Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Floyd Christmas Party is finally held in May

Our good friends Fred and Ann First had a dickens of a time trying to hold a Christmas party last year. Floyd had epic snowfalls on the dates and alternate dates they selected, so they finally decided to hold the Christmas party when there would be no chance of being snowed out.

So, last Saturday, on May 15th, we all trooped over to the First's home on Goose Creek Run and celebrated with a potluck dinner, great music and hours of happy conversation.

Fred and Ann made us all feel at home and we partied until the clouds opened up and rain began falling. It was one of the most enjoyable parties we have attended at their house. The food was fantastic and there was plenty for everyone.You can see from these images that we had a great time.

Music was provided by Andrea Marshall, Jenny Traynham, and and Rusty May.

Mickey G's - Focaccia Burgers and Split Pea Soup

On a snowy Monday in Floyd Virginia, what will lift your spirits more than a visit to Michael Gucciardo's newest restaurant, Mickey G's Italian Bistro and Pizzeria. 

Don't laugh! In Floyd, we celebrate life as it comes.

Some of our friends have not been able to leave their homes for days at a time because of snowdrifts and ice blocking their way to the main roads.When we see them in town it is like a reunion.

So anyway, Gretchen and I decided to celebrate being able to drive into town again with lunch at Mickey G's. The Focaccia Burgers attracted our attention and they really hit the spot. They taste as good as they look.

The big surprise, however, was the split pea soup! This was an amazing creation! I have had split pea soup all over the United States and Michael's version knocked my socks off!

I should have ordered a quart of it and taken it home for the next time we are snowbound. I will have to ask Michael how well it freezes as it is just the kind of a restorative you need after working hard outside in this weather.

I'm sorry that I did not get a picture of the split pea soup. It was as photogenic as it was delicious, but I had scarfed it down before it occurred to me that you all might enjoy a photo. I will try to remember next time before eating the food. Note to self: shoot first, then eat.

Local blogger and his airborne Subaru jump a barbed wire fence

On my way to deliver a framed painting, I hit a fifty foot stretch of ice on Franklin Pike this morning. The subaru's all wheel drive was no match for the ice and we shot down the hill and up over an embankment into a pasture six feet below.

The car clipped the top strands of a barbed wire fence and was airborne for about 15 feet then it touched down and slid to stop under an apple tree some forty feet from where it had left the road.

The engine was still running, but I could not get traction in the deep snow. The visible damage was limited to the left front tire and the underside of the front grille.

The temperature was still in the teens and the wind was howling so I was hard pressed to stay warm. I called neighbor Ann Bower and she picked me up and brought me home for some coffee until the tow truck and State Police arrived.

Bell's Towing and the State Police showed up within 15 minutes and they both got into action with no delay. They are both old friends. The last time I had seen Tommy Bell he was winching my van up onto his tow truck.    

Trooper Anthony Mackian asked if I was on my way to deliver one of Gretchen's paintings. After getting my insurance data, etc. he walked up the road to investigate the accident scene. It was so treacherous that he had to do some fancy footwork to keep from falling on the ice.

We were very fortunate that there was no traffic from the north end of Franklin or we might have had a nasty pileup against the tow truck. There was no way to stop or change course once a car was on the ice.

Tommy Bell managed to pull out enough fence posts and barbed wire to make room for dragging  the Subaru back onto the road.

The Subaru was still operational and I put it in reverse while Tommy dragged the car back to the opening in the fence. Once the car was positioned on the bank, Tommy had to lift the Subaru up the bank and drag it onto the road.

The Subaru looked pretty good considering what it had been through and Tommy was able to drive it up onto the tow truck for the ride to the garage. This was fortunate because the tow cable had come off the spool during the final minutes of rescuing the Subaru from the pasture.

This is more proof why Subaru is the "car of choice" in Floyd Virginia. If you do not have four wheel drive you are helpless in this weather.

All's well that ends well. The Subaru is fixable, the fence can be repaired, and I escaped without a scratch.

For those of you who are interested in details, here is an annotated shot of the jump area.

If you are traveling south on Franklin Pike this week, watch out for the ice on the hill just south of Silverleaf Lane. It is unsafe at any speed.

Floyd Earth Day 2008

Come celebrate our place in the world with a focus on the topic: Water and Life in Floyd County.

The April 19 event at Floyd County High School will be free and open to the public.

Speakers, panelists, vendors of water and nature-care-related products as well as water, soils and geology professionals will be present. They will meet with interested county residents who want to learn how to help maintain both adequate quantity and quality of water in the county.

Since its inception by Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, Earth Day has been an annual opportunity for civic and church groups, schools and universities, municipalities and national organizations to take a fresh look at how we might work more effectively towards a healthier planet.

We may not agree on the global issues or the solutions, but we can all agree that the planet could be cleaner and healthier for the living things that reside here.

Locally, our primary concerns are water, sustainability and earth-care issues in Floyd County and the surrounding region.

Visit the website for Floyd Earth Day 2008 and get involved in the future of Floyd. Do your part to keep Floyd green.

There is a signup sheet for vendors, volunteers and those who just want to be informed of developments.

Gone in Nine Minutes - the future of moving is here

Moving containers take a great deal of stress out of moving and they offer the potential for saving money at the same time. PODS stands for Portable On Demand Storage.

In a recent example of a PODS move from Charlotte, NC to Floyd, VA, this PODS container was delivered by truck and was placed in the townhouse driveway in less than ten minutes.

A day later, all of the furniture from the two-bedroom townhouse was loaded into the container by trained professionals in three two hours and the homeowner locked the container. There was no messing around with inventory lists and box counts. The owner's stuff goes in the container and it is locked up, period.

The next day the fully loaded PODS container was picked up and removed by one driver. Here is the slide show of the PODS container being picked up and removed in nine minutes. Turn on the captions feature on Flickr to get the full effect.

Compare this to the extreme circus of traditional moving company activities. In a traditional move, a huge van pulls up and blocks the street for several hours while a crew of people cram your possessions around or on top of somebody else's household furnishings.

The driver is making an inventory list and giving directions while workers carry boxes, lamps, and furniture on to the truck. Near the end of this activity, workers are creating and sealing boxes for all the odd things that are left over, like your golf clubs and the weed whacker and the left over skate boards. (All in same box - marked with a cryptic number)

When you are given the box count, it is a miracle if the count means anything to you and you hope that it is complete. You sign the inventory anyway and hope for the best.

When a moving truck arrives at your new home, it is a different truck and your household possessions have been rearranged and crammed in around somebody else's possessions. You can tell because they loaded your furniture into the side of truck "A" and they are taking your furniture out of the top rear of truck "B".

Your furniture has been piled high on top of other people's furniture and they have to hand your furniture down piece by piece in 108 degree weather. They are passing your heavy living room furniture down ten feet while hanging off the back of a van with no lift gate and no ladders.

Images of unloading a Mexican bus come to mind while this is going on. The only difference is there are no crates of chickens.

Four hours later when the dust clears, you find that some of your possessions are missing  and you start negotiating with the driver to get the situation handled.

Container moving offers a great deal of flexibility and it does not hold you hostage while movers madly scramble to unload a truck and get your furniture placed in inclement weather. If your new home is not ready, you can store the containers until you are ready to unload them. If they get delivered and the weather turns inclement, you leave the containers sealed until you are ready to unload them

I have written about SmartMove which neighbor Tom King and I have used successfully. Their smaller containers offer a little more flexibility in tight situations and steep driveways, but the delivery and pickup of five containers took an hour versus the 9 minute pickup I witnessed with this recent POD move made yesterday.

See the images on Flickr to get the full significance of what this new container moving system can do. From the arrival of the truck and its driver, to the departure of the truck, driver and POD container, it took only 9 minutes from start to finish!

That's hardly enough time to drink a cup of coffee! Compare this to your last move...

Floyd Building Department Helps Homeowners

Anyone who has applied for a building permit elsewhere is in for a pleasant surprise when they get to Floyd County, Virginia. 

Jimmy Whitten and his staff are a huge asset to Floyd homeowners dealing with the myriad requirements that come with building or remodeling a home. When you apply for a building permit in Floyd, you know immediately that these people are here to help you!

The helpful attitude of the Floyd County Building Inspection Department is evident from the minute that you walk in the door and meet Dawn Underwood. She is the person you meet first and she is a huge help in navigating the many details that have to be handled.

Jimmy is the Building Official responsible for the Building Inspection Department. He is certified to do electrical, plumbing, and mechanical inspections and has been doing inspections for most of his adult life. A Building Official generally oversees Building Inspectors, but in Floyd County, Jimmy Whitten does it all.

He has an open door policy from 8 to 9 in the morning when people can come in and ask questions or discuss problems.

This is especially valuable for the do-it-yourself homebuilder, but I had a experienced contractor working on my house who spoke approvingly of this practice because he said this enabled him to keep up with changes to the building codes and figure out a solution to any problem.

Jimmy also does house plan reviews in which he goes over the house plans with customers. Other places offer plan reviews, but they are done when the customer is not present.

For example, someone wishing to build a straw bale home would find that there is nothing in the code for a straw bale home but there is provision for alternate building methods. Working with Jimmy Whitten, a builder of such a home would find that there are approved ways to meet all requirements using performance-based building codes.

There are all sorts of alternative methods available for home construction including cord and cob houses. Whether it is an  original architectural design or a plan from purchased over the Internet, Jimmy, as the Building Official, makes sure that the final result is a strong, safe and waterproof home that meets the codes in every respect.

Jimmy has also made sure that the current building codes are kept on file in the Jessie Peterman Library so that anyone who wants the information can go to the Library.

If someone wants to build in Floyd County, they can find the entire permit application on the County web page http://www.floydcova.org/ and can download it and fill it out before submitting it. The application includes vital information on recent code changes, what the building inspection will cover and how to get electric service from AEP..

In addition, the County web site refers customers to www.iccsafe.org, the website of the International Code Council  which is a master reference for all aspects of the International Codes, including performance-based building codes which deal with alternative materials, design and methods of construction.

If you are visiting Floyd this Fall, read this...

I am getting more email every week from future immigrants who ask how to make the most of their upcoming visits to Floyd. Some of them have already bought land in Floyd or in the nearby counties and are now bringing relatives here to share their discovery.

For those of you who are considering country life, here is a quick take on how to decide whether Floyd is for you and you are right for Floyd:

1. Check out my website Discover Floyd County. It is a quick overview on some of the factors I found important about country living. 

2. When you bring your family or friends to Floyd, you need to have them wander the streets of Floyd on foot and to visit a few key locations to get a feeling for the lifestyle and ambiance that is Floyd. Make sure that you all talk to everyone you meet.

3. Have them visit the following places and have them ask people about Floyd and how it is to live and work here. If your friends are planning to open a business here at some point, the questions will be different of course.

In no particular order, visit these places:

-Cafe del Sol (several times - in the morning especially)
-The Jacksonville Center, in the afternoon and ask about the classes
-The Bell Gallery - admire the art and Darcie's Kittens
-Oddfellas Cantina on Saturday night or for the Sunday Brunch
-The Over the Moon Gallery and Coffee Shop for lunch and on Friday Nights

-The Blue Ridge Restaurant for breakfast any day and take note that this is the only restaurant open on Mondays and Tuesdays except for Subway and Hardees.

-The Floyd Country Store for lunch and on Friday Nights for the Friday Night Jamboree.

-Visit the Harvest Moon Food store and compare to the Sweet Providence Farm Market on Hwy 221 Northeast of Floyd.

-Visit the Winter Sun which houses the Cafe del Sol and a soon to open Mexican Restaurant. Explore the galleries and studios downstairs. The artists in the Art Under the Sun Studio and Gallery can give you more tips on cultural and other attractions for those moving to Floyd.

-Eat at the Pine Tavern and enjoy family-style food service and hospitality.

-Browse the Farmer's Supply Hardware store next to the stoplight in Floyd.

-Buy hardware or supplies at Wills Ridge Supply off North Rte 8 on Lumber Rd and stop in and check out the Bread Basket bakery on the way to or from Wills Ridge Supply.

-Browse Slaughter's Market and Garden Supply (two stores). Check out the Food Lion

-Stop in at The Pickin' Porch and chat with working musician Scott Perry and admire his vintage and homegrown acoustic instruments.

-If health issues are a problem, ask about practitioners, doctors, dentists, etc. There are a few locally, but most people go to Christiansburg or Blacksburg for treatment.

-For information about local real estate, you might contact Julie Arrington, a friend of ours. There are others, but their names escape me at the moment. I will add them later.

-The Chamber of Commerce Office is staffed by friendly volunteers and they can provide a wealth of information about the area also.

-Visit Mabry Mill  and the Overlooks on the Parkway for scenic beauty. See also the Morrisette Winery and the Villa Appalaccia Winery.

Drive the country roads around Floyd County and drink in the scenery, but look carefully at the range of accommodations on almost every back road. We have beautiful views but we also have residents who don't just accumulate cars in their yards, some of them collect school buses.

Rural living is not tidy lawns and gated enclaves. It is hard-working people struggling to make a go of it however they can. They are good people and make wonderful neighbors. You just have to decide whether you will fit in and make a welcome addition to the mix.

A lot of Some talented people have come to Floyd and reluctantly decided that LA or DC or KC was where they needed to be, and they left after a few years of trying to make a go of it here.

Country life in a small-town environment makes a few demands on you and the most important is that you need to be the kind of person who makes haste slowly and are willing to understand and work with the many groups that make this county what it is today.

Those who are comfortable with themselves will do well here. You can change Floyd, but living in Floyd will probably change you more than you realize.

Please take note of the following, as it can be a real deal-killer for someone planning to move to Floyd:

Plan on bringing your job with you or be ready to invest in a local business because we don't have a robust economy yet.

We need self-starters who will find ways to serve this growing community with goods and services that are needed.

If you have other questions, please send me an email and I will be happy to meet you at the Cafe Del Sol where we can chat. I may be able to introduce you to people who really know what is going on. I am always interested in meeting people who can contribute to the energy that is building here in Floyd County.

You should also read our local Floyd County bloggers to get a multi-dimensional view of life in this county. They make excellent reading and will give you valuable tips for understanding Floyd.

• Blue Ridge Muse
• Fragments From Floyd
• Loose Leaf Notes
• Oh Papa Blues Blog
• Dark Chocolate, Red Wine

Then and Now

A few years ago we began to tire of endless daily meetings, high density living conditions, and 2 hour commutes and decided to leave Silicon Valley and head East, me hoping to begin a post corporate career as a writer/woodworker and Gretchen to continue her corporate career as
a telecommuting Senior Project Manager.
For us, the party was definitely over.

We held our final yard sale, and disposed of car, furniture and exercise equipment. Then we took one last look down our long street of tiny houses with tiny yards and drove across America to a new future.

We settled in an idyllic lakeside community called Lake Monticello, a few miles away from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

We enjoyed the peace and quiet after San Jose, but decided after a few years that we weren't cut out for the idyllic life in a gated community.

I fed the deer, which was against the rules, and worked in my workshop at all hours of the day and night, which was also against the rules. I wanted to build a bigger workshop, but that would have also been against...well, you get the idea.

Nice neighbors, friendly kids, but a development that started as a rustic retirement dream was morphing into a neatly groomed suburban bedroom community like the ones you find outside almost every city of any size.

Except for the size of the yards, it was beginning to feel like our old neighborhood shown in the second picture above.

We decided we were done with bedroom communities and we went exploring to find a place with plenty of landscape and industrial strength high speed Internet connections. We found what we wanted in Southwest Virginia.

This is not everyone's cup of tea, which is fortunate, as this unique and colorful county would otherwise be overrun with new settlers. This particular area has great scenery, lots of local talent but only a handful of job openings, so it is wise to bring your own business, preferably one that brings money into the county from the world outside.

This is an ideal place to live if you do business over the Internet. If you are a writer, or a CEO of a virtual corporation, or a knowledge worker, you have instant access to everywhere and you can watch cows while you have morning coffee on your deck.

If you are up to the rigors of country living, you can have the best of both worlds. You have daily access at the local coffee shops to people with fresh ideas and lots of business savvy, while through the Internet you stay connected to your old business partners and clients.

Country living means wells and septic fields and emergency generators and woodpiles and all sorts of things you do not concern yourself with when you live in a city. You keep your pets inside at night so they don't get eaten by coyotes.

It also gets dark at night as there are no street lamps and your nearest neighbor may be a mile away. This shot was taken just after sundown and I captured the moon and the last rays of the day.

The beauty and the isolation are acquired tastes and not for everyone. Some new settlers stay only a few months and find they miss the press of humanity and the all-night deli's. We find the quiet space around us gives us more time for creating.

We found this to be kind of community where there are a lot of  opportunities to serve the community in some capacity plus there is ready access to professional training in the arts.

We have seen new settlers dive immediately into service work such as rescuing animals from being put down or joining Amateur Radio Emergency Services. Gretchen and I became involved in the arts and in the local library association.

Many of the people we know have farms and a job or a career as an artisan. These are not gentlemen farmers as they raise food for their families, but manage to be contractors or musicians or painters as well, or potters, or woodworkers, or even teachers. It is not unusual to meet someone who has four jobs, so you soon get the idea that this is an area where personal industry is recognized and rewarded.

The net result for us is that we are probably working longer at more challenging tasks than when we were "employed" but we have more freedom and more opportunity for self-expression than ever before.

This last may be a result of the fact that when you are surrounded by self-employed and self-motivated people, there is this tremendous synergy which results in you getting inspired to explore new ideas and new business opportunities every day.

We do not yet have a significant base of industry for economic development of the conventional kind, but we may be reaching the tipping point as far as having enough talent in the area to achieve critical mass for a creative economy, which is the business of making money from ideas.

Construction is not over until the dumpster leaves

Construction on our new house and workshop has finally come to a halt. Our contractors have departed and we can occasionally enjoy a few minutes of deck time.

This is one of our favorite spots in the house. We have a 180 degree view of several different mountain ranges and are being visited by a growing number of curious birds and animals. A morning coffee is a grand reward for all of the work we put in, and we savor every minute we get to spend out here.

Life is quite different and calmer than when I was bringing down the last moving van load in late January.

In the ensuing months our contractors completed our back deck and laid down a hardwood floor in the house with a tiled entranceway which serves as a civilized sort of mudroom. This opened the way for us to set up furniture, hang drapes, and generally get things shipshape.

The house is really comfortable and we have settled down to a regular routine of locating the last few boxes which haven't been unpacked and getting things put away where they can be useful.

The workshop looks like a real building now that the siding has been put on and it has heat, hot water and a fully operational bathroom with a shower.

Gretchen and I waited until the contractors left and called in our excavation contractor to pick up the last of the construction debris with a Bobcat. There was so much left that he topped off the dumpster.

The dumpster people came and the driveway is now clear. Our attention is now focused on getting the workshop ready for business. That is the last hurdle to overcome and will probably be a post in itself.

My solution so far has been to erect an array of metal shelves along the back wall of the workshop, with each shelf dedicated to a specific kind of storage: fasteners, small tools, paints, jigs and fixtures, sub-assemblies, etc.

Unfortunately, there are too many bins of "stuff" that don't fit into my neat set of categories, so I have to modify my storage technique on the fly. Fortunately, Gretchen is an incredible organizer and she is able to guide me through this otherwise traumatic period of settling in.

We expect to be up and fully operational by Monday, but that will probably involve donating a lot of spare equipment and boxes of household items to our favorite local charity. That is the only way we will create enough space for me to produce custom woodworking designs efficiently.

In the past, I fell into the trap of working in too little space and it doubled and even tripled the man hours required to complete construction of complex pieces. I spent more time moving things out of my way than I did working. I was able to get the work done, but it took too much time to set things up for  each new operation. Since I was working on fixed-price contracts, I was putting in a lot of time that I was not getting paid for.

Getting a larger workshop was one of the driving forces behind the move to Floyd. Now that we are here, we are putting everything we have into getting ready for production. Work is already coming in from new clients so there is no time to waste.

You have to be careful what you wish for. I wanted design work and I am getting it. That is probably going to cut into my deck time...unless I figure out a way to bring a drawing board and a computer out on the deck.

Anyway, that is a problem for next week. This weekend I will be cleaning and organizing the Augean Stables and turning them into a functioning workshop.

If anyone has a sure-fire method of squeezing more space out of a workshop, I would sure like to hear your suggestions. I need all the ideas I can round up.

Building/moving to a new home - day 127

Once more with feeling

You may have wondered if I'd forgotten how to blog. Such is not the case at all. I spent the last three days driving this 27 foot U-haul moving van and have not been able to post.

Here is the van in profile. It is every bit as big as it looks.

We made a decision last week to bring the rest of our belongings to Floyd so we wouldn't have to pay another month's rental on three storage units. A round-trip rental of a U-haul moving truck was actually cheaper than a one-way rental.

I picked up the moving van in Roanoke and managed to figure out the five-speed stick shift before I had gone too many blocks. After twenty miles of stoplights, I was up-shifting and down-shifting without having to think about it. The fact the my first leg would be driven empty made it much less stressful.

The hardest part to learn was to allow enough room when I made turns or drove into a filling station. I didn't hit anything, but I had a few near-misses until I got used to the width of the truck and the enormous turning radius.

Finding stations that sold diesel fuel for trucks was another adventure entirely. You can't just cruise into a station and check out the pumps when your truck is more than 30 feet long and requires 12 feet of overhead clearance.

Several times I saw Diesel signs but the pumps were set up for automobiles and small trucks only. I finally found my supply of Diesel fuel by looking for beat-up filling stations with large driveways and high canopies. Once I knew what to look for, I spotted these diesel stations on the outskirts of every industrial area I passed.

The loading and unloading of household goods went almost like clockwork. I had enlisted teams of helpers at each end of the run. It took three and a half hours to load the truck in Palmyra and three hours to unload the truck in Floyd.

Driving back with a full load of household goods revealed every quirk of the old van. It had 239,000 miles on it and the steering was not as tight as it once was. After a while I got so I could anticipate how it would handle various road conditions, so it wasn't as wearing as it might have been.

The entire drive was done under severe wind conditions. The warnings from the weather bureau were not exaggerated from the damage I saw in the pine forests I passed. In one stand of pines, about 5 percent of the pines had been snapped off about a dozen feet above the ground while an equal amount had been blown over. The crosswinds were strong enough to sway the van so I watched my speed carefully.

The trickiest part of the entire drive was negotiating the last few miles of country lanes. Winding roads that I normally flew over in the Dodge van required careful driving to avoid severe lurching in the moving van. The country lanes follow the terrain faithfully. Every bump, hollow and swerve are duplicated in asphalt. When you drive a large truck full of fragile equipment and furnishings, the road assumes a far more menacing aspect.

My unfinished driveway presented the most formidable challenge of all. Several trenches have been dug across the drive for power, water and electricity. Every one of the trenches has collapsed to some extent because they were dug and refilled when the ground was frozen. Every subsequent thaw causes the earth to subside. Driving over these sunken trenches was the final test and fortunately nothing fell over or was broken.

As I write this, all of our worldly goods have been moved to Floyd, everything has been stored away safely, and we are sitting in front of our fire surrounded by sleeping cats. We have weeks, perhaps months, of unpacking and finish work to do, but we have essentially completed this building/moving to a new home phase of our lives that began about four months ago.

Thanks to all who have followed this adventure and have offered their best wishes and support. I hope that this narrative has been useful to those planning a similar move. We have put in a lot of hours but the results have far exceeded our expectations. We have learned a lot during this experience and hope that your moves go as well. If you have questions I have not answered, feel free to send me an email and I will do my best to get you a useful answer.

Our future projects in our new home will appear in the category Country Living.