When we finally decided to build an airplane we went through the normal back and forth of looking at the hundreds of possiblities. I had flown the normal bottom end Cessna stable of 150's, 152's, 172's and a 175. After all at one time my dad was in charge of production on several of those models in Wichita. But still I wanted more.
Jan and I love to travel and we tend to pack heavy. We had also discovered the joy of being humbled by playing golf, so the ability to carry our golf clubs was important. Over time I ended up looking at the Cozy design. I joined the email list once I found Marc Zeitland's 'Unofficial Cozy Builders' web site. I studied the FAQ on Nat Puffer's (the designer) web sitel CozyAircraft.com.
At the time the designer Nat Puffer was embroiled in a legal fight ... I really wasn't sure if at any point in time the fabeled plans for the Cozy would go off of the market. So even though I really wasn't ready to start building I bought the plans. My plans number is:
I was living in a north Dallas suburf at the time called Plano. I was already an EAA member so I hooked up with one of the local EAA chapters, Chapter 1246 just up teh road in McKinney, Tx. It was there that I met a great guy by the name of Mike Pollock. Mike had built a Velocity that he flew while he was building a Cozy. Mike invited me over to his shop and proceeded to show me how to do a tape layup in his fuse. He even told Jan which Epoxy pump to get me for a Christmas present. What an exciting Christmas - this was incredibly exciting stuff 
As a matter of fact - one of my email posts actually made it onto Nat Puffer's CozyAircraft web site on the 'Why build a Cozy' page. Of course the topic of my post was recommending that you just get started building. Well I've long since forgotten how long ago it was that I wrote that post but here we are now - opps I'm skipping ahead.
A few weeks later Mike called up one afternoon to see if Jan and I wanted to go out for a $100 hamburger ride. 'Hell Yes!" So we met up at Mike's hanger at McKinney (TKI). We flew over to east Texas and the ride was incredible. Smooth flying, no stall, beautiful unique flying aircraft - what more could you want? Jan and I both fell in love!
It was off to Oskosh! We met Jan's folks there and proceeded to have fun! We hit the Velocity tent every day and tried not to drool too much. We looked at Van's, Lancair's, Glasairs, met Nat and saw his Cozy. It was a great time!
When we got back home, the magic of Oshkosh dimmed a little and reality started swimming into my mind we realised as much as we wanted a Velocity the kit price was just out of our reach (for this lifetime anyway). Then we made an immediate left hand turn, switched to the darks side and bought the empannage kit of an RV9.
This was fun! Tab A into Slot B everything fit. If it didn't - you goofed! While this was fun the sub-kits were still somewhat expensive (then around $5,000 a kit after the emp). I was still in love with the canard and four passenger, load hauling just seemed to fit with what we wanted to do better. Van's was coming out with a four passenger kit called the RV10. At the time even Van didn't know what the kit price was going to be. As the emp started nearing it's completion I decided to stall, hoping I'd be able to afford the RV10 kit. Eventually, the prices were firmed up and this like the Velocity was out of my reach.
Meanwhile the plans for the Cozy sat on the top of a book shelf. Life rolled on and soon we found ourselves moving to Santa Fe, NM. We love the high mountain desert. Jan was born and raised here. It was coming home for her. Her folks still lived here so we had visited many times. Each time we headed back to Dallas we'd spend the first hour of the trip wondering how we could move back to New Mexico. Then one day it just happened. Anyway, Santa Fe is considerably more expensive than Dallas was so even finishing the RV9 seemed unlikly.
One day I was sitting around thinking about building and I went and grabbed the Cozy plans and started to revisit them. There seemed to be a lot more support on the web for the Cozy now. Marc's site was still up as was his email list but in addition there were a lot more builders web sites up as well. Along with forums and wiki's.
There were exciting new innovations being done by builders on the original design and people were supporting each other doing them.
Let's see, I could follow in the footsteps of others, I could have the same kind of support community that the Van's series was famous for and I could buy pieces parts as I can afford them. It's a four passenger (well as long as the two in teh back are small). Ok I don't really plan on flying four people all the time, but we do like to travel and we tend to pack heavy. It's fast so all of those places I want to go to and people I want to visit on both coasts are accessible. I don't have to take my shoes and belt off at the airport, I don't have to arrive two hours early, I don't get prodded with an electronic beeper, hmmm... This is a done deal.
We're finally Cozy builders!