Long Drive

Inspirational song: Highway Tune (Greta Van Fleet)

My bored, road-weary husband sent back so many photos from the highway, in traffic jams and pulled over trying to capture distant lightning on camera, that I feel like I made the long drive to eastern New Mexico with him. I have done that drive more times than I care to count (yet still probably fewer than he has done), and I feel like I still remember every inch of it, especially the lonely road part after one exits the interstate to cut across at Springer. He made it to town after dark, hours later than expected, because of the same matted-up traffic in Southern Colorado where we were car-sandwiched this spring. 

Neither of us wanted this trip to be necessary, but it was inevitable. Our house down there has had plumbing problems since we lived in it a dozen years ago. Every year or so, one set of tenants or another would need emergency plumbing repairs, and our rents collected would once again dip below what we needed to pay the mortgage. Now we are closer than we have been in years to being able to get out of the landlord business at last, with the current tenants expecting military orders to move in this upcoming winter cycle. And right on time, the sewer line has given up the ghost for good. 

We sold the condo we had in Boulder this year, at a significant profit from where we bought it, so putting money into the remaining house would offset our taxes owed just enough to be worth it. (I'm sure we will still owe some, but this sewer repair will represent a serious loss of income, so maybe it won't be too bad.) The contractors doing the replacement predicted they would need to cut through the sprinkler line in two places, and for a mere thousand dollars more, they could repair it as they went. Naturally we told them to get bent, and with gasoline, food, and hotel, Mr S-P driving down to do the repair is still cheaper than what they wanted to charge. And also tax deductible. 

While he is there, he will make contact with the real estate brokerage we used to buy it back in 2008, to lay the groundwork to put it back on the market after Christmas. I cannot tell you how happy I will be to let this place go, finally. Ten years was too long to be absentee landlords once we moved from there.