A sixteen-day escrow. Might be some kind of record. Anyway, we are now the proud owners of a beautiful home in Old Town Fort Collins, CO.

Here’s Jeanie, getting the key from our outstanding real estate agent, Rick Hausman. Great name for a real estate agent, eh? We had some wonderful agents when we were selling our house on Bainbridge Island, too, but we both think Rick is the new Gold Standard. He’s very low key, doesn’t really try to sell you anything. He simply, absolutely, loves Fort Collins. And when you ask him why he loves Fort Collins, he has plenty of concrete reasons: miles upon miles of world-class bicycling trails; not just one, but three nationally-ranked breweries; a lively, vital, growing economy centered largely around a highly respected state university; thousands of old-growth trees; more sunshine than just about anywhere else in the US…and the list goes on. And on. And ends with perhaps the best feature of all about Fort Collins: its citizens. Jeanie and I have often wondered where the polite, civilized, normal people of America had gone. Now we know: they’ve moved to Fort Collins to be with their own kind. The people of Fort Collins are so polite, it’s almost scary. They sit on their porches on warm evenings, sipping wine, and wave at you when you walk past. The checkers at the various stores smile and ask you how your day is going–and actually look at you. They beg your pardon if they’ve somehow managed to get in your way. They throw their trash into litter containers, and mow their lawns, and hang cheesy little decorations that say “Welcome” in their flower-filled yards.

Rick drives a Subaru, and is contemplating (I think) buying a Volvo. His black-framed glasses sit just a bit croookedly on his nose. He smiles a lot, talks admiringly about his Dad who’s in the home-building business in Colorado Springs. He doesn’t like big cities. “I don’t do traffic,” he says simply. He loves to bicycle and hike. The latest news from his home is that he and his lovely wife Katy are struggling to keep a couple of robin chicks (one apparently fell from its nest) alive behind their house. Jeanie and I stand in his office, waiting patiently while he discusses his plight with a friend visiting from his office down the hall, and our hearts warm from the conversation. This other fellow is a “birder” who spends the first couple of hours every day walking around the area, watching, listening to birds. He and Rick talk briefly about some of the birds he’s seen: ospreys, blue herons (huge!), pelicans, and, of course, robins. And throughout their conversation, there’s an overtone of humble respect, even reverence, for the natural beauty that is so abundant in this part of Colorado.

How could we possibly not want to live among people like Rick Hausman and his friend, and the scores of others like them–good, down-to-earth people–we’ve met in this beautiful little city?

We’d have to be crazy.

Okay, enough is enough. We had a great laugh a few posts back (the one with the outrageous diesel prices in New York), but we stopped laughing when we took a look at our rapidly diminished travel funds. Yep, afraid the time has come to rein the ol’ horses in and take stock of our situation. The gist of it is that, if we’re going to stretch this adventure out as far as we want to (we originally figured about ten years would be a good starting point, and we haven’t changed that figuring just yet), then we’re going to have to take it a whole heck of a lot slower. Our financial advisor advised us quite a ways back that it might be a good idea to purchase some property and live in it, at least part of the time, to stabilize expenses. We pooh-poohed that idea and went our merry way. But it’s finally come time to give him (his name is George) some credit for good counseling. Hence the photo above: a little charmer of a house (interior measures a little less than a thousand sq. feet) in the Old Town section of Fort Collins, Colorado. And, as of the 26th of this month, it will be ours. We won’t exactly be able to move into it just yet, though. We still have commitments out in California (Jeanie’s daughter Felicia is having a baby in September, and we have a wedding to attend in San Diego the same month), and in Washington, where we plan to stay for a few days while collecting our stored items. Bill’s daugher Heather will be taking care of the place for us during that time, and we expect to move in sometime December or January.

More later…

Well, it seems like it, anyway. We’ve been on the road (from New York) five days, and we’ve gone through five states. On our way to a short sojourn in Fort Collins, Colorado. Here we are, parked in a KOA just east of Kansas City, in a small burg called Oak Grove. 85-degrees, and about fifty-percent humidity. Hot! Humid! But lovely, nonetheless. The trip is going well. We’d had to have the injectors replaced in the truck back in Croton (could have cost us upwards of $6000, just for the parts, but they were covered by warranty), and so the truck is running almost perfectly. We also installed XM satellite radio, which is wonderful.