At the beginning of the chapter, Eric presents us his friend Craig Baggott. Eric sees Craig as a happy cheerful man who does not worry too much about life. Craig is the one who has first talked to Eric about Miami’s dockominiums. A dockominium is simultaneously a dock and a condominium. For Eric, dockominiums are genius inventions because they combine the frivolity of private boats and the commitment of real estate investment. The author is appealed by the happy, carefree and pleasurable life he imagines in dockomiums.
Eric thinks that Miami is a nice place to make a new beginning after the many years he spent outside his natal country, so he and his wife decide to do a reconnaissance visit. When Eric steps out of Miami’s airport, he feels…show more content… They tried to convince them with the threat of the unbearably hot Christian hell, but Greenlanders merrily chose hell, that seemed more pleasant than their Arctic tundra. In the same way, Eric’s friend Andy, who is also his neighbour in Miami, cannot stand to live there anymore. After twenty-two years, his paradise became his hell, mostly because of hurricanes like the destructive Hurricane Andrew that hit the Miamian coast a few decades ago, the virtual absence of seasons and the cultural discomfort he experienced. Indeed, a lot of Latinos live in Miami, so Spanish became a very used language over there. In addition, Andy finds Miamians rude, so he decided to move to Asheville, a small city of seventy thousand inhabitants, located in the mountains of North Carolina.
Andy loves Asheville because of the mountains all around, the presence of four seasons, the feeling of peace he experiences over there, and the size of the town, that is big enough to have a great arts scene and a lot of restaurants, but also small enough to avoid big-cities disturbances. Andy is afraid that too many people might also discover Asheville and move there
