Saratoga or Los Gatos. Both are very tri-friendly .

I live in Menlo Park and work by SJC, and it’s about a 40min commute and getting worse. Don’t even think about living further north.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

One other thing to consider re location is also where you may end up working in the future. You’re near SJC now, but if you switched companies, what are the likely locations? Mid-Peninsula (Menlo Park/Redwood City) gives you reasonable access to the South Bay, the Redwood Shores Oracle corridor and SF, especially if you can work from home some of the time. The riding is great on the west (280) side, there are tons of trails to run on, and you have decent pool choices, plus open water options in Foster City and Redwood Shores.

There are a lot of people, high costs and traffic, but it’s for a reason. If you were here right now, you’d understand - the past couple of weeks’ weather has been about as perfect as weather can be.

Ian

Plus Marin is far better than living near San Jose.

--another marinite

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https://markmcdermott.substack.com

When I quit my day job in tech, Marin is where I want to be :-D!

You'll need drinks here every night to forget why you moved here, if you are not made of money.
No reverse commute unless you work at night.
Make sure you make at least 25% more to come out somewhat even (most of that will go to housing, e.g. mortgage and taxes).

I can't believe people think the riding in the South Bay is great....maybe MTB, but road? Please enlighten me.
On the Peninsula, there is exactly ONE area where road riding is decent and that is around Mountain View / Palo Alto / Menlo Park area. People drive there from N and S, even as far up as from SSF.
It is relatively good for running, but you also may have to drive to the Parks. Pool access in the South Bay is good, and two Masters Programs I know about around the SJ area. Even better on the Peninsula.

Otherwise it is Paradise.

Mount Umunhum for climbing.

I wouldn't even stick a toe in at Redwood shores (maybe Foster City in early summer).
Our rule is no swims in the Bay south of San Mateo bridge.
I have seen the results from water testing and the risk does not outweigh the benefit, but YMMV.

The "corridor" up and down 101 is a cluster fuck other than from 8PM-6AM and 10AM-3PM.
But he could commute from Santa Cruz, which takes about the same time it takes to get from PA to SJ, unless it isn't possible at all to get over. J.K.

Don't get me wrong. The more the merrier...and weather is perfect.

If Caltrain is an option for getting to your new workplace, seriously consider taking advantage of that opportunity - makes looking for housing a bit farther north more attractive. Caltrain is very bike friendly as well.

The key is getting deep into the mountains, of course. You're limited for sure on 1-2 hour before-work road rides. But I think people are thinking of the all-day long rides with big loops around Pescadero, Tunitas, along Skyline, OLH, and Big Basin when they're thinking peninsula and south bay riding.

Also, here's a great resource for the real estate market near where I live - I have no affiliation with the guy who runs it, but he has great weekly breakdowns of the local RE market. Haven't looked for a little while - amazing what happens when you run out of space to build...

http://www.whiteoaksblog.com

If you're going to work near the airport, willow glen (95125) is the best choice. Nice Main Street (Lincoln ave) and great neighborhoods. Easy to ride to Los gatos and then up through Palo Alto, woodside, etc. I do this ride almost every weekend so despite what a previous poster wrote, there's no need to drive to LG to start your ride. You can even ride south through Morgan hill.

WG also gives you good access to Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, and Monterey.

Access to the Los Gatos Creek Trail is generally a short run through neighborhoods and goes all of the to Lexington Reservoir.

LOL. I think you've had too much of the kool-aid there :)

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Excellent point, and I think this is one of the biggest problems with the bay. People move there for -career- security, not -job- security. And as finding appropriate housing is such a shitshow, especially with a family involved, that should your job change, which it will if you're doing anything related to tech, you'll be loathe to give up your housing. And this is why people end up with insane commutes.

I used to work with a woman who had a 120-150' commute each way. She loved her house and neighborhood but had 3 or 4 job changes in the last decade, each one with a progressively less-favorable location.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Yes, there's all the back roads in the Santa Cruz mountains. There's also Kennedy/Shannon/Hicks/New Almaden/Uvas loop and all the back roads in the Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Watsonville area. I can't believe people think the riding in the South Bay *isn't* great.

Edit- oh yeah, and Mt. Hamilton and all the roads on the back side of that. Yeah... no good riding here.

THIS. Tried it twice. Hated it. Over it. We're in San Diego until retirement, then aloha-land.

I moved to SF in early ‘97, so was fortunate to buy into the housing market then. I commuted from Pac Hghts to the 280 side of Palo Alto, and it got progressively worse as the dotcom boom raged. I had my personal commute limits, though, so when it was likely that my company would need to move south, I sold my SF place and moved to Menlo Park. Best decision ever, for me anyway.

Now I pretty much won’t take a job with more than a 20-minute commute, and even then only if I can work remotely a lot of the time (I spend a lot of time in Hawaii). Again, I chose well in my career and also had some luck, so I am extremely fortunate to be in that position, and I don’t take it for granted. Perhaps that is one reason why my experience here seems so much more positive than yours or windschatten’s - or maybe I’m just a more positive guy. ;-)

I fully agree that commuting sucks the life out of you, though, and the Bay Area traffic is the worst I’ve ever seen it. But then so are DC’s and Honolulu’s, so it’s not a problem isolated to the Bay Area.

Ian

Hi, I'm wondering if any of the locals have any love for Santa Clara?

I know it's not the best cycling area, but it does have the world class Santa Clara International Swim Center, home of several Olympic Gold Medalists and the finest swim facility I've ever been to.

http://santaclaraca.gov/...national-swim-center

I swim there 3-4 times a week when I was working near there.

Hadn't seen Santa Clara mentioned as being one of the best spots to train in so maybe a local could update the original poster.


There's an active tri club in the area that may provide good info to him as well: http://www.svtriclub.org/


Thanks!


Mark

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Fast-Finishes.com
Triathlon and Running Race Timing
Athletic Event Management

I grew up in Santa Clara, and swam at the International Swim center for years, and was also an SVTC member for a number of years. My parents love to talk about how when they bought their house in Santa Clara in 1970, it was considered 'the boonies'. Stevens Creek Blvd (one of the major roads in the area) was a dirt road, and most of Santa Clara was orchards. Now, Santa Clara is the heart of suburbia in the South Bay. With Apple's new headquarters opening, housing prices (which were already quite high) are experiencing another surge. It's quite common for houses to be selling for several hundred thousand over asking, in all-cash deals. Santa Clara has a lot going for it still... Levi's Stadium, great schools (especially if you're in the part of Santa Clara that's Cupertino High School district), a very well-funded local municipality.

As far as riding goes, you have to ride through suburbia to get to the good riding (or drive 10-15 min and park somewhere to ride) but all in all Santa Clara is still a great place. Housing varies neighborhood by neighborhood. There are some neighborhoods that haven't experienced much updating since they were built in the 1950's and there are other neighborhoods that feel much more modern, so there's a bit of everything in Santa Clara. It's worth checking out, but probably with someone that knows all the little pockets/neighborhoods.

Living near that pool would be a dream. Between access to the pool and the likes of NVidia being a 6 minute drive or similar ride away it would be awesome. Just ride over Montague on the other side of 101 and you have a choice of many great companies to work at.

Bay Area traffic is up 80% since 2010. It's not going to get any better either. I'm in the East Bay (too far away for any Silicon Valley jobs so I haven't weighed in on this thread) and the traffic is approaching L.A. levels here, in that the freeways are backed up at 2 p.m. during the week and there are traffic jams on the weekend (24/680 corridor). I'm just counting the days (years, really, unfortunately) until I can bail.

Oh I don't live there, and I'm also an extremely positive person :)

I guess my perspective comes from spending an aggregated ~1.5yrs there over the past 4 years, so I've frequently been able to compare/contrast with other parts of the world to create my viewpoint without being fully drinking the kool-aid.

All I know is that every time my plane makes that left bank over Silicon Valley, a little part of me dies inside. That's in sharp contrast to how I feel arriving (almost) anywhere else.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

That's what people there tell themselves. The reality is that it's expensive because so many people think they have to be there to make huge salaries for......$80,000 Teslas, $3 million houses, nannies, gardeners, and housekeepers.

I live in Southern Oregon where a bunch of people figured out that they don't need to be on that treadmill. They sold their Bay Area houses, bought something up here for 1/4 of the price and now lead very comfortable lives off the proceeds -- with some of best cycling around and no traffic.

The added bonus is that our kids up here go to school with normal people of diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds. Their friends are Latino, African American, Asian, and European; their parents are doctors, plumbers, and gardeners. By contrast, if you live on the Peninsula, there's a nasty divide: wealthy white and Asian Facebook & Google employees and then the Latinos who flood into Menlo Park and PA every day to mow their lawns, clean their houses and change their babies' diapers. The latter group often lives in desperately crowded conditions in East PA or RC to make ends meet.

It's funny that most of these Peninsula folks consider themselves "progressives," but the life they lead has shades of "The Help." The irony is that a few of our most progressive friends treated their "help" the most horribly.....

We're so happy to have moved away. Reno has it right.

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My latest book: "Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire" is on sale on Amazon and at other online and local booksellers

Great! So now you're telling me what I'm telling myself? Listen, I'm glad you are making it work in Oregon. Kudos to you. And then you threw in the $3 million houses and nannies... Wonderful, you just lumped over a million people into a little box you constructed. Fantastic reasoning skills. Zero of my Silicon Valley friends have those things. Yet, we are still so happy to live and train here.

But I can live wherever I want in the country, and I planted my roots in San Jose because it had the best quality of life for me and my family. Funny enough, I was offered a job transfer to Reno ... I visited .... and quickly decided: Hell to the no.

Message to all the Bay Haters: Life is what you make it. If you don't like the rat race, then avoid it. I hate the rat race, so my wife and I now have a 10-15 minute reverse commute.

These posts on this thread are highly exaggerated. You don't have to make a million a year to survive. My wife and I are not in tech, and we don't have rich parents, and we are not C.O.O's. We bought a 1300sq. ft townhome in Willow Glen, and we are still able to put away $$ each month. What's everybody bitch'in about?

Oregon huh? I'll think of you next time I am cycling in November in shorts, and swimming in a speedo in January. Enjoy the rain and clouds beeyatch :)

They sold their Bay Area houses, bought something up here for 1/4 of the price and now lead very comfortable lives off the proceeds //

Ok, but didn't they first have to live and work there for awhile to build up all that equity that they now live comfortably off of? Shouldn't we all be able to take that path? I mean you put it out there as the secret formula for a happy life..(-; I mean you are not going to buy a house in Oregon and then wait for that giant equity winning lottery ticket, probably hasn't changed there much out in the suburbs in a long time. Maybe Portland downtown?? Let the guy get his dream home, find out it really is a nightmare and then cash in and move next door to you where all the smart people live..(-;

Average rainfall: Ashland: 20 inches; Los Gatos: 17 inches
Air Quality Index (today): Ashland: 8; Los Gatos: 79 (hmm..... 7X worse)
Speedos: Ashland: none reported; Los Gatos: P3 sighted with one (Oh, the Humanity!)

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My latest book: "Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire" is on sale on Amazon and at other online and local booksellers