The "Air Chalet" Story

At the end of the 2006 ski season, my wife and I rented a place in Big Bear that claimed to be "walking distance" from the slopes.  We were very disappointed to find out that they considered a 2+ mile hike to be "walking distance".  Have you ever tried hiking 2 miles in your ski or snowboarding gear, carrying your equipment, dodging traffic, trying to avoid slipping on the ice, sliding into the creek, etc?  We were also disappointed to find that the "private spa" was only half full and had dirty, smelly water, the oven had a gas leak that made the house stink, there was a plumbing leak that drained most of the hot water from the water heater, and numerous other problems.  In fact, the maintenance people were there so often during our stay that we offered to set up the 2nd room for them.  They weren't amused.  Neither were we, frankly.  We felt ripped off! 

After all of that mayhem, we were still sold on the concept of being able to stay in a nice, private house in Big Bear on our ski vacation, and we really liked the idea of being able to walk to the slopes, as advertised.  We just hadn't found what we were looking for. So, while we were still in Big Bear, we decided we'd drive around with a realtor to try to get a feel for the area for future reference.  We had no intentions of buying on that visit, but we had it in our heads that we could do this ski cabin rental thing the right way, after all, people really love our Lake Havasu Vacation rental property.  They tell us so in the guest book all the time.  So, we picked a friendly realtor and told him that we were just looking, and that we just wanted to get a feel for the area.  After looking at properties for most of the day, we were extremely disappointed at what we saw up there.  Most of the houses were old, run down, and depressing...  Finally, towards the end of the day, after we'd almost given up hope, we came across this neat little chalet-style fixer-upper.  We were excited to discover that we could walk down the street about 3 houses, cross the trail 10 yards to the left, and we were right there at the base of Bear Mountain Ski Resort.  Clearly the place needed some work, like most of the other houses we saw, but it had so much potential.   We pictured walking down the street, putting on our equipment, and just jumping on the chairlift.  We thought about how at lunchtime, we could go back to the house and warm up, using it as both a ski locker and a lunch restaurant.  It costs and arm and a leg for a beer and a sandwich on the mountain, not to mention the agony of trying to find a table on a crowded day, which I've always found far more frustrating than looking for a parking spot for the car.  Thinking about this house, we pictured being able to ski down to the place, have a healthy lunch and good beer waiting for us in the fridge, relax knowing that we didn't have to fight for a spot to sit and enjoy it, and then head back to the slopes energized and ready to enjoy the rest of the day.

Anyway, we talked a little bit about how it might get a bit noisy right next to the resort like that, but the thing is, even though the place was right next to the busy ski mountain, the house was in a quiet neighborhood, set way back and above the street.  It was spaced nicely from the other houses, and on a large lot, with a wilderness area for a backyard.  Back when the area was developed, the houses were built around a huge center lot that never sold, so now all the houses in this development share that center lot as their extended backyard.  You could have a picnic out there, gather firewood, sled down the gentle slope, build a snowman, feed the squirrels, etc.  The place was close to the slopes, yet still secluded.  Our interest began to peak, but this house still needed alot of work.  That was a serious consideration.  We speculated that the reason it hadn't sold at its listing price was the horrible color scheme the owners had selected.  It had fresh paint... fresh, ugly paint, as if they'd made an attempt to upgrade the home, but just didn't know how.  Both the inside and the outside of the house showed very poor taste. It took some imagination to see the potential in the place, but my wife is good in that department.  (A funny side note here is that we actually met some neighbors who told us that they referred to the place as chateau pupon, because of the mustard theme in the color scheme.  They stopped by later, after we bought the place, to thank us for repainting it and "restoring dignity to the neighborhood".  We had a good laugh.)
 
After a serious discussion about what it would take to fix the house up and make it look nice, we decided to buy.  That was in late April of 2006.  We had high hopes that escrow would close prior to the vacation we had planned, but things don't always go to plan.  We'd already paid for tickets and hotel reservations for Nicaragua, so we were heading down there whether escrow closed on time or not, and we told all parties involved. Anyway, things went wrong in escrow, as often happens, and it ran long.  We were actually in Nicaragua, in a 3rd world "internet cafe", in the middle of a torrential downpour, waiting for an email to download which would tell us whether escrow had closed properly or not, then, suddenly, the power for all of San Juan Del Sur just shut down (a frequent occurrence in a country like Nicaragua).  The lady at the internet cafe announced in Spanish that we had “tres minutos” left on the backup battery before the computers all shut down, so we needed to wrap it up.. tick tock tick tock... we waited, watching the hourglass icon on the screen with our fingers crossed, as this dial-up-speed connection chugged away.  Amazingly, at 2 minutes and 46 seconds, the email finally finished it's download, giving us just enough time to read that escrow had closed.  Then the entire room went dark, computers included, and we walked out into the muddy streets, happy.

After we got back from our trip, we spent most of the summer fixing the place up, agreeing to head up to the mountains every other weekend to work on it.  We hired help for some of the work, but we did a lot of the work ourselves.  Our upgrades included painting, decorating, changing the curtains, and flooring, etc, etc.  By the time we finished, we were completely exhausted.  It's tough doing so much labor at that altitude (see our article about dealing with altitude), but we were also very happy with the results.  We really put alot into making this house a great ski rental property, and we hope that you'll enjoy staying there as much as we do. 

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