Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

Second moving estimate today. Third tomorrow. Sent documents to mortgage consultant via fax. Used a bar coded letter that they provided. She couldn’t find them. When I told her we’d used the bar code, she said, “Oh. That puts them directly in electronic docs. I’ll look there.” Things can go astray several different ways.

Down to Sears Outlet to buy a new stainless refrigerator to replace our faithful refrigerator which has worked without incident since we bought it 20 years ago. When considering fashion, functional takes a distant second place. Not for me, but then we won’t be here to see how this works out. A good deal though. A $2,200 refrigerator for about a third of the price.

It’s all moving, all the time. Push, push, push since we’re shooting to close this deal on October 31st. No slack in getting things done. When this is over, if we finish by that date, all this will have been worth it. Right now, in the middle of it, it feels like I’ve descended into a whirlwind of legal documents, decisions needed right now.

And insurance. There’s always insurance. Conifer is in the Colorado red zone, a high risk area for wildfire. So, niche insurance. Which =’s expensive insurance. Have to insurance to close. And so on.

Fall                                                                                              Falling Leaves Moon

It was a quick trip. Out Friday mid-morning, back early Sunday morning. But I got to spend time with a mortgage banker and time with the new house.

When there’s a lot of details to sort out in something, I focus, a form of move-stupid, and become almost affectless, plowing through things I don’t like to do, but things that stand between here and there. Getting all the particulars of a mortgage application sorted out is a steady drip of correct dates, dollar amounts, the right forms not the wrong ones, doing things on a timely basis. That’s an example.

Going through the house and the matters necessary to make it our home. Better, but still preliminary to the desired end result of a living there. In both of these cases it becomes difficult for me to remember, journey before destination.

Been contacting fencing contractors. A top priority for us is dog containment. That’s a sine qua non before we can take our furry friends to the mountains. Boy, are they gonna be surprised.

Checking out the mountain trails, the waterfalls nearby (Maxwell, upper and lower), the Arapaho national forest that starts within two miles of our new house. Driving through the funky mountain town of Evergreen, realizing that we will be living where many people come to relax. Better yet.

More details and faxing and promising and committing tomorrow. There will be a time, perhaps sooner than we imagined, when the move will drop off as a posting category and Colorado will replace it. May it come soon, but not too soon.

Fall                                                                                      Falling Leaves Moon

Back in the  business center, still unrecognizable by my own computer. I’m saving fixing it until I return to Minnesota.

Forgot to mention yesterday the no-fingerprints woman. When my laptop wouldn’t recognize me and I needed to do some work on the mortgage, I called Valerie, our mortgage banker and asked her if I could come to her office. And I did, driving through southern Denver to her office in Greenwood, an Edina close suburb. Gotta love that Garmin.

When I got there, I had two surprises. First, she was a pleasure to work with, the first time I’ve encountered such a person in the Wells Fargo system. Second, when I explained to her that my own computer wouldn’t recognize my face, she said something surprising, “I don’t have any fingerprints.”

? as the spanish say. Her family is “one of 50 in the world” according to her that are born without fingerprints. She showed me her fingertips and sure enough they continue the smoother skin of the more proximal joints.

She has to have a security clearance by the FBI (money-laundering) every six months. They come in and she says, when about to be fingerprinted, “This is not gonna work.” The reply, she says, is always, “Oh. It’ll work.” Then they have to an old fashion manual clearance.

How about that?

Today it’s off to Black Mountain Drive for the inspection. Jon, who recently completed an extensive addition to his own home, will be along to advise me.

Fall                                                                                          Falling Leaves Moon

Writing this in the hotel “business center” because my relatively new Lenovo laptop has a biometric passcode which uses facial recognition. It refuses to recognize me. Frustrating since when I try to enter the password it times out before I can finish. The perfect circle.

Anyhowl.

So I arrived in Denver and ended up spending all afternoon with a mortgage broker. So, I arrived back at the hotel, checked in, took a nap, got up and had some sushi, then decided on a whim to drive out to 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Night had fallen, but I had wanted to drive there straight from the airport but got caught up in the wonders of mortgage  banking software instead.

When I left Denver metro at a mile high the temperature was 57. By the time I reached Black Mountain Drive it was 38. It took 45 minutes to get there, winding up some chicanes, past signs for falling rocks, wildlife and national forests. When I pulled into the driveway, I could only see the house in the headlights, so I got out.

The quiet, even more profound than Andover hit me. I remembered then I’d wanted to to up there at night, for precisely this reason. But I hadn’t counted on the sky, clear and high, no light pollution, just stars. I knew I’d come home.

There are still a few things. Like the mortgage, for one. Getting it approved, though we’re far down that track. Fire insurance. Kate found some. The costs, which seem to metastasize. But even on the drive up I had a sense that this was a moment not for reason alone, but for adventure. We’ll absorb the costs somehow and have a third phase home for both of us.

Great job, Kate.

Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

Counter-offer. This is the negotiating side of the transaction. It feels a little like punching with pillows strapped to the hands because the offer goes through intermediaries. The feedback is dulled by the process and flattened. It becomes coarse, too, without as much information as, say, haggling in the market in Marakech.

But, it is a counter and the terms will probably get decided in the next few hours. Then, I’ll go out, see the inspection report, the property, Kate will get all of our financial info to the mortgage banker and soon we’ll have a closing date. In the dollars and cents of it all we’re going to have to spend a good bit more than we figured, not for the house, but for the whole move. That, however, says more about our experience (virtually zero) of interstate moves than it does about the service providers. Moving our life to a new location is expensive.

Then, probably in January, we’ll move.

Oh, my.

Fall                                                                                       Falling Leaves Moon

A guy is here disconnecting our generator. They moved it into the garage for packing.

Ron from Metcalfe moving (Mayflower) came to do an estimate. It was about twice what I had guessed. Sigh. We’ll get three quotes but I imagine it’s going to be in his range.

We await news on our offer. The owners of 9358 Black Mountain Drive have until noon Mountain Time to respond.

And, of course, Gertie, our hypervigilant German shorthair barks the whole time though crated. This, with a little sleep deprivation, makes the whole experience lively.

Too, Jon and Jen are not happy with the location of our new home. We’ll discuss the process of our decision more when I see them on Saturday.   Ah, the joys of a major life change. All this will recede into the past in a few months, but right now, I feel a bit frazzled.

Some more sleep will help.

Fall                                                                                      Falling Leaves Moon

Oh, boy. The scout has found a house. And we’re going to put in an offer tomorrow. Proposed closing Nov. 1. Wow. Don’t know yet when we’d move, too new and we’ve got the  current owners feedback on our offer to get yet. Here’s the address: 9358 Black Mountain Dr, Conifer, CO 80433. This is well south of the Idaho Springs area where we had focused our search, but it’s still at 8,800 feet which was a key feature we wanted.

There are, of course, issues. The primary one for me is finding an insurer who will rebuild our house if it burns down. I’ll fly out tentatively on Friday, see the property on Saturday with Jon and return on Sunday.

Kate’s very excited and I think she’s right. This house has no yard to maintain, existing beds for a small garden and good sized work spaces for both of us.

Conifer is west and south of Denver, instead of straight west, so it will not serve as a way station for the skiing. It’s about an hour from this place to Jon and Jen’s. Jen’s worried that we’re going to be too far away since we’re moving out there to see them. She doesn’t understand extended family. I grew up in one and know that having the in-laws around all the time isn’t something either the in-laws or she would really want. We’ll see them all on holidays, birthdays, school events. The kids will come out and stay with us. We’ll go over and stay with the kids from time-to-time just as we’ve done from here. (that’s the house)

The important piece for us that this is our new life and we need to be able to make it independent of them, even though having their help as we age remains something we hope will be possible, yet still a good ways off.

It’s exciting to see Kate’s trip prove fruitful. We’ll see how the dance goes on from here.

Fall                                                                                 Falling Leaves Moon

Another house, another surge of energy and questions. Like:

1. Does household use only for a well mean no watering of a garden?

2. How do they anchor fences in rock? Does that make building a fence much more expensive in the mountains?

3. What does 6.5 gallons per minute recovery on the well mean?

1. how do we get info about the septic system?

2. how do we get more info about the well: depth, water quality, water quantity?

Has the cedar siding on black mtn been treated with fire retardant chemicals?

Easy to sit back home and let the questions come, then 1 e-mail, then a second, then a third. I don’t want to be too cautious, but I also don’t want to buy something with flaws obvious to someone who knows the local scene. Water quality, availability and flow rate are all important in water poor Colorado. Fire is a big issue with mountain homes in Colorado’s fire red zone, a zone which happens to include all the areas we’ve investigated so far.

These questions are in addition to square footage, usability of the space, attractiveness of the house and lot, privacy, kitchen, all the ordinary factors. We can assess those using our own subjective yard sticks and make firm, confident decisions, but in matters we know less well, like water and fire, hesitancy seems prudent.

All of these questions swirl around because we have the means to make this move and the will. So they’re happy problems, or questions, but they are questions.