Sept 98 - moved from the Northern beaches of Sydney Australia - endless summer almost - with an enormous tri community and perfect training opportunities
…to…
the east side of Cleveland, Ohio.
Yeah yeah - I know - crazy - but it was a chance meeting with a woman while visiting here for one month that brought me back. Married now so it worked out ok.
So Cleveland won’t give you the year round training opps, but you should swing in here one summer - we have a great Tri Club - great people - and the cost of living…let’s just say - much more affordable than CA.
In my travels - I would certainly be pushing San Diego (just like Sydney) or anywhere near the coast in N.C.
Cleveland’s a relatively decent place to live. It can be worse, much worse.
After getting married, my sherpa and I packed up and moved to (shudder) Martin, Tennessee because he’d gotten a tenure track offer from UTM. 2 1/2 hours west and 30 years behind Nashville. Dead flat, soybean fields everywhere, surly native populace once you got past the Southern hospitality veneer. Big deals were when a Burger King opened up in town and the annual soybean festival. We’d go to Nashville or Memphis for a Saturday and I’d cry on the way back to our townhouse because I hated going back there so much.
Where I live now (about an hour WNW of Panama City Beach in a burb of Ft. Walton Beach) isn’t perfect; a bit on the small side at times, not terribly adventuresome in terms of culture. But it’s got enough good going for it that we can’t really think of a better place to move that would have affordable housing and meet our other needs. Great weather most of the year, even though we complain it gets too cold in January. Brrrr high of 49F for about 6-7 days in a row. Small but active endurance sport community complete with a couple tri-specific LBSes. Decent, though hourglass-shaped job market. And great quality of life if your idea of a good lunch out is a damn fine mahi sandwich eaten while watching pelicans and dolphins play in Choctawhatchee Bay.
“Where thousands live and millions more wish they could” as a local radio station likes to say.
(3) large enough city for me to find medium to large sized law firm (I practice corporate law).
I’m almost surprised that noone has yet mentioned Phoenix. I say “almost”, of course, because it does get pretty warm here in the summer, but…“it’s a dry heat.” In the summer, everyone gets up early to train - and it isn’t any worse than most places in the US. IMHO, only various places in California can boast better weather on a year-round basis - and they still have to contend with earthquakes, mudslides, and the CA cost of living.
-lots of bike lanes, with some decently hilly terrain
-great trail running
-relatively affordable housing/cost of living
-a decent amount of medium to large law firms (though wages are not near Chicago levels)
-Phoenix is the 5th-largest city in the country, so there is likely some job opportunities for your fiance, too (though we still need some growth in high-end professional job opportunities). If her PhD is engineering or bioscience related, there may be some good opportunities.
I find it kind of hard to believe that no one has recommended the great Northwest. I spent my first 23 years in washington (the real washington, on the west coast), and now that I have been stuck in Illinois for the past 5 years (I should finish the dissertation in 3 more semesters, hooray!), I can’t wait to get back to the great NW. I think that somewhere between San Fran and Vancouver, BC is the best place to live. Seattle has hills, hills, and more hills, and it also have great trails to run, hike, and mtb, plenty of open water to swim and paddle in, and plenty of people doing all of those things all year. Yes, it gets a little wet from November to March, but it’s usually just a drizzle. A couple of fenders on your bike and you are good to go. I went to college in the south east corner of the state, and that area is also very nice to live and train in. It’s colder in the winter, but it is significantly drier all year around. I went to College in Walla Walla (insert joke about the name here), and they boast something ridiculous like 300 sunny days a year. Hard to beat.
With regard to cost of living, this site: http://www.homefair.com/homefair/calc/salcalc.html
calculates comparative costs of different cities. On this scale, Seattle is WAY better than San Diego, though I would have to give the SD tri community the nod.
Yes it’s usually a drizzle, but a 35-45 degree one and unless you like being wet and miserable that makes the NW suck for any bike riding for most of that 6 month period (a couple years ago there were 100 straight days with rain). Suicide rate is also quite high. Kurt Cobain was not atypical in coastal WA.
The best year around climate is Hawaii without doubt though very expensive. Climate and cost of living (incl taxes) winners would be AZ, TX and FL. AZ is more geologically and meteorologically stable (flash floods being the major risk) than the others. Besides training in high heat increases performance in other conditions as well.