Imagine booking a tour package for New York City that includes a “trip to the top of the Empire State Building!”

Now imagine being dumped off at the curb, gazing up in distraction as the cab screams away behind you, smell of burning rubber filling your nostrils, doorknob still in your hand. Your backpack is in the backseat; cell phone also.

You manage to find a payphone and call the tour company and ask to be picked up, having given up on seeing the Statue Of Liberty at eye level.

That’s when they tell you “hey…we got you there…the rest is up to you” as you hear the sounds of shutters locking and chairs being hastily folded in the background.

Translation: The title company sold us a supposed easement that is actually a forest service road crossing a remote portion of our property. The property is six-hundred-feet wide there with an average slope of 50%. It’s also collapsing into old mine tunnels.

We can’t build a real access road into the property from there – to the minerals – to the other forty acres. We are landlocked. The title company says curbside service is fine.

This is a mineral patent that comes with a strong bundle of rights that includes the ability to develop the resources – so they’re wrong. We have some legal issues to clear up now because we also discovered that we have our own road that leads directly to the mine that they didn’t tell us about.

In the meantime, it’s backpacks and cardio – and the meter’s running.

Can you say damages?