View from the Mountain

Our Oak is a teenager, and we're a lot older

It was nineteen years ago this past festival in the park weekend when we visited Roanoke to make the decision to move.

It didn't take us long to decide Roanoke would be a great place for our family to live.

Our kids were young, and we were excited to be in Roanoke after a couple of years in the intense environment of Columbia, MD.

Roanoke seemed like a green mountain paradise filled with friendly people.

Our home on the mountain overlooking Roanoke city is where we our kids really grew up.  It was their fourth house, but it is the spot they call home.

While all three were born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, they all spent only a few of their early years on the farm.  Then it was on to Halifax and Columbia.

I can still remember bringing the kids to get a look at the house for the first time.  I had watched it being built before we even bought it.  I loved the spot and was nervous that they might not.

Actually it took a lot of selling for me to convince my wife that it was a good spot.  She was worried about their being enough kids around.  That did end up being a little bit of challenge, but there are some great memories up here on the hill.

The kids were a piece of cake, the house has huge bedrooms, and they made the most of them.

It was actually in the fall of 1989 when we finally moved into the house.  Our Oak tree was barely visible in the front yard.

There were also no houses around us.  Now we are surrounded by homes, and we are some of the last of the first settlers still left on the hill.

Our kids are grown up and all through with college now.  The only teenager is the big Oak in our front yard.  For years it didn't look like it was going to make it.  Then all of sudden the Oak found whatever it needed and really started growing.

One of the tree guys who has looked at it said that it will eventually be as wide as it is tall right now.  Unfortunately that means it might be too big for the yard some day.

We had a Silver Maple which girded itself and died before we figured out what was wrong.  The Oak seemed to grow even faster once the Maple was gone.  There are a number of large Poplars in the back behind the house.  We also have a huge Ash tree and several Black Walnut trees.

Still of all our trees, the Oak that grew strong and true is my favorite.  It reminds me of our kids.  They are past their teenage years and just now finding what they need to grow.

I hope the Oak will be around for a lot of years to remind them of the home that they once had on the mountain overlooking Roanoke.

Maybe sailing ships will come back, and it will find a home as part of ship that will travel the world.

Mother Nature, my favorite cooling system

It doesn't matter whether we are at the coast or in the mountains.  Natural cooling is the way I like to go as long as is possible.

In the evenings it means throwing open some windows and of course the weather has to cooperate, but as long as the humidity isn't too great we get by quite nicely.

The only problem is perhaps listening to some neighbors cooling systems running.  When the temperature outside is 55 degrees Fahrenheit, like it has been recently at many places along the east coast, it is a shame to be burning electricity to keep cool.

The only people that are happy when we do that are the folks selling us electricity and the people selling the electricity plants coal.

Last night when we got home from a visit to Beaufort and Morehead City, I ran upstairs and opened the windows before I did anything else.  It was well timed since the temperature was at 79 degrees which is just below where we have the upstairs air conditioner set to begin cooling. 

Downstairs the temperature was 77 degrees which was one degree below the 78 degrees where it is set to start working.

We had started the morning with lots of windows open and an inside temperature of 64 degrees Fahrenheit.  We made it all day without our cooling systems working.

We seem to be able to do that unless the temperature gets above 86 degrees and then we need a couple of hours of cooling.

Last year this system worked at the coast until the last week of June when the humidity descended upon us.  Roanoke is a little trickier since it isn't quite high enough to really get a lot of cooling, but it is much better than a place like Raleigh which seems to cook most of the time.

Of course here at the beach if the weather gets too warm, we just head off to the beaches for a nice walk along the water.

Don't count on "social networking"

That might seem like a strange statement from someone who spends a lot of time writing online and until recently answering questions in some social networks.

What my experience has taught me is that you can provide a lot of information to people. It certainly helps to get them interested in an area, but it rarely goes beyond that.

Being interested and actually doing something like moving to an area are two totally different things.

Where my posts on social networks have been most effective are with newcomers who have already moved and are looking for area information and having a hard time finding it.

Part of the challenge with social networks is the people running the networks.  They are so convinced that their networks hold the only key to business success that they police them like some homeowners associations who have nothing better to do than making sure someone's tomato plants don't stick out beyond the side of their house.  Don't laugh I actually saw that happen in Columbia, MD.

I recently got banned once again from City-Data forums.  My sin this time apparently was suggesting that if the poster had any specific questions, that they could send me a private message. Apparently that was "soliciting business." As you can see from their response they were happy to talk to someone who knew the lay of the land.  They are a long way off from buying property.

Thanks for the awesome reply on my post...I am going to look into everything you mentioned.

Question...is there an airforce base nearby? I have heard that there is one on the East coast of NC...any ideas of the name of it and is it close to Carteret County?

Last question, if my family and I wanted to go and check out Carteret County and do so on a mini vacation with the kids...where would you recommend staying? I have a 3 and 5 year old, so we would hit the beach a few days and then drive around the county to get a feel for it...

I ended up sending them a Google Map to Cherry Point from our area. That's probably not something of interest to many people besides them.

About a year ago, I used to get excited about responses like this.  I even drove several couples from City-Data around the county.

After a while I learned an obvious fact, most of these people are just dreaming and doing what if scenarios with their vacations.  While some of them might choose to move to our area, there are usually far too many hurdles in their way, like jobs and selling their current home.

Even the people who got as far as visiting the area are far beyond the vast majority of people on the forums.

I have stayed in touch with some, even helped one get a job offer, but the results stay the same.  They come for a visit, love the area, but then get back to reality and usually stay where they are.

It might be a function of the current state of the economy and the housing market, but I think it is more than that.

While there are some legitimate folks prowling these forums, most are Sunday afternoon lookers.  We are all guilty of that sometimes.  If I want to look at new cars with being hassled by salespeople, I visit a car lot on Sunday afternoon when it is closed.  At least in Roanoke and much of North Carolina, Sunday is a day of rest even for car salespeople.  I hasten to add that as a real estate person I worked last Sunday afternoon.

So how do you look over areas if you don't have enough interest to actually get in the car and visit?  Well the online forums are the first stop for Sunday afternoon area lookers.  You can hide behind an anonymous handle and get all sorts of opinions, some of which have nothing to do with reality.

How much more risk free can you get than anonymous folks answering questions about places which sometimes neither have visited?  I love the generalities.  Some of the moderators will answer any question with authority even if they have never visited a place.

I once had a lady who saw me on the forum, took the trouble to search out my phone number and called not surprisingly on a Sunday afternoon.  She had decided to move to Emerald Isle but wanted a home not in a flood zone.  I suspect she thought she was giving me an impossible assignment, but I found her some places.

It wasn't long before she had more questions and eventually found a red herring, there wasn't enough shopping in the area so she was going to consider Nags Head and Wilmington.  I was happy when she started looking in other areas because I had figured out that she was a compulsive looker.  I forget how many thousand posts she had done.

Whether you call it skin in the game or serious interest, most people in online communities don't have skin in the game.  Their visits to the forums don't cost them anything.  No one even knows their name.

They can drop the idea whenever it pleases them.

So why do I keep trying.  Well in spite of online forums not being a good way to find true clients, it is a good inexpensive way to get information out about an area.

While it is impossible to convince the idiot moderators that I am marketing the area more than anything else, that is what I found that is working.

Almost 100% of the people who don't have a previous relationship with a real estate agent, take the agent who is at the desk when they walk in the door.  Sometimes they drive around and see who has the most listings and ask for that person, but beyond that they take the person in the seat when they open the door.  It is the same at car dealerships.

It is not a good way to do it, but it is a fact of real estate life.

Maybe down the road some of those folks who used my time and gas will show back up, but I am not holding my breath.

Most people should perhaps interview a few real estate agents, but everyone is convinced they know what they need to know to buy property.

Maybe they should check with the guy that I met the other day who has a lot with over 40% of it listed as wetlands.  That's fodder for another post.

I'll keep working with online forums, it is an effective way to get our Coastal Paradise near Emerald Isle in people's minds.  I am just being a realist and recognizing that most people you meet on the forums disappear whenever they feel like it.  Almost none will turn into clients.

It is just the nature of online forums.

Of course some buyers who walk in the office do that, but at least I have gotten their real names and numbers and had a chance to size them up.

Blogging has actually been far more effective for me.  People know who I am and it is pretty easy to figure me out from what I write.  If they like what they see, they contact me and work with me.

Some of those who have contacted me based on my blogging have actually bought property.  That's why I will keep blogging.

My latest real estate post is a good one for buyers and sellers to read.

Practicing my chapel skills

The other day, I was dealing with as much weird stuff as any person can take.  I needed to get away from work.  My wife and I took the ten minute trip that it takes to get to our favorite beach.

Having a beach ten minutes away is one of the advantages of living in Carteret County.

This is the take off point for the beach.  It is the end of a board walk that brings you over most of the dunes.  We usually leave our sandals on the bench and pick them up on the way out.

The day we went, we didn't run into a single person on the beach.  We saw someone far down the beach exercising a couple of dogs, but that was it.  We had the beach to ourselves.  We enjoyed it for an hour and a half.

I waded out until the water was up to my knees.  I was pleased that the water while cool was actually very pleasant.  I splashed along the shore taking pictures and looking for fish while my wife tried to find a few shells to interest her.

As usual I took lots of pictures and posted a slide show of our adventure on the web shortly after we got home.  It was a great afternoon on the beach.

However, the best part was when we left the beach.  We sat down on the bench where we left our sandals to brush the sand off our feet.  We could feel and hear the wind while sitting on the bench.  Of course we could hear waves crashing in the background and the setting sun was beaming into our faces.

Then there was the occasional mournful sound of the wind whistling through one of the Bogue Inlet buoys.

We didn't talk about it, we just sat there and closed our eyes.  It is actually hard to say how long we were on the bench but it was probably thirty to forty five minutes just feeling the wind and sun on our faces and listening the waves and the sounds of the beach.

I managed to practice some of those sleeping while sitting skills that I learned so well in chapel at McCallie School where I attended military school during high school.

It was actually really hard to rouse ourselves from the trance that had been created by the beach, wind, and sun.

When we did finally leave, we both agreed that our minds had been cleansed, and we were ready for a few more of life's challenges.

Given the way things are running, I am glad the beach is so close by.

A sunrise from another day

The weather doesn't look as nice today as it was earlier in the week when I snapped this sunrise in Roanoke.

While we are having what I would call a "late" spring, I think we need to be thankful for the warmth that we have seen.

Yesterday's temperature in the low seventies in Roanoke might not have been as nice as the mid eighties down on the Carolina coast, but it was a whole lot better than it is in Canada.

Actually this is the South, and it will not be long before heat and humidity will descend upon us.

These temperatures from the WeatherUnderground show just how thankful we need to be.

Can you imagine the howls in Roanoke if we woke up near the middle of May to find the temperature 37 degrees Fahrenheit?  And that high wind warning?  Well the one for Halifax is much worse.

Then there is always Calgary when you think our weather stinks.  It snowed there last week.

So given the options, I will take a cool spring and even the humidity and heat of summer before i consider moving back to Canada.

I can still remember wearing a down jacket to a mid-July soccer match in Halifax.

Even that wasn't as bad as the spring when the pack ice filled Halifax harbour.  As I have told many people, it was like living inside a frosted iced tea glass.

We will get through spring in fine shape.  At least the moisture seems to be hitting most areas.  Perhaps we won't have to worry as much about drought this year as we have had to in the past.

I had someone from a NY publisher write me a note asking for permission to use a picture of my Roanoke yard last August as an example of drought.

You know it has been dry when they are putting you in the text books.