Potential places to move

Burlington, VT. Best riding this side of East Jesus.

Scratch SF off the list.

Burlington, VT would be a great choice, as JBP suggested. I'd look at just about any city in New England although Boston can be pretty expensive.

Portland Maine

I thought you were moving to canada a while back to open an indoor bike park?

I've been riding in the nc mtns or poston all year. You are doing it wrong

colorado.

Denver. You just described it.

Portland, OR doesn't have kick ass riding until you drive in any direction for at least 35-40 minutes, depending on traffic.

These places come to mind:

Boise, ID
Missoula, MT
Bellingham, WA
Fort Collins, CO

Weren't you moving to Montreal?

Any town in Texas.

Do not move to Alaska. There is no, repeat NO riding here. There are NO epic rides. There are NOT multiple bike-parks in the city with huge banked turns, there are NO long descents, there is NOT a ski-resort 40 minutes away with a tram, and you can NOT ride year round.

Anyways, SF is close to mountain biking, not the mountains. Getting out of SF and up to "the mountains" is a major ordeal and wipes out your day/weekend pretty easily. Not like Seattle and other places where you can escape relatively quickly. Luckily there are quite a few good places to ride around SF, and up in Mendocino county or down near SC if you want to travel a little without going through the craziness of getting up to Tahoe. Make no mistake, you can get up to Tahoe, it's just that you spend 6-8hrs in the car for how ever many hours of riding you spend. For quality of life, restaurants, parks, attractions, nearby outdoor beauty and all sorts of stuff, SF is hard to beat. I think Seattle can win though. SF seems to have had it's "hey day" in the 1980s, that's when everything was modernized, houses were fairly nice, streets were taken care of, bridges were good, military bases were huge, etc. Now it seems like things have fallen apart some. Make no mistake, some of the parts and things are just as good as they were, but others have been left to kind of decay. Seattle seems to put a lot more effort into keeping the city beautiful and constantly improving. Traffic sucks, but that's the same in SF, not to mention that it's far quicker to get to mountains in Seattle. Bay area weather can vary dramatically, from foggy neary every day and somewhat depressing, to occasional whisps that burn off quickly to uncomfortably hot and nasty. If you travel around the bay area, you get to see it all. Seattle gets more rain obviously, but certain places alongside the sound up and down get far less, there's a wet and drier season, but during that wet season I think your a little more locked into the overcast and rain. SF gets full on slammed by pacific storms more though and you can still get "rain for days" in the winter. Honestly weather wise I don't think it's much different unless you are significantly inland in the bay area, and then you teter on being uncomfortably hot and still getting those pacific storms in the winter. Bay area in the summer is nice though, in that there is some sun and close to the water it's always cool.

I think quality of life in Seattle will be higher given the proximity to the mountains, world class mountain biking areas/resorts, the city and surrounding area (it's like a slightly more spread out bay-area, which means still fairly high population density, but down to a more manageable level and more lush vegetation able to grow in between everything). Every time I go through Seattle I'm always taken back about how much I like it there. I will probably transfer down after a few years in Alaska, which is pretty damn good with awesome riding, but I think Seattle wins in the end.

SF and Seattle are for the mountain bikers that need to be in/close to big cities. If you can free up your choices a bit, there are countless places around the country with awesome riding that are smaller, but not so small that you feel like you are in hick-town.

Seattle or I would say Santa Cruz before I would SanFran.

Also I would say Colorado Springs not Denver.

Also if you could handle Arizona. Cheap to live, decent college, TONS OF GOOD Riding. IF you ever do get sick or it Utah is not a far drive from there either and there is Moab and more there aswell.

i vote for salt lake or colorado springs or boulder stateside.

vancouver is one hell of an awesome city.

chillindrdude said:

i vote for salt lake or colorado springs or boulder stateside.

vancouver is one hell of an awesome city.

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SLC is nice, but it reminds me of LA a little bit. Tons to do as long as you can tolerate mormons and meth heads.

Who are you people who keep suggesting Colorado Springs? I've been trying for 9 years to get the fvck out of this place. The economy, unless you're in the military, sucks here. There is ZERO culture or night life, CC, while a good college, is expensive, and if you're not in the military there is a 50/50 chance you might actually already be a part time bike mechanic. The riding is good, but that's about the only thing we've got going on that meets OP's list.

As a former Portlander who desperately wants to go back, I don't know that I could recommend it either if a variety of close trails are that high on your priority list, because there aren't many. You'll be looking to drive a fair bit to get to any decent trails unless you're living out in the burbs.

boostindoubles said:

These places come to mind:

Boise, ID
Missoula, MT
Bellingham, WA
Fort Collins, CO

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^^^^^^
This is a legit list for the left side of the country. I <3 Missoula, Boise is nice too except that my parents live there.

Jm_ said:

Do not move to Alaska. There is no, repeat NO riding here. There are NO epic rides. There are NOT multiple bike-parks in the city with huge banked turns, there are NO long descents, there is NOT a ski-resort 40 minutes away with a tram, and you can NOT ride year round.
View attachment 114185View attachment 114183View attachment 114182View attachment 114184View attachment 114186

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you left out the state bird....

[coolstorybro]
The guy who gave me my first job in aviation did 15 years in Alaska as a helicopter mechanic. He used to tell a story about a small plane that crashed out in the boones where both people survived, but subsequently died from "mosquito exposure". Don't know if it's true or not, but Phil was not one to tell tall tales.
[/coolstorybro]

stevew said:

you left out the state bird....

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i fcuking hate mosquitos. if i could eradicate forever one bug, it would be either mosquitos...or ticks

chillindrdude said:

i fcuking hate mosquitos. if i could eradicate forever one bug, it would be either mosquitos...or ticks

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True. The mosquitos in AK are bad at certain times in certain places. Not an issue in the city. If you get into the backcountry in the summer then it depends. They can be anywhere from nonexistent to murderous. If you don't have repellent, you're fine as long as you don't stop. When you stop, they attack. We had one weaker guy from SoCal with us on one of the rides in the pictures and on the longest multi-mile climb we had to leave him behind and get to a clearing up top with a little wind, there was just no way we were going to stop on that climb because of the mosquitoes.

I hate ticks a little more, since they will get on you and crawl all over without your knowledge, then if you find one embedded it just sucks getting em out. In the summer in OK you couldn't ride 10 feet in on the trail without picking up 10 ticks from the grass/brush on the side of the trail. Just flipping nasty.

Luckily mosquitoes are waning big time now.

The state bird is the Ptarmigan though and it's dumb as a rock. They sit and try to be camouflaged, but usually it's in the middle of the trail, so they either try to run down the trail all floppy like or fly up at the last minute, often right into you because they are pretty crappy flyers. Two weeks ago I literally had to pick one up and set it off to the side of the trail because it didn't know what to do.

Wel i am going to say montana area of course.....




Stay away from sf, ok to visit, but way too much city, denver is the same, i hated being there and that was just a weekend, colorado springs great for a week, like squeeb says thats about it, personally on your list i would pick oregon, economy is better, hometown type people, and driving for a ride is not too bad

stoney said:

Denver. You just described it.

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Disagree. He should move to SLC.

SkaredShtles said:

Disagree. He should move to SLC.

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You are a horrible person.

Dirtjumper999 said:

Unfortunate circumstances lead to that plan falling apart literally a few weeks before I made the move.

You guys are really putting a bug in my ear about Seattle, I called up SBS earlier today and spoke with a sales rep about the area, she seemed to love it, and kind of put to rest the reputation of heavy rain there.

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Yeah... it's not heavy rain... it's constant drizzle. NTTAWWT. The summer (May-Sep) is really nice, though.

stoney said:

You are a horrible person.

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Hell - I'd move there myself if it wasn't for the... uhhh... you know.

chillindrdude said:

i fcuking hate mosquitos. if i could eradicate forever one bug, it would be either mosquitos...or ticks

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Yeah - you should ignore the advice to move to Vermont, then. Of course, they have heat and humidity too.

Bend Oregon? I've been contemplating a move for a while and for whatever reason I keep looking at Bend, never been there but I hear good things. The problem is the industry I work in doesn't have a strong presence in Oregon.

mattmatt86 said:

Bend Oregon? I've been contemplating a move for a while and for whatever reason I keep looking at Bend, never been there but I hear good things. The problem is the industry I work in doesn't have a strong presence in Oregon.

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You would need to plan to take a job with you to Bend. And I suspect the "Price of living can't be ridiculous" will eliminate it as an option... even with the recession pummeling the real estate market out there.

SkaredShtles said:

Hell - I'd move there myself if it wasn't for the... uhhh... you know.

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you can't get syrup there?

stevew said:

you can't get syrup there?

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You funny old bahstid.

Portland ha a lot to offer, but close in riding is not one of them. There is a revamp planned for Forest Park that might be awesome in a few years and Timberline and Meadows are now both planning lift serviced trails for soe real DH. Blackrock has amazing riding, as does Stubb Stewart now and there is a ton of work being done around the area on new trails as well as updates to existing trail systems.

There is some ok riding in Forest Park (overlooks downtown) and some at Powell Butte (20 min tops from downtown). But Blackrock is 90ish minutes and Stubb Stewart is about 45min drive.

Auburn CA

Just sayin

mbrennan said:

I've been riding in the nc mtns or poston all year. You are doing it wrong

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ummm...this

SkaredShtles said:

You funny old bahstid.

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old....old!

you're the one with the gimpy back.

ha!

Asheville NC

stevew said:

old....old!

you're the one with the gimpy back.

ha!

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Shuddup you old bahstid!

Westy said:

Any town in Texas.

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Texas sucks, but I hear Washington is nice.