Got to see somebody die today. Makes you think...

[Michael K.]

So today I was sitting in my office. Today is a normal day that began way too early, saw me put over 100 miles on my car, and then back and forth between my office and too many places. Office Max for an ink cartridge that actually WORKED, the post office to pick up a package, some crap gas station to pay a crap sum for crap overpriced food, hours jawing on my phone with more people than I care to remember, listening to a client demand last minute changes to showings that took forever to set up...

...just another day that started at 5:30 am and still hasn't ended.

Then I heard a screech and a thud. Looking out my office window, I saw a SUV with a dent, a motorcycle on its side, a van with a dented rear bumper, and someone laying in the road. I joined a chorus of others frantically calling 911.

The ambulances came, one person per ambulance. The SUV driver, a woman, walked to one ambulance. She was fine, just shaken. The van driver, also a woman, was helped to another ambulance by two paramedics. The motorcycle driver, a man, was NOT moving. Four paramedics carefully placed him on a stretcher and loaded him into a third ambulance. The Flight for Life helicopter was cleared to land in an area bowling alley's parking lot.

It quickly landed and took off less than three minutes later.

None of the ambulances moved.

None of them have moved for over an hour. But I just watched as a nondescript red minivan slowly pulled forward. A magnetic sign on the door says "Medical Examiner - Transfer Vehicle."

The motorcycle is a cruiser, an older one. Maybe very late 1970s or early 1980s. Foreign. Maybe a Honda, Yamaha, or Kawasaki. Definitely not a Brit, though. I'd estimate that the bike was worth $3k, give or take, before being rear-ended and pushed into a van.

This guy was alive a little more than two hours ago. Don't know how his life was, if he was happy or mad or whatever. But he was alive and headed down the avenue on a motorcycle. Now his corpse is taking a ride downtown to meet the coroner.

We, as real estate investors, DO have a swagger about us that's unmatched by most others. Can't explain it, but few people can match the swagger and bravado of true real estate investors. Unfortunately, we're all going to end up just like the motorcyclist laid out inside of the coroner's van parked outside of my office. It won't be for the same reason. Hopefully it won't be so quickly. (He didn't look like an elderly man.)

So tell me. Can you honestly look at it all and say that you're totally headed in the right direction? Where you TRULY want to be? And when you're dead and being trucked off to a mortuary, what will people say? What will they say a year later? Two? Five? Ten?

I've been asking myself that for the last hour or so. I can't say that I'm so happy about all of the honest answers that have come to mind.

Mike