Origins

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?- Albert Einstein

While still killing time here in Beaufort before we leave next week, I thought I'd share some of our recent history and our life before Felix. Because we must be rich, living on a sailboat and not working and all, this is a good chance to show future dreamers our fool proof path to wealth and happiness. ;-)

It was 2003 and everybody it seemed was making money on the housing bubble that was blowing up around us. We were living in West Palm Beach, FL spending a ridiculous amount of money on rent while saving nothing, and thought it might be a good idea to buy a place to live that might make us some money in the future. We knew that with $15,000 of life savings we weren't going to be able to buy anything in South Florida, so we started looking north in the state. Looking at the map we saw a town in north-central FL named 'Chiefland', and if you've read much of this blog you'll notice that we have a fondness for the Chief, and we thought it fitting that he move somewhere named after him. So that's where we went looking for property.

It turned out that we couldn't even afford much up there with the money we had, so instead of borrowing money to buy a rundown old single-wide on 5 acres, we decided to borrow money and buy a piece of raw land. It was near Bell, FL that we found the piece that we just loved. Rural, unimproved, unspoiled, full of game, and at the end of a county dirt road. The picture above shows the only entrance onto the property when we bought it. While doing this, we still had our minds set on buying a boat, this was going to be our short term break from the water while working and saving money.

For 6k we bought a used 30 foot travel trailer and a Coleman gas generator, which was going to be our short term home while we improved the property. We cleared land, ran underground electric onto the site, put in a well and septic, and then ended up living in that camper for over 2 years until the roof just rotted out on the thing. The funny part was, that travel trailer was a lot like our previous boat, only bigger and more comfortable! During the early months when our only electricity was from the generator, it really did feel like we were living on the hook off of some remote island. The only traffic in the area was deer and turkey, and we found out that yes, cows really do make good neighbors.

When the roof started to crumble on the camper and the mold in it had gotten so bad that we could hardly breathe inside, we knew we had to upgrade our digs. I was working the night shift at the time and Star was commuting into Gainesville during the day, so big construction projects were going to be tough and we opted for a repossessed mobile home that we found a fair deal on. A lot of people look down their noses at mobile homes, which is a shame, because after 3 years living in ours I don't regret a thing about it and I'd have no problem living in another.

All this time we had been thinking we wanted to get another boat, but the housing prices were still going up and we didn't want to sell too early. I think what really made up our minds was the day the black widow bit Star. We had been working out at the gate by the driveway entrance putting up a few new posts when Star said she didn't feel right. She started to walk back to the house and only made it about 5 steps before collapsing into the dirt, vomiting, and then losing consciousness. She recovered in the ambulance on the way to hospital, and we figured out later that it was probably a bad reaction to a black widow bite on her finger. But I think that was the turning point when we finally decided that we couldn't sit out here in the woods anymore dreaming about doing what we really want. Sometimes you've just got to go do it, even if you don't think you're ready, because we never know how much time we have left. We put the home on the market a few weeks later.

You've got to love a place where you can take pictures like this from your front window.