Walking the streets of Indianapolis, Indiana, on an Autumn Sunday morning in 1987. Beautiful light for photography. The geometry of row houses along one street caught my eye.

When you tell friends you plan to bag the city and live full time in the country you run into a lot of head shaking and incorrect impressions.

“You won’t like it,” is often heard.

Wrong. I grew up in the country. I already like it. Amy grew up in the city but now loves country life.

“No places to eat.”

We crashed Friday afternoon. Crashed hard. After accepting the contract for sale of our condo Amy and I hit the sack…and slept…and slept…and slept some more.

A long six weeks getting this place cleaned out and sold. Although it was only on the market for four days the time leading up to getting it there was long, hard and tiring. You just can’t dispose of 23 years of living in a short amount of time.

We still have some things to do but the worst part is behing us. And, for the first time in weeks, we both got some rest.

With the sale of our home in Arlington scheduled to close on November 29, we turn our attention now to a new home in the Blue Ridge.

Do we build something new on the 105 acres we own at the Floyd-Carroll County line or do we buy an existing home from the many excellent choices that are on the market now?

Good questions. Do we spend the next six-to-eight months building exactly what we want or do with go the more immediate route of buying and rennovating to get what we we want?

Thanks to an out-of-control real estate market in Northern Virginia, we have the flexibility to make such a decision.

We will leave town on November 29 with enough financial security to make the decision that best serves our needs. But we’ve already made the most important decision, the one to call the mountains home once agin.

Ring the bell mama. We’re coming home.

Most of our friends said "congratulations" when we passed on the word that our condo in Arlington sold.

One didn’t.

"You’re a fool," he said. "You could have gotten more money if you had driven a harder bargain."

Perhaps, but how much is enough?

We’re making a 375 percent profit over what we paid for the condo in 1984.

Our Realtor is making good money out of her 6 percent, which averages out to more than $10,000 a day for four days work.

Our buyers, a couple who buys older condos and remodels them for resale, are getting a 30-year-old unit at a decent price and will be able to make money after they rennovate it and sell.

When we moved to Arlington from Illinois 23 years ago, we sold our three-story, four-bedroom circa 1835 townhouse for enough to pay off the mortgage and had just enough left over to make the down payment on the condo in Arlington, moving from a house with 3300 square feet to one with 1320 and financing it with what was — at the time — a bargain 12.5 percent mortgage.

That mortgage is paid off and long gone. We leave that condo and head for the mountains with enough money from the sale to build a new home of our dreams (around 3000 square feet) and still have twice as much left over.

Everybody is happy. Everybody makes money. Would dickering over a few thousand bucks add any satisfaction to the process?

Not from where we sit.