Jaye

If you want to trade just let me know, I am ready to get the heck out of Los Angeles County. That should give you my $0.02 for one of the locations on your list.

Grasschopper

Wait a min I guess I am late to the game. If part of the requirement here is to be near a major teaching medical center (and I might be wrong that that is part of the desire here) I would suggest Hershey PA. Hershy Med Center is there and you quickly get into the country for some great riding in any direction. Plus you are not far from Harrisburg and Philia isn't all that far off either. Hershey really is a sweet place

zotma

I'm not sure how Phoenix riding is but have you considered Tucson (not so hot, better IMO)? Either city there are plenty of good teams to race with, a good long race schedule, and plenty of good training months (if you don't mind some heat). PM me if you're interested in more info.

Gomez308

Let me know if you decide on Atlanta. I transport patients to Grady almost everyday.

alison_in_oh

I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I have compiled all the comments and will be making myself a pros and cons list this weekend. If you feel strongly about any of these places and want to help a gal out, I've got probably a month to finalize my preferences.

To those who suggested alternative locations, thanks! Always good to hear from somebody who likes their community enough to pimp it. But the limitations of finding a program for my husband to work in mean that the list I gave is probably the farthest afield we're going to look. That said, I'll take a second peek to make sure we're not missing out on anything in the cities you mentioned.

gcasillo

I'll respond to cities I've visited and know something about.

Phoenix: Also known as "little LA." Rapidly sprawling and getting uber-expensive. Between June-August, the heat is inhumane. Go there in late July. I dare you.

Atlanta: Sprawl, traffic. Fun town to visit, but I'd hesitate to relocate there.

New Orleans: Avoid like the plague. Great to visit once. Every subsequent visit, the place seems to get dirtier, smellier, smaller, and more dangerous. Almost got gunned down on Canal Street. Have since visited four times. I'm dumb. I was young.

St. Louis: Roadblock to the West! Second worst roads in Missouri trailing KC, MO. Therefore, the worst roads in the USA.

Charlotte: Now you're on to something. Just my personal preference, but there's enough small-town charm and humor in those cities near the Atlantic seaboard. Big city amenities without the relative expense. Worth a looksy.

Good luck. Moving can be a real *****, but then, I'm a major homebody.

Gregg

bigskymacadam

portland ranked third in forbes 'most overpriced places in the us' and it sure feels like it.

while i do love it here the taxes and housing are steep. mind you, we should get a break on taxes next year when multnomah county's school tax is off the books. howerver, the cycling here is the best. with nike hq being here there's huge support for fitness related activities. lots of hills to climb. great weather.

having lived in sacramento also, their economy seems to be continually booming.

Bauerthis

San Diego= Perfect weather 365 days, coast, mountains, surf, ski, ride...

DesertRoller

Sorry Greg - but if Phoenix is so inhumanely hot, why is it growing so fast?? You can keep your Kentucky humidity. You can't imagine how nice 95 degrees w/ 5% humidity feels like in May.

Alison - you need to consider Phoenix. Lots of bike shops. Lots of places to ride. If you don't like riding in the rain, consider 330 days of sunshine per year. For cross-training, skiing is a couple hours away in the winter. If you'd like a smaller town, Tucson is a good option. Lots of places to ride. Plus El Tour de Tucson is right there (just think - a Century in November when your friends are shovelling snow).

GOBforPresident

I can offer a few comments on Salt Lake and St. Louis.

SLC is similar to Denver in terms of sensibility, i.e. cycling and other outdoor recreation is generally looked at as a good thing. The road riding right in town is just so so, as the valley is really like a smooth bowl. Things tend to be either consistently flat (north-south) or consistently and progressively steep (heading east toward the canyons). Riding in nearby Summit county (Park City area) and vicinity is very good. The climate is at least as favorable as the likes of Sacramento and Denver. Unless you get socked in with an inversion, it doesn't get that cold in the winter and the snow tends to be lake effect that dumps primarily on the ski mountains 20 minutes from town.

If your experience in Cleveland has been good -- other than being tire of the cold -- you would prolly like St. Louis. The four winters I spent there were pretty mild compared with the upper midwest, and Missouri is chockablock with hilly, rolling two lane roads. The general attitude to cyclists is not very progressive and the number of cyclists you see on the road is not great, but my sense of the cycling subculture is that it is pretty avid. So I'd say overall the cycling scene is quality more than quantity. I don't really share the low opinion of the roads mentioned by an earlier poster.

beppe

No one's mentioned this yet, so what's city #15?

Personally, quality of life is more important the expenses -- i.e., I'd rather have a smaller place in a nicer city that a bigger place in a less interesting city -- so I'd prefer Seattle or Portland, or possibly L.A., Denver or Albuquerque.

Not a big fan of L.A., but despite the stereotypes otherwise, there is a lot of culture going on -- a sea change from Cleveland. (I did live near Cleveland for a time, so I'm not talking from ignorance.)

Steelrider

Don't know how into other forms of fun/recreation you might be into...have never actually lived in Sacramento, but have spent lots of time there and have some relatives there. They love it, and love how much their homes have appreciated even more. Lots of new/newer and beautiful suburbs and close-by communities so you don't have to live in Sacramento proper if you don't want to. Yep, there are a lot of places in the country experiencing a real estate "boom", but compared to CA, boom has generally been a relative term when talking other parts of the U.S. in terms of long-term, sustained increases in growth and valuation. Heck, even if you didn't end up staying, it'd likely be a great starting investment anywhere else in the country if you cashed out and moved. If there aren't opportunities in the SF Bay Area, Sacto is close to gold country, wine country, boating, Tahoe, skiing, near the center of lots of historically significant places in the CA and the West. Gets hot in the summer, but it's no Phoenix for sure. Good luck with your decision.

gcasillo

Touche. But you can keep your overnight lows in the 90's. The humidity is only a factor here when the temps run into the 90's, high 80's if you're soft. We might get 1-2 weeks of that intense combo of heat and humidity. At most. We had zero days in the 90's last year.

Otherwise, I ride year around provided the roads aren't buried under a foot of snow. Maybe one month's worth of weather I wouldn't dare go out in. On the other hand, I would hesitate making a regular go of it in 110F highs and 90F lows. You get three full months of that.

alison_in_oh

Very observant! It's Cleveland. Figured I didn't need any input on that one.

SpongeDad

I guess it depends somewhat on your residency specialty. Some of the more macho ones won't give you much time for anything, especially in surgery. A friend of mine couldn't believe that some of the residents at UCLA was being remarkably candid about divorce rates until she realized they were bragging.

That being said, I'd go for temperate climes. New Orleans is a cool city, but I can't imagine riding there in the summer (an zero hills). Of course, if you want to study tropical diseases, Tulane is the place.

alison_in_oh

Y'all are awesome. I shared my compilation with my hubby, and he was grateful that I did the legwork, so I of course have to pass the gratitude on! We've got a top 6 list I think, we'll rank them in order at some point this winter after interviews, but for now I think there's about a 98% chance that the cyclists in Charlotte, Portland, Sacramento, Fresno, Denver, or Phoenix will see us on the road by next summer.

By the way, barleyrocket good memory. We lived in Portland for 5 years and we have friends and family in the area still. OHSU is a great hospital, and it was one of DH's top choices for med school, but we'd heard that the emergency residency was nothing to write home about. But lately we've heard differently, it's got a pretty good reputation, so we'll keep looking into it -- it'd be great if we could just go "home" after all this fuss!

2Rodies

We left LA for two reasons, the cost of living (everything is too expensive) and there are just too many people. I was born and raised in LA and now when I go back I can't wait to leave. My wife and I were making almost 300k there and I still felt like I was lower middle class (income wise). We sold our 1900sqft home in three hours for 175k more than we paid for it 11 months earlier. Now we have a 3600sqft home for 1/3 the cost and my kids don't have to go to private schools.

The weather and riding is great in SoCal but that's about the only good thing about it. To many people and too much traffic along with air that you can see I'd skip it if I were you.

H2OChick

Oh no! You've already eliminated San Diego? But there wasn't a single negative comment! (Weeelll, except for that darn cost of living thing.) I'll add that it's basically triathlete mecca and you've got a huge percentage of the population into outdoor activities. Let me put it this way - when I hear folks ranting about getting taunted and yelled at when they're riding, I can't even wrap my brain around that. It's that cycling-friendly here. (Then again, I'm a woman, so that might have something to do with it.) In any case... I've lived here for 15 years and it can't be beat for weather and climate and enthusiasm for outdoor activities. BUT, it is pricey and is pretty congested nowadays.

Marge

I would pick Portland, Oregon. Great cycling community, great mass transit,
Drivers of cars actually know how to respect the rights of cyclists. Housing is
still somewhat affordable, (for the West coast). the one down side, I notice
when I visit, is the lack of food options. no really great sushi or pho, no really
killer chefs. but if you're not a foodie then you wouldn't care.

zonatandem

Tucson, AZ
At half-mile elevation, it is further south, but higher, than hotter Poenix. Ski in winter atop Mt. Lemmon @ 9,200 ft (30 miles UPhill from downtown Tucson) then come home and dive in the pool.
One year we rode our tandem over 13,000 miles . . . in the Tucson area!
Hills, some flat areas, ideal winters, summers a bit warmer but low humidity (not like Atlanta!) and you just ride early a.m. in summer, then hit the pool after you get home.
Been here since 1978 . . . love it!
Great medical commumity too.

gapowermike

I can kind of speak for the winter in Denver. It's better than the winter in Cheyenne, Wyoming (2 hours north). Spent 3 winters there and cockroaches don't even live there if that tells you anything. God intended Wyoming for the buffalo and antelope. Denver on the other hand was always 10 degrees warmer, less windy, and closer to skiing. Better food, grass, trees, entertainment. Great biking everywhere west of town, too.

Ostuni

here's a vote for charlotte. terrific town. great part of the world to live. nice mountain/beach proximity. only downsides: grew too much too fast for the roads to keep up and thus has some ugly rush hour traffic issues, and, as probably has been mentioned, can have summer heat and humidity that will kill flies....

dspyder

I would avoid Sacramento. When we moved up here 3.5 years ago from the Bay Area, we had hoped that the jobs, culture, and excitement would follow.

It hasn't. The only thing that has come is increased traffic and hugely increased housing costs. Our house has gone up 100% in 3.5 years. My salary has gone up 8% in the same time frame.

We have found the people up here to be uninspired, intolerant, bitter at the bay area-imports, and generally in a single word "blah". The civil servant mediocrity runs rampant (apologies to those civil servants that do excel).

The American River Bike Trail is nice, and there are some decent areas (Folsom) but my wife and I find the entire area to be extremely (!) over-rated.

Only experience I have with Fresno is a joke my uncle (from England) says.... "Nooooooooobody goes to Fresno, imagine whattheir Rapid Transit is called"? (a reference to the Bay Area's Rapid Transit, BART.) and my brother's mother-in-law moved out there to retire.

We're considering moving and will be visiting Austin, TX and a couple areas in Colorado next. We have already ruled out Portland (didn't like the housing situation) and SoCal (expensive for not that much of a change from NorCal) and a couple places in Washington (too much rain, despite what they say).

Have been following these relocation threads closely. Appreciiate the input.

--Darren

Dchiefransom

https://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USCA0967.html

https://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USAZ0166.html

https://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USNM0004.html

gcasillo

Good for you, 2Rodies. I've read countles stories of people whose homes have appreciated $200k in the last six months alone, and they're still reluctant to sell! They say, "I want to time the market just right." If ever there were more famous last words. Sheesh, the rise in property taxes is pulling the rug out from under some folks I know. This housing bubble is ridiculous.