Week 32

Date
August 13, 2017

Distance
100 miles

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Week 32

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Warning: Non-cylcling rambling ahead.

As mentioned last week, August is off to a slow start. I flew in to ABQ last week on Monday afternoon. The whole trip didn't quite go as planned. The plan was to fly to ABQ, get my rental car, then drive to Alamogordo to look at some houses the next morning. Well, there was a flight delay of about 1 hour. I had the car reserved with Budget, which closed at midnight. Unfortunately, the rental car center isn't inside the airport, so I had to catch a shuttle. I went outside and one was leaving right as I walked to the bus stop.

The next shuttle wasn't too far behind, but I saw the clock tick past 12:00 about halfway into the 5-minute ride. I thought Budget would still be open, because they had my flight number and I'm sure that last flight of the day is delayed fairly often. I was wrong. Nobody was around except the Hertz guy and some janitors. Hertz was going to cost about an extra $100, so I decided to just stay until 5:00 AM when Budget would open up again. I tried to sleep a little, but it wasn't happening. (This will become important later.)

When they did open (5 minutes late, I might add), the counter lady was saying my car wasn't ready and I would have to wait some more. I was pissed. I was less than nice to her (sorry), and she finally agreed to let me take a van. I hate to be a dick, but it seems like sometimes that's the only way to get things done in this world. If you're ever going to ABQ and coming in on the last flight, rent at Hertz.

I made it to Alamogordo and looked at a few houses Tuesday morning. There was one I really liked and 3 that seemed to be priced a little on the high side. Unfortunately, there were 2 others that I was most interested in that I couldn't actually look at because the realtor just quit his agency or something and we couldn't get the keys. I would have been mad, but I really liked the one house and made an offer on it.

I made my way back to ABQ, where I found out that there were multiple offers on the house already. I'm not sure if they priced it low to start a bidding war or what. Well, I'm not interested in bidding wars, so I just kept my offer the same and figured I would be 0-2 in my house offers this year. (I made an offer on a house in AZ a few weeks back, but didn't get that one.) Now it was starting to feel like a wasted trip. The other houses seemed overpriced compared to the house I made an offer on, but if that house was artificially low then my whole thought process was messed up. Now not being able to see those other houses was more of a problem. I kept telling my realtor to keep an eye on stuff since I was coming from so far away. Obviously she wasn't doing that. I could have found some other houses to look at if I had known. I suppose the bigger lesson is that I should leave more than one day to look at houses next time. That way I'll have more time to adjust.

Wouldn't you know, my flight to RNO ended up being late. That meant I got about zero sleep on both Monday and Tuesday night. I woke up Wednesday with a sore throat. What's funny is that I'm around sick people all the time at work and never get sick, but I ended up getting sick on my off days due to lack of sleep. I don't get sick very often, and when I do it usually only lasts a day or two. This time lasted a little longer than normal- 3 solid days plus a few lingering snotty days. Then I had a visitor coming to town, so I ended up taking 5 days off the bike in total.

Later on I was told that the house got an offer for $14,000 more than the list price. I don't know what the deal was and my realtor didn't offer any insight (surprise, surprise). At least I didn't miss out by $100 or something stupid like that. The new price put it solidly outside of my price range. I hate to spend money flying out there to come home empty handed, but I guess I'm learning lessons along the way. If something seems too good to be true it probably is. I shouldn't have let that house skew my opinion on the other houses I looked at, and I should have taken some time to find a few more houses to look at when I found out I couldn't look at the other 2 I wanted to see. This will be my 3rd time buying a house. You'd think I'd be better at it by now. But if you've read my blog for more than a few weeks you have probably learned to never underestimate my stupidity.