Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

I’m here at the Cape with two of my favorite guys, including Charles, the young man who turned twelve last Saturday.

Part of his birthday celebration was out first parasailing outing – and his dad made the plans for this great adventure without a whole lot of input from the kid! 

Now, when I was his age and, for that matter, throughout my life, I have not been exactly adventurous.  As a kid, I balked at jumping off the dock into the waters of Lake Shawnee and the arms of my father waiting in the water.  When I was doing a program that included a ropes course, it was all I could do to rappel down a cliff, in spite of the totally redundant safety equipment.  And last Saturday, when I agreed to the parasailing thing I was asking myself, “Pat, what are you thinking?”

As things turned out, I had to double up with Charles for this little birthday adventure.  As we were strapped in waiting for the crew to let out the rope for our take off, he decided he did not want to do this.  The captain was great with all of the kids and teens on the trip, and he got Charles to agree to go out for the first twenty feet.  If he didn’t want to continue, they’d pull us back in.

Fair enough.

We got out the twenty or so feet, and I thought he was fine with it, so I gave the captain the thumbs up and, whoosh!  It was up, up and away! 

And Charles was pissed!  He was not really OK with this at all!   But as we floated several hundred feet above the water, there wasn’t much to do except try to get him to understand he was not in any danger.  And wow!  Look at the view! 

As the boat got smaller and smaller, he wasn’t having any part of my attempts to reassure him.  Even after we landed safely and later that evening when we eating birthday cake, he wasn’t really over it.

“But, Charles,” I asked, “Aren’t you glad now that you actually did the sail?  You can show your friends the pictures when you get home!”

No.

The good part of this whole thing was that, while I was at least as reluctant as Charles to go up, his fear made me forget my own.  Trying to convince him that it was really fun convinced me! 

Then, the next day, he told his father and I that he wanted to go parasailing again.  And on our second outing, he went up twice – once with his dad and once with me.  And this time, he loved every minute of the ride!

And I started to think about all of the things in life I was afraid to do and just did – leaving home to move to New York, taking a job in Washington that was way over my head, getting my real estate license, and looking for a book publisher. 

Oh!  And did I include buying my first place?  So what did I learn about this experience that I could apply to my real estate practice?

• If you push people into doing something they are not ready to do, they will get pissed off at you.
• If, later, they agree that it was a good idea, they’ll love you for it.
• Lots of things are scary the first time you do them, including buying a first place and taking your first parasail ride.

Ah!  The beach!  For a couple of weeks each year, I find sun and sand and ocean somewhere.  For a while, it was Barbados over Christmas.  For the past couple of years, I’ve been joining friends on Cape Cod during part of July and August.

It’s great to be able to get up early, walk onto the beach and let the breaking waves lap at my ankles.    Then there’s the smell of salt water and the noisy birds looking for their breakfast.

It’s interesting that I should be here in Chatham during a time when there is a lot of discussion about off-shore drilling.   And when I listen to the arguments for and against it, I understand only that there are no simple answers. 

And I think that I should be more like my sister, Joan, and use my bicycle more and my car less.  It would be good for my health and good for this beautiful beach.

As a little kid growing up in a devout Catholic household, we ate fish on Friday. 

Now, I grew up in Kansas, so our choices were pretty limited and a challenge to my mother's considerable culinary skills.  She worked wonders with tun noodle casserole.   Then there were the new innovations in frozen food - fish sticks and cod cakes.  Ah!  Cod cakes!  I really hated them - broke off little pieces and mashed them uo the undersurface of the dining room table.

As an adult, I never tried cod.  Then, last night at The Chatham Squire in downtown Chatham, I was coaxed into trying real, fresh, slept in the Atlantic last night cod fish.  And

Oh!

My!

God!

It was fresh and baked with a light lemony winey sauce.  It was so good!

Now I'm thinking of all the other foods that I didn't favor as a child and don't eat now - lima beans, brussels sprouts - and maybe it wasn't the veggies but the companies that put them into little frozen boxes.   

Maybe a trip to the farmers market is in order!  And cod, at least fresh cod, is being elevated from avoid to eat whenever you get the chance!  Especially at The Chatham Squire.  I gotta buy a t-shirt!

There are a lot of things that make Chatham, Massachusetts an utterly charming little town.  There are the old houses in all sorts of interesting architectural styles.  There are lovely little gardens.  Then there are all of the shops along Main Street, with hand-painted signs, unique wares and, yes, window boxes.  Not just window boxes, but window boxes of note.

Some have a sort of red white and blue patriotic theme.

Some of them are pretty simple, with a single type of flower - these look easy enough for even purple thumbed me to grow!

And some are impressively elaborate.

This is a town of many charms, and the flower boxes are certainly making their contribution.

Every summer Friday night in Chathan, is band night.  The whole town shows up in Kate Gould Park to hear the Chatham Band, dressed in smart uniforms that looked really hot - and I mean sweat pouring down your face hot.  I mean picollo sliding all over a sweat covered chin hot. 

It didn't matter what they sounded like.  It was about watching hundreds of familes from this New England town gather at the band shell, kids, dogs and folding chairs in tow. 

They played some medlies - from The Wizard of Oz, Mama Mia and Hootnanny.  Then they did a floot stomping Sousa march, inviting all of the children in the audience to march in step around the band shell.

It's the kind of thing that I imagine happening on summer nights in Lake Woebegone!

This morning, we went out in pouring rain to look for fish with our caption, Russ Peterson of Liveliner Sportfish here in Chatham.  Normally you find lots  of bluefish (sort of the zucchini of fish - people always catch more than they can eat and try to give them away), and if you get lucky, maybe you'll pull in a striped bass that's big enough to not have to throw back!

We started off by checking Captain Russ's lobster traps.  We found some small fish and lots of little crabs that are supposed to be inedible.  There were also two little lobsters that we wound up having to throw back - one was small and the other was practically newborn.

We got soaking wet, even with hooded rain jackets on!  And that was OK, because the fish were jumping.

We caught enough blues to feed a bunch of people and have some left over to give the neighbors.  I pulled in a big one myself, and that's when my camera battery died!    Now bluefish are not among my favorite fish when I get them from my local DC fish market.  But we're planning to eat these guys a couple of hours out of the water, and when they are totally fresh, they're a whole different fish.

Recently there have been a lot of posts on Active Rain about how real estate professionals can establish a relationship that involves becoming the "trusted adviser", and as soon as this concept worked its way into my little brain, trusted advisers have been showing up all around me.  Captain Russ was our trusted adviser on this fishing expedition.  He knew the weather would be OK, if inconvenient.  He knew where the fish were and taught us how to reel them in.  He knew when it was time to turn the boat around and come back to port.  And it was a fun expedition, rain and all.

So it's about seven in the evening and the storm clouds are gone.  They're predicting more than decent weather for at least the next few days, so I can go work on my freckles.  I use SPF 350, so I'm not likely to get a tan unless I spray one on.

It's time to cook bluefish!

Today, I flew from Washington to Providence for Day 1 of my well-deserved vacation.

Flying is clearly not what it was in the days before airline deregulation.  I can remember most people getting pretty dressed up for a trip, complete with eye makeup and curls in the hair.  Now it’s pretty casual.  The guys on each side of me are wearing shorts. 

And when I worked for the old Eastern Airlines, we wore designer uniforms (the largest size was a 10) and stewardesses were forced to quit at age 32 or before that if they got too fat for the tiny uniform.  Today’s “flight attendant” was pushing Medicare with a pot-belly, and he, too, was wearing shorts.

And planes back then were half full – or half empty, depending on how you looked at it.  Today, my filight was  totally full – and I was stuck in the middle seat – although it was the bulkhead, so my teeth were not digging into my kneecaps.

And like real estate, computers and the Internet have revolutionized air travel.  Like many people looking for homes, I began my search for a ticket on-line, finding non-stop flights on Southwest Airlines out of Thurgood Marshall Airport in Baltimore.

Also, like real estate, various airlines charge a wide range of fares, and there is often little to distinguish my cheap seat on Southwest from the high priced carriers that charge double or triple what I paid.  I like to think that with discount real estate brokers, there is a lower level of service than the top-of-the-line quality that my firm offers.

None of the airlines serve real food – at least not anything I would consider eating.  They all take the same care (or lack thereof) of your luggage.  There are options with respect to cost but not really related to service quality.

There is another similarity between airlines and real estate. 

We had a little turbulance – a storm – and we had to circle Providence for over an hour before we could land.  And there was nothing I could do about it except to get white knuckles and pray to St. Christopher ( the patron saint of travelers).  The pilot was my “trusted advisor” in this situation, and luckily, he knew what he was doing.

It reminded me of those times when my clients and I face a little turbulence in a transaction.  It can get pretty white knuckle for them.  They usually have no control.  And it helps if they think of me as their trusted advisor!  I get paid the big bucks because I do the worrying – so they don’t  have to.

So now I'm at the cottage with it's pretty little side garden (I think it's actually the neighbor's garden, but it sure is pretty). 

And we're a quick walk along this path

to the beach, which is deserted today (it's still drizzling) except for the sea gulls! 

And it's a beautiful day - clouds and all!  Wow!