Blogger to Blogger

Hi Mark,http://boxcanyonblog.blogspot.com/

I have been lurking for a month or so, waiting to introduce myself, until I finished your blog since 2007. As a wannabee fulltimer, I have been researching selling my house, business etc. and hence found Boonie, http://occupation-of-independence.blogspot.com/, Mobil Codger, http://mobilecodgers.blogspot.com/ and Glenn, http://www.tosimplify.net/ blogs which led me here. After reading it all, I kinda feel I have lived in Ouray!
Although, I have done some ballsy things in my life, going fulltime scares the shit out of me.

Should I trade this:

for this?

As I got started, I found Mark and Bobbie selling everything and hitting the road, come what may and fulltiming for real. Taking your chances and seeing what would happen...this is going to be my kind of blog! I was almost stunned when I found out you all had taken the nest egg, and bought the house in Ouray after only 6 or so months on the road and didn't mention it until another six months, but having that rental income all the while.

Today April 2012, when you talk about "looking forward to the yard projects" and the good feelings about "home", it really hit home to me, that you all made the right decision...financially, socially, and as a couple, not to sell it all and take your chances out there.

I guess what really put "bad butterflies" in the pit of my stomach, is that if I sold this business that's it, I don't have the energy to build another one; if I sold the house I will never be able to buy another one. It would be for real and what would I be doing five years from now?......IN THE SLABS, TENDING A GARBAGE FIRE!

Thanks for a great blog and I look forward to the future stories.

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 Hi Ted,

Wow, you endured many moods and travels going back and reading all the blogs… thanks for that and for communicating your thoughts.

It is a tough decision, full timing, especially when it's "either/or." We were fortunate to bail on the full-time life style before we ran through all of our savings. Looking back, we've sold out and quit jobs four times and I have no regrets; after all, it landed us in Lovely Ouray… a mountain paradise.

 I learned in trying to run away so many times that the mountains are where I belong. Bobbie knew this all along… for herself. She was patient with me. I still need to break free once in a while, tho… especially during winter. Now we come and go from Ouray and it seems to be good enough… but if it were just me, I wouldn't have a home… I'd be mobile. So it's a contradiction… a compromise. I've witnessed some who sold out and spent a fortune on an RV… essentially burning their bridges behind them… and a few lived to regret those decisions. Bottom line, to each their own. Keeping your house and your RV would be a good way to try on The Road for a while.

 Meantime, keep writing! You've got a good start… some interesting humorous posts.

Thanks for writing,

Mark

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Thanks for the advice and reflection Mark. I guess what we share at this stage is “is this all there is” and “wherever you go, there you are” (a hippie carpenter that builds beautiful cabinets below me attributed that to Dr. Seuss, but a google search cites Confucius) and a friggin’ lack of “fuck you” money”. I remember in 2008 when you all were getting ready to full time, and you looked out over Ridway, and thought “where can I go that is more than this”? But you wanted “more” and left anyway. I have left Charlottesville to go all over the USA and overseas since 1976 and every time I fly back into our podunk airport, I am struck by what a cool place I live.

 As recently as March of 2012, I went to a Grateful Dead type concert in Amsterdam with my brother. We were sitting in a *coffeeshop* sipping their version of an IPA, talking about the show. After eight days, conversation slowed for a moment and the we realized that “wherever we go, here we are”! When I flew home, I was glad that I had a cozy wood stove to go to.

 Fulltime, would put a end to all that. Business wise, I have never had a real job or cubicle, fulltime would end that. After reading many blogs, especially yours and those of your compadres, studying the advice you all have sent, I realize that I have it pretty good being a weekend warrior. There is always the chance that the recession will force me into fulltime, and I can look forward to scooping ice cream on a Main Street, in a town not unlike Ouray. A grey haired fulltimer with a name tag that says “Hi, I am Ted, would you like sprinkles”?