With the invent of the Internet, it made finding real estate in any part of the country a pretty easy process, and that was back in 1999/2000.  We have seen where the Internet has taken real estate today.  Anyway, we had found a house for sale online in Palm Coast, FL. The house was less than five minutes from the Ocean on a golf course, East of I-95 - was over 2700 sq ft, concrete block and stucco construction and built in 1980. After having invested in and remodeled homes that were built in the late 1800's...this was a no brainer. Better yet, the price: $99,000. We bought the house sight unseen, did all of our financing over the phone and to this day have still never met the agent that sold us the house.

I still remember the day I walked into my new home. It was like entering a time warp. The house was spotless and back in the 80's when it had been built, it had the trendiest and best products available and everything was pristine like the day it was built. I also quickly learned that DH and I were the youngest people on the street and possibly within a five mile radius by about 30-40 years. But, I was out of Illinois, we would make this work.

Within a couple of weeks, I was able to find employment as the Membership Sales Manager for the Palm Coast Golf Resort. I worked with two great women. The only problem was that our clientele was dying off in record numbers or cancelling their memberships because they just could not play golf anymore. It was fighting a losing battle everyday, with no solution in sight. So, I decided to go back to my passion, buying and selling homes. Only this time, in addition to doing it for myself, I was going to get my Florida Real Estate License and also help other people.

I started going to classes at night while continuing to work during the day, and after 45 hours of extremely boring and quite frankly useless information (very scary how easy it is to get a Florida State Real Estate License by the way) I took the Florida Licensing exam and passed. I was now a Florida Licensed Realtor.

I put my license with a local broker that was affiliated with the current company that I was working for, gave my notice, took my two weeks earned vacation time and went to Mexico for a week. I was floating on air. I was finally going to be doing my dream job, in a community that was in my mind the next best thing to my beloved lala land – Steamboat Springs, Colorado, this would be fun, exciting and a piece of cake.

After an amazing week at an all inclusive Resort in Cancun, my dh and I woke early on the day before we were suppose to fly back home to do some souvenir shopping. I am not sure what time it was exactly, but I do remember what happened next. There was a strange chatter in the lobby of the hotel. I could hear the television turned up to a decibel level reserved for busy, noisy sports bars...and people were gathered around just staring. I new in my gut that this is not right, something is wrong. The words that came out of my mouth to my DH to this day haunt me, because of my fear of flying and the fact that we were going home the next day I said "Please, do not let this be a plane crash".

As I walked around the corner of the lobby to find out exactly what was going on, I saw the second plane fly into the World Trade Center. The gentleman standing next to me collapsed to the floor. I found out later that he worked in the World Trade Center. DH and I looked at each other and in confused shock said "Where in the world is that?". Neither of us had ever been to NYC, and could not wrap our brains around the fact that this was happening to the United States. At that moment, everything changed.

We were stuck in Mexico for 7 days without anyway to get home. In the meantime while watching CNN international, we saw a one line ticker come across the breaking news at the bottom of the TV that Hurricane Gabriel had just hit Flagler County. Our first experience with a hurricane and we did not even know about it.

I also realized that things were going to be tough for alot of people for a very long time, including ourselves. I had just quite my job, and was starting a new career that tends to eat more money than it creates for most people. On October 1, 2001, I began my career as a REALTOR.

More to come.....