I told a friend I was headed to the Midwest to measure concrete pads.
That was the actual job.
My partners and I were trying to buy a mobile-home park in Columbia, Missouri. We had gone from looking at listings and debating whether the idea was real to trading purchase-agreement revisions with lawyers.
The agreement was still not finished. Seller schedules were incomplete. We had already bought flights for our first site inspection because the original plan called for closing before the end of the year, and changing the trip this close to the holidays was going to be expensive.
So we went.
The diligence list was very specific: measure the vacant lots, inspect the park in more detail, update our rough site surveys, and interview the current manager. We had spreadsheets for the rent roll and the park-owned homes. We were still waiting for part of the prior-year information.
Lunch was set for 12:30 in a small office. The choices were a BLT and turkey with provolone. The manager was joining us so we could walk through the records, and I asked for the current-year income and expense report so we could review that together while we were in town.
The useful part of the visit was not glamorous. We walked between homes under big trees, looked at utilities, checked the empty lots, and took photographs of things like a concrete ring sitting in the grass beside the road.
This was what the side project looked like away from a browser. The listing had become a purchase agreement. The purchase agreement had become sandwiches, spreadsheets, and measurements on the ground.
We did not own the park. We did not even have the final agreement yet. But we had made the flight, met the people running it, and started the diligence. The next job was getting our side of the agreement signed.