Smoke gets in your eyes. Especially now with fires burning in six different areas of California. The largest is up in the foothills and is over 100,000 acres. This one affects us locally not only with air quality, but many of our friends and acquaintances have been evacuated. My underwriter, Gail, has 18 family members that have been evacuated and, as of Friday, were all staying together in a 2 bedroom home. Gail and her husband live in a 3000 square foot home up outside of Placerville and she was going to reach out to them and offer her home for some of them to stay. Many of their homes have not yet been burned, but they are in the path of the fire and may be allowed to reenter their home if the fire turns to another direction. We had fairly calm conditions yesterday, but the winds were up today. The odd thing about a fire of this size and intensity is that it creates its own winds. With the sever drought in California there are so many areas that are bone dry and these fires are popping up all over. We are supposed to enjoy the effects of a Super El Nino Winter this year and it is supposed to be WET. We had flooding in 1986, 1996, 2006 and are poised for more here in 2016. We all hope to see the El Nino effect to be in snow rather than rain, but at this point we will take what we can get.
I was up in Lake Tahoe this week for the Annual Meeting of the Western Independent Agents Association and was installed to the board. We played golf on Wednesday afternoon up at the Championship course at Incline Village. The course is in amazing shape and they get a fair amount of Summer thunderstorms up in the area and the conditions are fantastic. I had a tough time getting used to the altitude, in fact I was over the green on three of the four par threes. The only one I wasn't, I hit a tree and the ball landed in the front bunker. I struggled and shot 48+43=91. I definitely played better on the back side as I started to figure out the change n distance on my clubs, but had several long drives that actually flew too far as there was a creek that meandered throughout the property and my drives would find their way into the water. Frustrating.
The dinner we had Wednesday night was simply amazing. We stayed at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe resort and had dinner on the water at the Eagle's Nest. We had drinks before hand overlooking the water and then a sumptuous meal. I had an 18 ounce bone in rib eye, macaroni and cheese, a Caesar salad and some nice wine. After dinner our table decided to share a $190 glass of Louie XIII Cognac. I was the new guy and thought, "Wow, what about fiscal responsibility"? They ended up pouring us six shots of the Cognac and we likely ended up with at least two servings of the $190 drink and only got charged for one. Additionally, the restaurant comped our desserts and one of the bottles of wine.
The meeting on Thursday was really impressive to me. I've sat on these boards many times and this is one of the most information packed meetings I've ever sat in on. They have quarterly phone meetings and much of the meat of the job is disseminated during the annual meeting. We worked on plans to have my company set up several educational seminars for their agents. The association is comprised of 7 western states and they have 442 agencies as members. It is a great partnership for me as we are the sole E&S carrier for them. Funny, as one of the board members is the founding owner of one of my competitors. She was understandably upset when it was announced that Burns would be the sole wholesaler that the retail arm would work with. Alan, the CEO of WIAA, told me that her firm is now run by her children and they only work in California. We represent all of the states. Anyhow, I'm thrilled to be associated with this group and look forward to Jeff taking over as Chairman next year.
Friday Darla and I drove up to Yuba City and met her parents for dinner at Cool Hand Luke's. They had prime rib and Darla had shrimp. I settled for a chicken sandwich as I had steak on Wednesday and have to keep a close eye on my cholesterol. It is her Dad's birthday on the 16th and we wanted to visit with them. We will be gone next weekend on our San Francisco trip so couldn't see them next week so decided to head up on Friday.
Saturday, Darla had a jewelry event at the house. Her event was 1 to 3 and she hadn't coordinated ahead of time with me. I had a 7 AM tee time and would be home by 11:30. Darla had a Women's event at church in the morning and I decided to come home and work on the yard while she was having her party. She wasn't thrilled with that idea. I played with John, Neil and Paul and shot 44+40=84. We were sitting around having an early lunch afterward and Paul asked if I wanted to do a "replay"? I called Darla and she didn't answer and I left a message that I was playing another 18 and would see her after three. John decided to join us. John had given me a free round that day and we were able to get a replay for $10, so I played 36 holes and only paid $10, plus Paul owed me $5 in skins after the round. I shot 41+44=85 on the second 18 and ran out of gas late in the round. Paul and I did take a cart the second 18. It wasn't something that I'd want to do every weekend, but the sun was hidden behind the smoke and it was relatively comfortable and I did enjoy myself.
As mentioned, we are off to San Francisco on Friday. I have a tee time at the Napa golf course on Friday at 10:30. We usually play the Presidio course in the city, but they have a tournament on Friday. Steve wanted to play a course in Burlingame, but the ladies pooh poohed that idea. They were all on board with hitting up the town of Napa while the boys play golf. I got us a $99 foursome through Groupon.
We will stay at the Harbor Court hotel in the Embarcadero in SF across from the Ferry Building where we usually stay. Parking is another $50 a night, but Camille (John's wife) can get us parking at the PG&E building in SF, which is two blocks from the hotel for free. I told her if she got us free parking, we would pick them up and drive them. We pick them up Friday morning. We will see the Giants play Saturday afternoon against the Diamondbacks and then do a city bus tour on Sunday before heading home. It should be a fun weekend.
Well, the Dallas Sunday night football game is about to start. Darla has chicken and rice cooking in the oven and life is good. I hope you are all well and I'll bring stories and pictures from our weekend to the blog next Sunday night. Ciao.
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