Gyroscopic Investing

There are a lot of things that you can read about, but can only really understand with some experience.

For example:
You can buy some bitcoins - watch them gyrate.  Or you can buy a GPU enabled bitcoin harvesting computer and make your own bitcoins and pay your electric bill and your expenses.  Depending on the path you take, I think you might have a different opinion of the asset.

Likewise, you can invest in real estate.  Or you can buy land, build a house and sell or rent it out.

You can buy stocks, or you can start a business and grow it to a point where you can monetize it.

You can put your cash in savingsor you can print your own.

These different paths mold your mind in different ways.

I've been wondering about gold.  I've followed both paths in the examples above, but I've never tried mining gold.  Digging in the dirt, swirling in the pan.

This seems like a fun and introspective way to spend a month.  Just for firmly establishing the mental relationship between manual labor and value.  Has anyone on the board tried this before?  I'm thinking a month in the California gold country come next spring might be worth the price of admission.

[img width=600]http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content ... 00cast.jpg[/img]

A friend and I used to talk about panning for gold when we were hanging out by the local stream as kids. But I've never done it.

Mark, if you do this, please take an honest accounting of your hours spent and any related costs (getting to CA and back, a roof over your head, food, future work on your body for the time spent hunched over, etc.).

I'd also be curious of what help the locals might be. Would they give you tips from friends of friends or maybe even intentionally send you off in the wrong direction? Southern CA is awfully dry now so you'd have to head up north unless you want to be sloshing around in The LA River. Read up on your Steinbeck to see if he drops any clues, and please keep us informed if you go through with this.

Also, who are those two fellas in the photo with you?