June 20, 2006
We had such a fun easy ride today, with only one challenge – the bridge right outside the island. It’s a four-mile bridge, and reaches impressive heights, at least to a bicyclist who’s not at all fond of heights. I had to talk myself up this one –you can check out a distance view of it in our picture gallery. I just kept my eyes on the road, and put one foot after the other, and sure enough, Chelsea was soon calling me to stop and take pictures at the top. Alex was quite funny, driving next to me for a short ways, calling out encouragement. 🙂 There’s more evidence of hurricane damage here – it’s clear to see that there used to be roadside businesses here, but all that remains in some cases are just twisted timbers or foundations. You can see a great photo of a waterfront fixer-upper in our gallery.
Bayou is an extremely small town, despite the fact that it seems to go on for a ways. The kids went out for food last night, and everything was completely closed down by 8:30 at night. The only excitement in town was the local Sonic drive-in, so that’s what we had for dinner at 9:30 pm. When Chelsea and I finished our miles today, we asked a local woman if there was any place to get breakfast, and she looked at us in near total disbelief, and said, “In Bayou?!” We couldn’t help but laugh…and she was right…we had our breakfast at Sonic!
After spending some time dealing with trip issues, we took off for Pensacola, as I was to meet with a REIA there and introduce ourselves and Compass Rose, and of course our sponsors. We were such a classic case of a traveling virtual office! Chelsea and I were in the back seats looking up Verizon store locations online, finding Office Depots, sending off quick emails, doing Map Quest to find where the stores were and what the driving directions are to where we are going. We had to find several completely unrelated stores, figure out where they are, and figure out how to get ones that are the closest to each other, with very little time to accomplish this.
My cell phone completely died on Sunday, and I have been most desirous of getting it working again, so Verizon was a high priority for us. I finally remembered that I could check my messages from Chelsea’s phone, so I then had two days of phones messages to deal with, on top of the other office tasks.
One message was really a blessing – we have been expecting our tent from Peter Glenn of Vermont, and it was to be sent to General Delivery at DeFuniak Springs. The kids were going to go to DeFuniak to get it while we were at our REIA meeting, but FedEx had called and they were holding it for us in Crestview. Turns out that Crestview was a good half hour closer than DeFuniak, so it saved them over an hour of driving.
We managed to get to Verizon, where I got the really bad news that my phone was completely dead, and that I will have lost all the names and information in it, since we couldn’t turn it on at all. I nearly wanted to have a requiem mass on the spot! I decided I had enough to stress about, so I’d worry about it later. I decided that Chelsea and I would have to share a phone for a month, as my contract with Verizon gives me great savings if I wait to get another phone until July 16th. However, Chelsea’s phone has had its share if difficulties, so we will have to see if we can get it replaced. They told us it would be $60 to replace the phone and have her numbers transferred.
Chelsea and I made it to the REIA meeting with time to spare, and it felt wonderful to eat dinner quietly and peacefully. The meeting started out quietly but picked up steam when the speaker was about to start. Chelsea and I got to introduce ourselves, and got perhaps 15 minutes to talk about what we are doing. We were met with great amazement and admiration, and we had a number of questions put to us. We talked about what we teach, and our upcoming classes and courses, and then talked about our research project. We got to hand out our flyers, and even had one of the board members handing out our flyers for us.
The REIA, which appeared to be made up of primarily landlords, had a judge from Pensacola speaking on landlord tenant issues. It was just amazing. Apparently there has been a huge backlog of civil cases, and Pensacola just created its first civil judge, which was this woman speaking to us. She has made it a personal mission to clear the backlog, and now, 4 days a week, spends her lunch hours doing only landlord tenant issues, on an expedited basis. She was very forthcoming and very direct about how to get evictions done properly, and had her “Top 10” list of what errors she sees. The questions from the audience were excellent and the judge handled them really well.
I couldn’t believe what a great idea it was to have an actual judge get up and speak. This same group is now going to have the sheriff’s department and police department appear at the meeting, and field questions about procedures and misunderstandings for landlords. They also want to have rulings and procedures standardized among the counties.
I will certainly try to see that we get something like this in our area, and I recommend that all local investment groups establish communications in these crucial areas. The judge and local investors were telling us that it is possible to get possession of their rental houses in as soon as 9 days after an eviction has been filed!
This group of investors was really amazing. The average age was great deal older than any other group we’ve seen, and had a great many more women. And these women were not quiet participants or spouses – they were active and seasoned investors. This group was also more hard-core than any I’ve seen – their BS quotient was zero.
Chelsea and I had to wait outside the restaurant for a fair while till Alex and Stacey got back from Crestview, so we sat and came up with adjectives for the group. Here’s a partial list: salty; experienced; blunt; straightforward; hard-core; strong opinions; salt of the earth. These folks ended the meeting by publicly announcing a blacklist of both tenants and vendors. Apparently they announce at the meetings the names of anyone with whom they’ve had trouble and then list the names on the member website.
It was a very well run group – a not-for-profit – with committee reports, a librarian, and a treasurer’s report. I am delighted to have met them and have the pleasure of attending their meeting, and I hope to see them again. We ended up with nearly 40 people there.
It was a very long drive home, from Pensacola to Bayou La Batre, after having been up at 5:30 to ride from Dauphin Island, and then going strong all day. We got “home” at nearly midnight.