Publisher, The Old House Web
So there I was a little a year ago August driving from the Home Depot in Augusta, Maine, to our summer cottage 20 miles south.
Normally I'd have hopped onto the Maine Turnpike to get back to the cottage. Today I took the back road -- avoiding the Turnpike -- out of fear that the load of windows crammed into the back seat of my convertible might become airborne if I drove faster than 30.
So I took the back road -- the road less traveled, the road that took me past our old house.
This was the house we'd restored a decade earlier. The place we'd intended to live in forever. The place we'd sold after only a couple years when central Maine's sagging economy made a magazine job (and its steady income) in Washington D.C. look mighty attractive. The place we'd missed ever since -- even as its current owners let the paint fall off, and even as they let the weeds grow high.
And there it was: A for-sale sign.
I slowed down, then drove away, aware all the while that I intended to buy the place back -- and equally aware just how goofy the idea seemed.
Sure, Deb and I had been talking for years about moving back to Maine from the D.C. suburbs. And sure, we both missed our old house.
But going home again? Buying our old house back?
Not likely. For one thing, it was already August. School started in less than three weeks. Not exactly the best time to move 650 miles north.
For another thing, most of my income came from a job with a dot-com startup in Florida. Commuting every other week from D.C. to Florida was one thing. But commuting from Maine to Florida? Mainers like to say you can't get there from here -- and given the state's remote location, there's a reason the saying has persisted into the 21st century.
Still thinking things through logically, I drove back to the cottage and gave Deb -- who was already back in D.C. -- a phone call.
"Our old house is for sale," I said. "Let's buy it," she replied.
And so I called a Realtor friend. And then I plunged into airline schedules, to see if I could get from Maine to northern Florida without making three or four stops, and without paying thousands of dollars each trip.
I was thinking about flight as relates to jet schedules.
I should have been thinking about flight as relates to pigeons.
More on that next time.
