Blog

Sunday, September 26, 2004

My name is Jim Wilcox. I own an expanding Ohio, USA, based Midwestern rural residential and recreational land business called Countrytyme. We buy and develop large sites for homes, cabins, hunting, etc. Our first office was in Grove City, Ohio, near Columbus. Now we have seven in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Chillicothe, all in Ohio; as well as Louisville, Indianapolis and Charlotte. We will soon have a new Florida office in St. Augustine and one in the Georgia/Tennessee/North Carolina tri state area. The name of our business is Countrytyme. We buy about 75 rural properties per year, and we resell them in about 1000 “lots” of less than one acre to more than 100 acres.

We have 12 people out searching for beautiful land every day. They like to deal with Realtors, attorneys, landowners, companies, etc. – whatever it takes to find beautiful property at a fair price. Call me at 614-886-7730 if you know of such a property that might be for sale.

We have 21 people working on the resales of this land. If you have any difficulty with our system please call me at 614-886-7730 or 1-800-213-8365.

This is my first blog. I am writing this from Paraty, Brazil on the Atlantic coast between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. I am on a pseudo business trip with a couple of my friends in the same business as Countrytyme is in.

The language here is Portuguese, and very little English is spoken in Brazil. 80% of the population of 170 million is in the big cities. Sao Paulo and Rio are both in the huge city category. Sao is 17 million; Rio is 8 million, I hear.

It occurs to me that Countrytyme could offer our services here in Brazil, even though 94% of the population, or so, is in relative poverty. I figure we could deal with the other 6% for homesites or retreats when they get a hankering to come out in the country.

The summers here are blistering hot. Rio is on the Tropic of Capricorn line. The winters are very warm, and 60 degrees Fahrenheit is about as low as it can go. Now, in the US, in the hottest climates, those who can often “head for the hills” to get the benefit of cool breezes in the mountains. Here it is the opposite. They head for the beaches in the summer (100 degrees) and head for the mountains in the winter to “feed the cold.”

Brazil is known for many things, but since I am from the farm, I know they grow soybeans here in competition with the US. They have a huge soybean crop here, several times the US crop. There are even hundreds of American born farmers down here raising soybeans. It costs about $250 per acre to clear out the trees. They are like the farmers in the US who were “pioneers” in the days of Daniel Boone.

If we were to open a brokerage office here, as well as a land development office, we would no doubt get into the sale of bean land to American farmers.

But, I haven’t seen a soybean since I came to Brazil Tuesday. We are on the coast in a small tourist city known in Brazil for island excursions, boating, fishing and diving. Last night (Saturday) they had a big music festival and there must have been 100 huts and 50 stores open for tourist trash. Around here it is trees and cows with a few goats. We are in the south end of Brazil, while the soybeans are raised north of here in the central part of Brazil.

Paraty is a little town with cobblestones and horses. It seems a little like Venice, Italy, with the water drained out. Apparently in a high tide the water can cover up the street. I feel like calling the EPA down from Washington, because there is no visible sewage plant. I think the action of the ocean flushes the town out.

Trent, one of my companions on this trip, is here in Brazil to buy some used pinball machines for resale one by one in the US. As an aside on the trip we were “lucky” to get invited to a private pinball machine club in Rio yesterday to play on 25 machines hidden away upstairs in a secret warehouse. There are 5-6 owners of these machines that keep them for their private amusement. These are relics of a previous era before Japan took over the electronic game business. Now it is the Internet. But some people look back to their teenage days when pinball was IT.

Here in Brazil no one has heard of the “Buckeyes,” or the Reds.” Nor do they care. The big sport is football (soccer), and the big new sport is volleyball. The Brazil men won the gold in Athens this year. At the Copacabana Beach, there is a world tournament going on there now (regional playoff).

Kerry is the big favorite here in Brazil, as Bush is too unilateral and aggressive for the majority of the international community. However, everyone suspects Kerry would not be much better. It seems that the world would like to elect as US president a slippery character that could outfox the terrorists. Maybe I have the same dream?

One last story. In Rio we were accosted by an aging prostitute on the street near our hotel, the Merlin Copacabana. She made an obscene gesture and grabbed me. I tore loose and took off. She chased me for several blocks, and confronted me two more times. Apparently she is past the age of education, so she is paid to retreat, as she is a pest. The next day, she accosted me again from behind, so I decided to leave my two companions with her, and I took off running at full speed. After about 100 yards, I looked back expecting to see my two companions trying to avoid her. Much to my surprise they were right behind me, exhausted and breathing hard from the emergency retreat.

And so it goes in Brazil.