try to calm him down, and he answered but was still in another World. He finally asked if he could have a picture and James said of course. James never does pictures except for First Responder and children. The poor kid (cop) couldn’t figure out how to turn the camera on, on his phone. Finally I took it out of his hand and said “here, let me do it”. I found his camera and then took their picture. He kept saying “my sister is never going to believe this, you made my day, my year, I mean my life, I can’t believe this is happening”. Now I’ve been with James tons of times when we run into a fan but have never seen someone as blown away as this guy. He thanked us endlessly, (not sure why he was thanking me, ha), shook James hand , shook my hand and kept saying, “I can’t believe this is happening”. I told him, “now don’t pull us over”, and he said, “pull you over, hell, I’ll escort you anywhere you want to go”. We laughed and said that’s ok and thanks. So, James made this guys day with a memory and picture he’ll treasure for the rest of his life. I later told James that that was really nice of him to spend so much time with the kid and apparently I should be more star struck, we just laughed.

We then headed in to Denver to the cigar shop on 6th. My guy Max, is a super cool kid that always has the good stuff hidden for me in boxes up a ladder in one of the walk in humidors. We bought some smokes and then stuck around and smoked one. A guy in there recognized James too and introduced himself but was way calmer than the cop. After our smoke we grabbed a sandwich next door where no one recognized him as they were young kids playing some god awful rap music super loud.

We made it back up the hill by a bit after 2. Today we’re all having cigars as James is headed Cabo tomorrow with Castor (his son) and Addy and her two boys before school starts again. The band plays Australia and New Zealand in November and then Bahrain and Dubai in December so he won’t be around much for the rest of the year. They have lots of practice in September and we’re in Italy the first 10 days of October. Plus he has a small gig in the Hamptons for the kickoff of the Metallica channel on Sirius Xm radio September 1st, cha ching! We’re planning a cigar weekend in Florida end of February or first of March 2026, for our group but that might change as I think they’re going to do 12 shows at the Sphere in Vegas. If so, we’ll all go there instead. Lori and a couple girls are getting together with Addy this afternoon while us guys smoke cigars.

I saw Ty at 3 as he was leaving to go to Madi’s when I was pulling in the driveway. He’s going to the farms to buy produce down in Grand Junction for the restaurant today. He’s come a long way and is essential to the place these days. He’s the bar manager, buys all the liquor and wine and the produce, plus runs the front of the house when working.

Lots of bears out. You need to be careful. Lori saw a small fawn in the backyard last night. It was so young it still had spots on its rear. Lori was going to go save it from the coyotes but I told her leave it alone as its mom is close. She didn’t believe me and went outside and then thankfully saw the mom. Whew, dodged a bullet there or we’d have a baby fawn in the house this morning.

5:30 now and we’re heading to the gym. I have a call with France at 9. Shultz is driving up from Denver around 2 and I’ll meet up with him before we head over for cigars. He wants to get out of Denver early as last time when he left at 2, traffic was horrible.

That’s about it, time to get moving. Have a great day and God Bless.

I need to leave at 6:20 to pick up James so we can run down to Denver. With luck, meaning no traffic holds, we’ll be back by noon. Ty is off today and Lori is working in Vail. It’s hot out but didn’t seem too bad up here yesterday. I was in jeans and cowboy boots most of the day. Supposedly hotter in Denver today. Like everything, this will soon change. We’ve had snow in September before! Around the first of September, we’ll be two thirds of the way through the year!

Lots of good stuff happening at work. Knock on wood that I can keep it going. I’m basically transforming the Company into an incubator where I find brands with potential, take over the majority ownership, scale them a little bit and then flip them for 10X or more than I acquired them for. Think of Richard Gere in the movie Pretty Woman. I no longer have any interest in keeping a brand for years and years. The philosophy is to find things that are undervalued, raise their value and then sell them to huge companies that have the infrastructure, money and manpower to build them nationally.

One of my Partners, who only handles financials, left for Italy last night for two weeks. The other (Josh) is part time, since he became a Pastor, so it’s just me running and making decisions on everything. I’ve always basically been running things and pretty much done whatever I thought we should do, but now, I don’t even tell anyone, I just do it.

I’d like to make a few dump runs before the end of the month. Maybe I can get Lori to go through, or give me the ok, to get rid of some of her moms stuff. You’d think we’d learn after paying for storage for Mom’s stuff for years! We’re starting to purge things around here and declutter.

That’s about it. 5:30 am now. We wake up around 5 each morning these days. When you’re up early, you get a lot done and get a head start on things. Good stuff. Have a great day, God Bless.

Check out this pic, even more impressive in person! Ignore my thumb, ha.

Man are we busy but were kind of getting in a groove. I booked our Italy tickets yesterday through my connection at Fly Business Class, which is a broker for airlines of business class seats. They somehow have connections with all the airlines to buy discounted tickets. You’re still going directly through the airline you choose, so the tickets still pop up on your account. In this case, we’re flying Lufthansa, which I prefer, as I get my United miles (it’s part of the Star Alliance program) and the best part is our flight is nonstop from Denver to Munich. Same thing coming home. I hate, and try to avoid, switching planes domestically. Anyhow, we leave September 30th and are home October 10th.

Today I have calls starting at 9am and Lori is working in Edwards. Ty works at 7. Tomorrow James and I are running down to the front range to pick up our cans. We were invited to dinner last night with Gary, Jennifer, Ben and Eleni, but passed. I ate more of Lori’s enchiladas from dinner the night before.

I have a call with France this morning at 9 and then will be working on sales plans for the rest of the day. One of my new projects, which has huge potential, is moving fast. More on this later.

Yesterday the air was a lot less smokey than the day before. Hopefully it’s the same today. I need to run to Denver for a couple other things sometime and am trying to decide whether or not to run down quickly this morning or go later in the week. It’s 5:56aam now so I need to make up my mind. Think I’ll postpone it for a few days.

That’s it for today, hope everyone is well, God Bless.

Here we go, back to work. I’m down 8 pounds so only 2 to go until I reach my pre-trip weight. 5am now so we slept in a bit longer today. It’s cooler this morning but we still have the doors and windows closed as we can’t tell how smokey it is outside.

Marty and Melanie came over for dinner. He bought a new boat while in Montana. He traded in his old one, (barely used), and stepped up to an enclosed cabin, 22-foot aluminum boat that you can even take in the ocean. We spent the evening catching up and making plans for the future.

The smoke is almost gone, thank God. We went to the gym and it’s now 7:15 so I can see outside. No rain up here. Looks like Denver had some big-time rain and flooding last night. We could use some, but not anything that would cause floods.

Ty works at 10am this morning. Lori and I are picking our Italy trip dates today and I’ll get the tickets. We’re also looking at going up to Montana and Idaho, probably in September, to check it out. We just don’t see how we can afford to stay here in Colorado. Our friend Shultz, who’s super conservative and a Republican, told me he’s voting for Bennett for Governor, who’s a Democrat, to stop Phil Weiser from winning. Weiser is a socialist along the same lines as the whack job in New York.

Marty and I are trying to figure out how to retire, keep earning income and pay as little tax as possible. We were talking with Shultz last night who rented an apartment in Orlando earlier this year and is spending at least 183 nights of this year (half the year) down there to get out of Colorado capital gain and other taxes. He’s essentially now a resident of Florida which saves far more money than an apartment costs, even at $3K per month. I’m getting James (the bands) tax advisor to help us navigate the confusing laws and regulations, which seem to change yearly. Paul, their money manager who helped Jagger out a bunch, will hook us up. Tax laws these days are super complicated and there’s things you can do to protect yourself and save a ton of money. Most people don’t realize this and end up paying the government way more than they have to. But of course, the government doesn’t make it easy for you or tell you! More on this later.

Big day today being the first day back to work. I’ve transformed the Company a ton since July 1 and will continue with my plan this morning. I’m moving fast and cutting deals left and right. No time to go slow. So far, knock on wood, things are going better than anticipated. I’m actually pretty good at what I do, ha. Never been one to lack self-confidence.

7:30am now, time to get going. Have a great Monday. By this time next week, we’ll be halfway through August with September and Fall right around the corner. Then lookout, as things will start moving fast and before you know it, it’ll be 2026!

Take care, stay safe and God Bless.

Still smokey up here, and it’s not very much fun. It’s cooler this morning and that’s supposed to help the smoke dissipate over the next couple days.

Yesterday we went to lunch with Ben and Eleni and had a nice time. Later in the day we watched some football and then the Bronco game. During the game, a bird flew into our window. Sometimes this happens as we have a lot of windows and in the afternoon the reflection from the sun looks like a mirror so they can’t tell it’s a house. I told Lori who rushed outside as she’s an animal lover and saver. Within minutes she was caring for the bird and set up a spot on the patio with water and a blanket. I wasn’t sure if the little guy was going to make it as it hit the window hard. It sat up all night long with Lori checking and caring for it. Lori just went out to check on it and put it in a box, and thankfully, it flew away. Yea! That right there makes it a good morning.

Holly made it back from her family reunion in Illinois last night a little after 7, Tom texted. He reminded me that yesterday was the anniversary of Dad’s passing. I’m good with both Mom and Dad’s anniversary, birthdays and many other memorable events, but for some reason block out the anniversaries of their passing. Maybe because it’s not a pleasant memory, not sure, as I’m really good with dates. Thanks for the reminder Tom. Dad was an example of a truly great man that the World could certainly use more of these days.

Today Marty and Melanie and Davy are coming over for dinner. Ty works at 10 as he’s getting in as many hours as possible. We’re headed to the gym as soon as I’m done with today’s post.

Hard to believe it’s August 10th if you think about it. Summer is almost over. It goes much faster than winter, ha. We’re starting a slow purge of all the crap we have in our house so that by next Spring, we’re clutter free. That way, if we still decide to sell and move, things will be much easier. As of now, it looks like we’re leaving Colorado for sure. Lots of people we know are doing the same thing. You can thank the politicians in Denver. People can only tolerate so much and blue States across the Country are hemorrhaging people.

6:38 now. We woke up around 4 something but I tried to stay in bed while Lori got up. I finally got up at 6, so hopefully my sleep clock will get back on mountain time. Have a great day, be well, stay safe and take care, God Bless.

We’re up early again as we try to get back on our mountain time zone sleep schedule. We feel good though and we’re both getting back to normal. Our ankles were still swollen yesterday but are better this morning. We’ve also both lost about half the weight we gained on our 9-day foodie tour of France. Robi was happy to hear we ate our way through the Country and didn’t adhere to our normal eating habits. Hard to do that in France. Considering all I ate, bread, pastries, ice cream, butter, wine, etc., I should have been up 20 pounds! It seemed every few feet in France there was a bakery or an ice cream shop. It was fun.

Yesterday we hit the gym hard. We’ll be back there again this morning and then have lunch with Ben and Eleni at noon. Ty works today as he’s switching up his schedule to have Sundays and Mondays off for football season. He’s a thinker!

Lots going on at work and I have a lot of balls I’m juggling right now. For instance, I’m getting back all the equity (stock) from the guy we let go at end of June and then am turning around and selling his stock for six times what I gave him to a new Partner. Then I have all the estates in Europe I’m reorganizing and making plans with for 2026 and also doing the same with all the distributors here in the U.S.

Lori and I are planning to send a film crew over to Southwest France to do a short film or documentary on our Partner who has found and resurrected dozens of long-lost grape varietals, thought to be forever gone from the World. Think something similar to Mom’s or Dixie’s short film depicting their lives at their memorial services, only more like 8 to 12 minutes. Then we’ll release it on social media as part of a campaign to tell the World about this amazing place and their discoveries. It’s a story worth telling, even if you’re not a wine drinker. It just needs to be framed and explained in the right way. Who knows, maybe we’ll win an Academy Award for Best Short Film or Documentary! Ya never know!

It’s really smokey outside right now and the moon is bright orange. You can smell it in the house as we had the windows open while sleeping until I smelled it around 2am, woke up and closed the window. We think the smoke is from the fire up by Craig in the northwest part of the State but there’s also a few in the southwest part of Colorado. It was windy yesterday which didn’t help. We’ll be keeping the windows closed all day.

Glad it’s Saturday as we have two more days to recoup. 5:05am now. Have a great Saturday, make sure to watch the Broncos tonight, and God Bless.

We took off from Paris 15 minutes late or so and then landed in Frankfurt with 45 minutes until boarding. The walk between the gates is less than 10 minutes, but you do have to go through Passport Control to get to the international gates. This is a pain as it takes at least 15 minutes as the line is always long. We then stopped at Duty Free for some chocolate and Cuban cigars and walked up to our gate right as it was getting ready to board.

Frankfurt is a busy airport where sometimes you have to take a bus to your plane out on the tarmac, especially some of the larger planes. We made the first bus (never fly economy in Europe or for that matter, anywhere, anymore!) and made it to our seats. For some reason, probably due to being on 8 planes in 9 days, I thought we were in 8D and 8G, so that’s where we went. The flight attendants were so nice, way better than the United ones we had coming out. Right before takeoff the Purser came up to us and asked our names as we were booked in 5D and 5 G. Looking at my boarding passes, they were right. They said whatever we prefer is fine and we could stay there if we liked. Coincidentally, right before takeoff, the woman next to us took off her shoes and boy did her feet stink! The Purser (head flight attendant) again said of course we could move if we wanted to. So, right after takeoff, I moved us in less than a minute!

The flight was nonstop which is a huge plus as you don’t have to change planes and lug your stuff and walk through another airport when you’re already tired. It was a 10-hour flight, but I binged Landman again to catch up before season 2. At one point, I walked into the galley and startled this young flight attendant, and we joked the rest of the flight as we seemed to keep bumping into each other often.

Upon landing in Denver we zoomed through customs as we’re Global Entry. While most people have to go through a long que and wait in line and present their passports and have their luggage screened, we simply go to another line, stand in front of kiosk with a camera that uses facial recognition, (welcome to the future) and then when a green check mark appears, an officer calls your name, hands you a placard with a letter on it, (Lori and I were both E for entry) and we proceeded to walk right out the door. We hand an officer our placards and that’s it; we’re through U.S. Customs. No bag check, no passport check, nothing. We do any and everything we can to make traveling as painless as possible these days, no matter the cost.

The drive home wasn’t too bad. We made it from landing at 4 to making it home at 7. This included customs, stopping for groceries and driving through Denver traffic at rush hour. Not bad. I started laundry right away and took a shower. Both Lori’s and my ankles were swollen from flying over the North Pole for 10 hours but we’re much better this morning at 4:15am which is when we woke up. That’s 12:15 in the afternoon in Paris!

Great trip! We had fun and really enjoyed ourselves and the break. Italy is next in October and then Portugal perhaps later in the Fall. Good to be home. We’ll head to the gym at 6:30 to start working off the extra pounds we enjoyed putting on over the past 10 days or so. Glad we came back on a Thursday as we essentially have three days to recoup before work. Have a great day, we’ll add more pictures in the coming days, God Bless.

Thursday August 7, 2025, 12:30am Colorado time, 8:30am Paris. We had an epic day yesterday. We started off with a private tour of Notre Dame. Once inside though, there were thousands of people. Still, an amazing thing to see. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped for breakfast and then texted Mousse, our driver. He met us at the hotel with our stretch BMW and we then drove around the city stopping at different landmarks and unknown places only locals know about. Of course, we hit the Eiffel Tower and did a bit of shopping. The benefit of having a driver, especially ours, who is our new best friend, is he got us into everything. One stop was Goyard, the exclusive French bag and luggage maker. There was a line an hour long waiting to get in, but with a quick conversation between Mousse and the doorman, we were waived right in pass the 40 or so people waiting in line.

We spent 3 hours touring the city and hitting all the best of the best places that mostly only locals know about. One was this cheese shop that was out of the way and nondescript, but fantastic. Mousse said it’s the best in Paris. We bought $40 euro worth of cheese that would have cost $250 in the U.S. The cheese man even vacuum packed it for us and it’s in Lori’s carry on right now.

Around 4 we made it back to our boutique hotel that treated us like royalty. We dropped off some things and headed out to shop for the boys. We found a great shirt shop, reasonably priced and bought them each a couple shirts. We found Lori a really cool scarf and spent the next few hours walking around.

You can easily spot tourists in Paris. We though looked like locals. There are lots of people in town and in places like Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, you can see it. There’s no shortage of money here as like I said, the line at Goyard was an hour long to get to see an advisor. I’ll bet the average purchase was $5000! Lori gets buyer’s remorse before she even buys anything these days. She never asks for anything, but I can tell when she likes something. Its usually a challenge though as I almost have to force her to buy things. Years ago she was a better buyer but always frugal. She found a great bag and later we joked that this will probably be the last purse she ever buys. She’s done well though as all her Louis Vuitton’s have tripled in price! If she ever has to, she can sell them easily for a nice sum.

We had dinner in the hotel and then headed upstairs to purge our bags with things we didn’t need, to be able to pack all of our purchases. We made it to the airport in record time, (about 30 minutes) and Mousse came in and showed us where to get our VAT tax refund, which was like $700 Euros, and then headed to the gate. We’re in the lounge right now waiting for our 10:30am flight to Frankfurt, where we’ll connect to a nonstop to Denver. We’ll arrive around 3:30 and should, knock on wood, sail through customs as we both have Global Entry, meaning we’ve been prescreened for entry to the Country.

It’ s been a great trip and went pretty fast. We saw and did a lot of things but it’s always great to get home. We did pretty well on spending too as I had everything lined up ahead of time. We were on 8 planes in 9 days and in four different hotels, all fantastic. Pics to come tomorrow, have a great Thursday and we’ll post tomorrow. GB