Our biggest mistake ever... ha!

 So we spent the years between 1997 and 2003 working in Silicon Valley, living in San Francisco, and driving down to Salton City to see and stay with CHM and Frank several times a year. In 2002 I made the decision to quit my job and explore the possibility that we might be able to leave California and move to France. I needed to tell CHM that we would definitely not be buying his Paris apartment from him. We were planning to leave California as soon as possible and we'd need a place to live right away, not at some undefined time in the future.

In October 2002 we drove down to Salton City one more time. We didn't stay with CHM and Frank. We were camping on that trip, and we'd reserved a campsite a few miles west of Salton, near the town called Borrego Springs. We spent one night camping in Death Valley. In France, CHM had recommended a notaire (a government-licensed contracts lawyer) who he had dealt with earlier. I had temporary custody of CHM's keys to the Paris apartment. I went to see the notaire and arranged for him to send over one of his staff members to see the place. The notaire then recommended what price I should pay CHM. He still wanted a lifetime right to live in the place for at least part of the year.

Camping at Borrego Springs near Salton City, on our way (indirectly) to France

When I made the offer to CHM, he was disappointed. I thought you'd offer me more than that, he said. It's not enough. I pointed out that it was his notaire who had recommended that I pay that price. CHM said his plan was to use the money we paid him fixing the apartment up so that when the time came Walt and I would have a nice place to call home. I told him we had decided to sell our house in San Francisco and use the profit from that sale to buy a house somewhere in France.

We had realized that we wouldn't really able to afford a place in Paris comparable to our SF house. And since we planned to move to France with our dog Collette, it wouldn't be easy to live there and take walks with the dog. One thing the Paris apartment didn't have was a garage or parking space, and I wasn't sure I was ready to live without a car. I told Walt I was going to try to find a real estate agent who might be able to help us. I had quit my Silicon Valley job, so I had plenty of free time. I'd target the Loire Valley. We had recently spent two vacations there and liked the region. It was close enough to Paris and the airport. We still had to see what a property like the one we envisioned would actually cost.

I found an agent who said he'd be glad to help us find a house to buy. When I told CHM we were going to go house-hunting around Amboise, he had no choice but to accept the situation. He also said that we were making the biggest mistake of our lives by not buying his apartment. Time will tell, I told him. We hadn't yet put our SF house on the market. We started getting it ready to sell and we scheduled a trip to the Loire Valley in early December to work with the agent there. We viewed a total of 15 houses in four days, and we found one we liked.

To be continued...