BOTEC Analysis was hired by the State of Washington in 2013 as a consulting firm to develop the rules and regulations for legalized marijuana. Mark Kleiman, the owner of BOTEC died yesterday. BOTEC stands for "back of the envelope calculation", which describes well the method required for defining Washington's marijuana rules then. The state had no experience with the legal market, there were no models in other states to draw from, and there...
After three weeks, the Race to Alaska is done. The way this thing works around here, you are either a "junkie" or completely oblivious about this Super Event that no one has ever heard of. I fall into the junkie category. This year's race was just as spectacular as prior years, especially in terms of creating stories (the whole purpose for sailing a boat). What was remarkable this year was how the Organizers gathered up a passel of social media...
I have to figure out how to live here. Yesterday my family stopped by for a visit, and Matt heard someone congratulate the sail boat making it's way into the marina. That boat was the winner (first to reach Ketchikan) of R2AK. So I got a chance to check out their bikes driving propellers. This morning I'm drinking coffee and reading the news and a sail boat came in that I recognized. I was crew on my best friend's sail boat in the 1980's and...
I'm here for my annual visit to the Pt Hudson Marina and RV Park, something I always enjoy. The RV park offers spaces at quite premium prices, which folk gladly pay. I choose one of the two dry camp spaces to save money, but also because it's the closest to the marina proper. Very coveted spaces as I discovered the first year of the Race to Alaska. Excellent weather is in the forecast for the next week.
Another Race to Alaska commences Monday (see R2AK.com) and I'll be hanging out tomorrow at the pre-race festivities. But in the meantime, the organizers of that race put another event together called the Seventy48. The idea is strictly human-powered watercraft, no motors or sails, going from Tacoma to Port Townsend in less than 48 hours. It's 70 miles. The race started last evening at 7pm, and the first boat across the line was 10 hours later...
We're coming up on the fifth anniversary of legal cannabis sales in Washington state. I recall when the rules were being written, completely out of whole cloth given there was no experience, how many times the regulators and lawmakers wished they had some data, some numbers, anything concrete to help with setting the rules. How many customers? How many stores? How much to grow? What's the right tax? If only we had five years of data back then....
Seven or eight years ago I added an ad blocker to Firefox, my web browser. Now, some sites, mainly newspapers, detected my blocker and stopped me from reading their product. But they obviously felt their ads were more important than their content. Last week Mozilla.org changed their code which destroyed optional add-ons, including my ad blocker. So I've had to endure ads for a week now. Wow, I didn't know how pervasive those things were on the...
Oregon grows too much pot, and that means low prices. How low? You regularly see $3 grams advertised, and $50 ounces, sometimes less. A joint can be had for $2.50. But that's for folk on a budget. To get a better quality, $6 grams and $25 eighths are more like it. Contrast to CA with around $14 grams and $40 eighths (don't be surprised to see $60 eighths). Washington is in the middle somewhere, Nevada is more like CA. Oregon chose a free market...
I've been here a few days waiting for the next break in the rain, and tomorrow looks like I can move up to Seaside. And, there might be some dry days on the way. It's been six weeks since I hit the Pacific coast, and I saw about 5 dry days total. That means a lot of hours stuck indoors reading books and playing video games. Yesterday, I hit the end of Zelda:Breath of the Wild. I started it around October first, and now am looking at the grand...
There was a weather break today, so up the road I went to Newport, one of my favorite Oregon Coast places. I stay at the Marina and RV park which is super nice, with a view of the bridge, and when the weather cooperates, some great beaches within a short distance.
That's a relatively new term to describe the weather I've been living with for weeks now. It means a lot of rain, and high winds on the NW coast. Today it rained over 2 inches. Yesterday winds were around 55 mph. That's what I've seen almost every day lately. In Bandon for a bit until a break occurs.