Catching up to the 21st century, part 3...finding our land the 1st time

The last "Catching up" chapter had me getting an offer from Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO in late 2003. Cindy was concerned about the move to Boulder, so Mike searched for work in northern CA and found a job at Phonic Ear (now Front Row) in Petaluma. We found a nice rental home on the West side with a 4 mile bike/walk to Phonic Ear. It was a turn of the century home redone with a nice open great room and 12 foot ceilings – a foreshadowing of what we would like to design into our “dream home”. We had another garage sale and packed up the remaining stuff again. We hired a mover to take us down to Petaluma towards the end of February, 2004.

During the summer of 2003, Cindy and I tried unsuccessfully to become volunteer backcountry rangers in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park. While on a backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps Wilderness, we ran into Jim Holmes who runs the Trinity Alps Wilderness volunteer program. We told Jim about our inability to become volunteers in Sequoia. He said he would take either of us as volunteers in his program. In early 2004, Cindy took Jim up on the offer. She spent much of the spring in 2004 training and preparing for her summer as a backcountry ranger. She had the time of her life that summer and brought back some beautiful images and memories.

We spent much of the fall in 2004 discussing what to do about settling down. The housing bubble continued to expand in CA. Homes and land seemed to be getting more expensive every day. We searched in and around Petaluma for real estate, but did not find anything that moved us. We were a bit frustrated. Cindy started contract work at Symantec in the fall of 2004. She figured whatever we decided to do next, it would require more money (smart girl).

In December, 2004, the Santa Cruz Cohousing Yahoo group message board had a listing for four approximately 2.5 acre parcels close to downtown Santa Cruz. Cindy and I went down to visit the land and meet the person arranging the deal - Karsten. We fell in love with the 2 sunny parcels. Several parties were interested in purchasing the land. All of the interested folks were eco-friendly freaks like me and Cindy. We attended a meeting with these people a week later and were excited with the prospect of joining a group of like-minded greenies. We started gathering information related to purchasing raw land. The land would not be not cheap, and we were quickly stressing over the pluses and minuses of living in Santa Cruz. When in love, however, rationality goes out the window.

The deal was days away from closing, and all 4 parcels were still not spoken for. I think everyone involved was pretty stressed out. The 2 parcels we were most interested in were already taken, so we asked our green builder friend Estok Menton to visit the land with us to assess the feasibility of building on the remaining 2 parcels. Although the lots were buildable according to Estok, we were not interested enough for the amount of money involved. After sleeping on it a few more days, we backed out. The group eventually found enough buyers and closed the deal.

We spent much of 2005 going through the motions, earning money for some eventual land or home purchase. We were still very interested in Santa Cruz. There was a 2003 article called "healthy cities" in Organic Style magazine. The article references a 1997 report called Rating Guide to Environmentally Healthy Metro Areas. In this report, Santa Cruz ranked 109 of 317 metro areas in the US, and it was the highest rated area in California. Although this report is old, the criteria are thorough and can be searched for current data. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to research cities in the US.

In the fall of 2005, we contacted Karsten (the guy who arranged the aforementioned land purchase) to see what the real estate market was like in Santa Cruz. Surprisingly, he said that his land partner (Ben) was thinking of selling his share of the land. Karsten and Ben's parcel was the one we liked the most. It was the one on which our builder friend Estok said "This is where I would build my house". We contacted Ben, and he confirmed that he was interested in selling. The land was giving us a second opportunity, and we were not going to let it get away this time.

To be continued...