This weekend we had a windy Saturday blow in a gorgeous Sunday. We rode our bikes again for the first time this year and we spent some time in the yard. While we were out there we noticed a few things are coming back to life. This always makes me happy. There is green poking through the brown. The winter months are hard to get through but when spring comes around, I am thrilled!
Garlic bunch
Strawberry plants
Kitty and Schnoodle near the crocuses
We have a lot of options and decisions right now. That is both good and bad. The good is that it is usually better to have many options than few, the bad is that we kind of have a deadline to make some decisions on them. The funding for 3/4 of my job at the county will end on July 30, 2010. We had hoped that during this last trip to Puerto Rico we would have found something that “spoke” to us.
Another house we saw
We saw some properties that we liked but were either too expensive, weren’t situated on the lot very well, were too far from the west coast, were just land with no house, or had virtually no land (the Goldilocks story without the “just right”). We also didn’t see as many properties as I would have liked to. You would think a week is enough, but it really wasn’t. So now we are back and we are trying to figure out our best course of action given some assumptions:
A) Britton hasn’t been cleared to work remote yet, so we would have to plan on moving with very little income
B) I won’t have a full-time job come August 1. I need to either start looking for another job now, or plan for our move, or ??
With these basic assumptions, we have a variety of options:
1) Buy one of the larger places in PR and create a guesthouse. With this option, Britton would probably have to stay in Colorado while I got the place up and going, but if it works, we would have income. But because of Britton not being able to be there with me, it is not ideal. We are kind of a package deal. It would be hard to be apart for very long.
2) Buy a smaller property, but low-ball it so that we would be able to move there more quickly without much income. None of the smaller properties were exactly our “dream house” so this is not ideal either.
3) Buy another rental here in Colorado to provide more income potential for when we are in PR. We are comfortable with this as we have done it before, but it will take a chunk of our savings that we were hoping to use in PR to do it.
4) Buy a house here in Colorado that has a little bit of land (around an acre or so) and rent out our house. Then we could have a hobby farm here in the spring/summer/fall without much grief from the city and we could spend our winters in PR renting a house and looking for our ideal. I could do some part-time work as an instructor or possibly work on starting up an Internet or consulting business that could be done in PR as well. So, far, this sounds the most promising, but it puts our PR plans on hold which sucks.
So this is where we are at: a crossroads. I feel like I am in limbo and it is driving me nuts. I am a planner and right now I don’t feel like we have a solid one. And I hate pushing our dreams back farther. These life decisions are tough! But I am thankful for the options!
During this trip to Puerto Rico in addition to looking at some properties, we had the great opportunity to meet up with some people we had been chatting with online but hadn’t yet the chance to meet in person. On our last trip to PR, we had met Nick and Miri and so it was wonderful seeing them again this trip. We also met the Kruses at their finca, and Jim and Cynthia of PCH to 413 at Rosa’s (one of our favorite blog commenters 🙂 ) great party. We were also planning on meeting up with Summer and Stefan of CA2PR, but our schedules conflicted a little.
At Rosa’s House in Rincon
Some people wonder why we would blog and put our lives out there for so many people to read. Well, I have to tell you after meeting all of these great people, it has been more than worth it. Sometimes you put yourself out there and see what will come of it. In this case, so far, the benefits have greatly outnumbered any problems. We have also had the opportunity here in Colorado to meet Claire and her family at her wonderful farm.
Blogging takes a lot of effort and sheer tenacity to stick to doing it, but the rewards are worth more than gold. Of course, the Internet should never be used as a replacement for your other relationships, but is a great way to expand your friendship circles especially in finding others with your similar interests and outlooks.
For all of you with blogs of your own, all of our commenters and even you lurkers (you know who you are 😉 ), out there reading this, this one’s for you!
Where to start? Well, I guess I will start at the end of the Puerto Rico trip and work my way back to the few days that we missed in between. The reason for the lack of posts was that the internet was out at the house we were staying and that was about the only time we would have been able to update because we were so busy those last few days (but at least our server and router were working!).
View from the last house we saw on the trip -near another property we saw
Anyway, back to today and yesterday. We saw one final house in the Rincon area (up the hills) in the morning, but we were really pushing it for time, so we left directly from that showing to San Juan at about 10:30am. I was really not looking forward to coming back. It seemed too short of a trip and we really didn’t make any major decisions like we had hoped (more on that later).
On our way back from Puerto Rico to Colorado, we needed to be in San Juan by around 1pm, so you can see that we were pretty tight on time. The traffic was horrendous in Aguada and Aguadilla but once we got on the 22 (the main toll road/freeway) we went a lot faster.
Somehow once we got to San Juan we got turned around and ended up crossing a big bridge with a lot of US and Puerto Rican flags all over it. We needed to get to the car rental return place and knew we must be in the wrong area. We got to the cashier lady that changes money for the toll road and asked her if we were going the right way. She said, no we had to just turn around and go right back across the bridge to the first exit -oh and pay the toll of $3.00 each way!! So we paid the toll, turned around and paid the toll again.
We finally got to the car rental place and then to the airport, got our boarding passes, through screening and on to our flight. The flight to Chicago was uneventful but long. We had about a 45 minute layover and then our plane was supposed to leave. Well, they loaded us up a little late (about 8:15 instead of 7:50pm CST) and then over the intercom, the pilot says there may be a delay, and then that they were deciding whether or not to cancel the flight all together. They would tell us by 10pm.
Well, I was hungry, so Britton and I left the plane for some grub, and thank goodness we did! They canceled the flight at about 9:45pm because of the snow storm in Colorado. They were too backed up with de-icing so they stopped all incoming planes. Too bad we weren’t stranded in Puerto Rico!! 🙂
Why couldn’t we be stranded here!? This is my favorite picture I took at the beach in Anasco.
They issued partial discounts (about 25%) to area hotels and they rebooked us for a 6am flight back to Denver. That meant that if we went to a hotel, by the time we got there, spent the money (which would have been more than we paid for a whole week of sleeping in PR BTW), got settled, took a shower and so on, that we would only get about 3-4 hours sleep before we would have to come back and go through security all over again in the morning, so we decided to stake out a space at the airport…Ugh!
Let me tell you. I have never had to sleep in an airport, but it is not the most comfortable place to be. The fluorescent lights buzz, the intercom keeps reminding you not to leave your bag unattended or take rides from unauthorized vehicles and it is kind of cold! Luckily we were able to snag a few blankets and pillows from United.
We dozed in and out of “sleep” with a few other of our stranded castaways at Chicago O’Hare airport when suddenly we heard the cleaning lady vrrooom her vacuum between our legs, through the poles of the chairs, clink our seats and weave in between us. The babies started crying and it was altogether a hysterical situation. I just had to laugh and thought this should be on a Saturday Night Live skit.
One cowboy bullrider named Sean who had absolutely no optimism whatsoever kept yelling at her which only made it worse because she spoke no English. When she wouldn’t stop, he went over and unplugged her cord.
A Cool Walkway through Chicago O’Hare -we were like Tom Hanks in The Terminal!
Then some plane cleaners came at about 1:30am and each and every one had to swipe their ID card, beeeep in, then exit out the door toward the plane, slamming it and letting in freezing air as they went. It was a comedy scene. I seriously should write this skit, I just laugh at how ridiculous it was.
In a way it was kind of cool meeting our castaway friends while we were stuck there. It was kind of like a lock-in and we all were commiserating together. Besides, this is where good material comes from, right?
So finally we arrived back in Colorado (thanks Dad for waking up so early and picking us up in the crazy weather) and I immediately called into work to tell them I wasn’t going to be coming in after all and Britton was able to work from home. I took a shower and a little nap, and am feeling much more revived.
More about some Puerto Rico options/decisions and a few more pics and adventures in a post to come. Stay tuned…