Michael,

The past couple of weeks, the Mrs & I have had the worried feeling that things were going too smoothly in our housing transactions. First, improbably enough in this market, our house sold on the very first Open House day. Then with incredible luck, after only a week of searching, we found a great, affordable house in Boulder. And the timing was perfect, too. We could take our earnings from the sale of our Bowie house at closing on Oct 16 and apply it to our Boulder house closing on Nov 1. No mortgage!

But the randomness of fate struck yesterday, when we heard that yesterday, 4 days before closing, our buyer had gone to the hospital for routine surgery and had lapsed into a “coma-like” state afterwards. He can’t even sign a power of attorney for his wife and daughter. The closing is delayed until he wakes up, whenever that may be. A month from now, he could still be in a coma, and we can’t put the house on the market

So, we’re going to have to float a mortgage until this is resolved. I hope we don’t end up trying to sell our Bowie house while living in Boulder!

–rakkity

Canoe

Mike,

Here’s an interesting factoid about Boulder weather–90 mph winds in December and January are surprisingly common.

The attached picture shows a bar chart of occurence of winds in a recent 35 year period (1967-2002). In the months of December and January, there have been 41 90-mph “Chinooks” in Boulder. Chinooks are warm, fast, steady winds from the west, usually after a snowfall. I had no idea there were so many of them. On our drives out there this coming December and January, we may have to batten down the hatches pretty tight. We’ll be driving into the wind, anyway, so we should be able to watch the flying tumbleweeds and two-by-fours as they come towards us.

–rakkity