Parking is bad, but we have one car and a parking space behind the house. I think I may take up skateboarding, it looks like a good way to get around here. I don't get out of this area much. Been here since November, and drove on the highways maybe 3 or 4 times since.
Hey I get it, central Oreogn is beautiful (just ignore that unemployment rate). But you can't compare resturants in Central Oregon to San Francisco. For that matter you can't compare perfroming arts or the exposure to all the different cultures. I'm pretty sure the reason the the Elks are the biggest sports team is because a pro franchise wouldn't survive there (and not because people are "living the dream"). But again, beautiful part of the country. We just had a lunch debate about if you could have the same job in central oregon, would you relocate . . . more than half of the people discussing it would.
Ouch . . . that eats my heart out. I forgot how much I missed it there. Oh well, as I tell my friends: I would rather be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. Well I'm still a little fish, I just look bigger in this little Portland pond.
Maris, Bend made the front page of the Oregonian this last weekend. they didn't paint a pretty picture: But central Oregon has become the Middle Earth of unemployment -- at 17 percent, Bend suffers the second-highest rate among metro areas nationally -- as retirees scramble for work and homeless people supplant outdoor enthusiasts. "Bend is going to get tarred with this brush as a symbol of greed and excess," says local lawyer Michael McGean, who once worked real estate deals and now represents victims of development scams. "I don't think it's really fair. It's not all carpetbaggers." Fair or not, Bend -- the nation's sixth-fastest-growing metro area early this decade -- soared the highest and crashed the hardest of any community in Oregon. The city's volcanic housing market of just a few years ago has collapsed into a sea of foreclosures, bankruptcies and plant closures. Joggers range through overbuilt subdivisions that resemble upscale ghost towns. Evicted homeowners turn in pets at the Humane Society. A 9-year-old boy named Joseph finds refuge with his family at the Bethlehem Inn, an EconoLodge converted into a homeless shelter. Julie Tapia holds her son Mojave Bain, born in December, as his father, Matthew Bain, organizes furniture with her son Joseph Logan in their storage unit. Tapia and Bain, both unemployed, have found refuge with the children at Bethlehem Inn, a Bend motel converted to a homeless shelter."We've been on the spiral down to homelessness for about a year," says Joseph's mother, Julie Tapia, who praises the shelter's staff. "They have worked to alleviate the stress so I can concentrate on finding a job and a place to live." http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/05/after_storybook_boom_bend_face.html Are you seeing any of this?
Chicago is great but the girls are kind of ugly (but really easy). Get out of the city, its Suburban Hell.
Yeah, it all depends on what is most important to each person. I've been living in Palo Alto and Mountain View. I agree with what you say we get for weather here, and I still claim that we don't have real seasons here. This is actually exactly my point. You have to drive to Tahoe for skiing. In the ski season that can take 6-10 hours each way because of traffic. Yosemite takes a long time to drive there, and is incredibly crowded. The East Bay is a joke, and a dump. When I lived in Central Oregon, I could be from my house to snow skiing in 45 minutes. I could be from my house to an empty lake and wakeboarding in 45-60 minutes. I could be from my house to an empty hunting spot in 30-45 minutes. I could be from my house to world-class rocking climbing in 20 minutes. There really is absolutely no comparison between Central Oregon and the Bay Area when it comes to outdoor activities. It isn't close.
I've lived a lot of places, and I think Oregon has ruined me. For example, I live part of the year in Denver--in the opinion of many, a place high on the livibility scale--and I can't wait to get back to the Willamette Valley. I went hiking this past weekend around Chicago Creek and the entire hike I was thinking, "This would be really beautiful if they got as much rain as we did in Portland". I mean the scenery is jaw-dropping, something right out of a John Denver song, and I was still pining for the Pacific Northwest. And blazerboy hits the nail on the head. It's not that we don't have access to great nature here, it's just not as close or convenient as it is in Oregon. It's crazy to think that within a couple of hours you can be on the coast, whitewater rafting, on a mountain, in a rainforest or in a desert.
Funny to me to hear complaints about the crowds in the Bay Area and San Diego and how superior Oregon is. I left Oregon after living there for seven years because I just couldn't stomach how crowded it always felt. (Well, the rain really, really sucked too.) Every trail that's a reasonable drive away seems to have a parking lot jammed with cars. You can't piss in the woods without somebody coming around the corner. I get really claustrophobic just visiting Portland every couple of months. Constantly sandwiched in by people, buildings--even a murky gray sky for 9 months of the year. The "freeways" are a river of headlights and a river of rain in the winter. Living back in Boise, it really does feel like "big sky" country (although that's technically Montana--but hey, we're both mountain states nobody ever thinks about, so I doubt they'll mind me appropriating it.) There are too many redneck idiots here, but I know I can drive a half hour out of town and go duck hunting in the winter. And unlike Suavie's Island, I don't have to reserve a duck blind 8 months in advance (LOL!)
Good lord, with all the out of state plates here (Calif., Oregon, Washington, Florida) I have been seeing here lately, it must be the Midwest. A ton of cool places are within driving distance when you're smack in the middle of the country.
I will say one thing about Oregon, though--I really miss the ocean. I'm taking the family for a week in Waldport in early August, and it can't come soon enough. My son brought a starfish from last year's trip to preschool show-and-tell. Dude had the proudest grin I've ever seen when I picked him up. A lot of his classmates probably won't see an ocean for five or six years....
Portland Oregon . . . one of the few places you can surf in the morning and go sking that same day/night.
This pretty much says it all for me. I've been to and lived in several places in the country as well as around the world and I have yet to find a place quite like Oregon.
