Possibly relocating. Looking for opinions.

I was just in California, Mexican food is better, you should all move there..
I'm with @Norm on this one... I can make decent Mexican food, it's not a high culinary experience.

The weather in this state is about as year round awful as anywhere I have experienced.... To me that's the real downside of nj.... We never get decent weather. Finally cools off a bit in the fall only to have all the leaves fall and make the trails like ice.... Spring it finally warms up to 48 and raining.... After spending a couple days in San Francisco, man we endure alot of shit weather around here.....

However, our mountain biking is as all around good as any place I have been... No we don't have the whole enchilada trail, but if you lived in moab, would you ride that 3 or 4 times a week? We have such a big variety here... I have never ending options of rides within 1 hour of my house.
 
As someone who has relocated, having the variety of trails within an hour in NJ is something I do miss. I have multiple options but they all ride the same. Granted I’m unsure how high on the list local mountain biking trails are…
 
UtahJoe said:
The weather in this state is about as year round awful as anywhere I have experienced.... To me that's the real downside of nj.... We never get decent weather. Finally cools off a bit in the fall only to have all the leaves fall and make the trails like ice.... Spring it finally warms up to 48 and raining.... After spending a couple days in San Francisco, man we endure alot of shit weather around here.....
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i just spent a week in san diego.
high of 80, low of 60 at night. not a drop of rain (they only get 10" per year)
there was a cloud in the sky on one of the days. Marine layer had to burn off on a couple of the days too.

airport is small but goes to most places
lots of bike infrastructure on the city roads - plenty of trails (which i didn't ride)
Plenty of work
Plenty of food - asian and latino is excellent - and sometimes fusion!
Laid back attitude
Purchase 1000' back from the water, and wait a few years to have ocean front property.

really makes me wonder why we live here.
 
UtahJoe said:
The weather in this state is about as year round awful as anywhere I have experienced.... To me that's the real downside of nj.... We never get decent weather. Finally cools off a bit in the fall only to have all the leaves fall and make the trails like ice.... Spring it finally warms up to 48 and raining.... After spending a couple days in San Francisco, man we endure alot of shit weather around here.....
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100% back this statement. My ideal climate is VT summer. We get that for like a week a year.
 
Pearl said:
As someone who has relocated, having the variety of trails within an hour in NJ is something I do miss. I have multiple options but they all ride the same. Granted I’m unsure how high on the list local mountain biking trails are…
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Very true. Even most mountain bike destination areas would get very boring when it's one type of riding mostly.
 
Bike N Gear said:
With all the complaining about food, don't forget you give up good pizza and bagels if you leave the area.
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Not true for all areas. I can get almost everything near Nelson County VA; great bagels (Harrisonburg actually), real John Taylor Ham in small packages and the roll packaged in cloth in at least 2 supermarkets, and .my local pizza joint is 95% as good as a few in Clark. Even though I've found quite a bit I am missing fresh Mozzarella.
With that said, bagels in Charlottesville stunk, but then they have Khor's Bros Ice Cream without going to a boardwalk, barbeque is really good and I'm amazed at the Mexican options. So in my opinion there's a little give and take. And it's a totally different lifestyle; something we're getting used to.

Also lots of MTB riding options in a 60 min radius. I've only been to a few with getting settled in but looking around at more of the options. I met the folks that run the CAMBC MTB google group and it's okay and not nearly as active as MTBNJ.
 
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Santapez said:
We live in a highly populated area, so it's not really unexpected. Long Island isn't too dissimilar and their food choices are 100X better, that's why I find it strange. Then again I guess it's relative. In their traffic that's worse than ours, 30 minutes is the same town...

My complaint isn't really that it's 30 minutes to an incredible restaurant. It's that it's 30 minutes to a meh restaurant. Until Las Layendes opened up in Boonton/Parsippany, we seriously are completely lacking in decent Mexican food around here. Morris County is a wasteland of Mexican. Which is odd as most parts of the country tend to have a bunch of random family owned Mexican restaurants that are good.
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I stopped after Long Island. LI can EABOD. I dread going back there more than once a year.
 
Patrick said:
i just spent a week in san diego.
high of 80, low of 60 at night. not a drop of rain (they only get 10" per year)
there was a cloud in the sky on one of the days. Marine layer had to burn off on a couple of the days too.

airport is small but goes to most places
lots of bike infrastructure on the city roads - plenty of trails (which i didn't ride)
Plenty of work
Plenty of food - asian and latino is excellent - and sometimes fusion!
Laid back attitude
Purchase 1000' back from the water, and wait a few years to have ocean front property.

really makes me wonder why we live here.
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Wild fires
Earthquakes
Water shortages
Highest income taxes
 
Pearl said:
As someone who has relocated, having the variety of trails within an hour in NJ is something I do miss. I have multiple options but they all ride the same. Granted I’m unsure how high on the list local mountain biking trails are…
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Yeah, this is a fair point on this region's upside. About the only thing we don't have close by is true alpine riding. And, having done some of that, if you want to get an idea of what it's like, just go ride on any ski slope here while breathing through a swizzle stick while bears are allowed to walk around the grounds free. Maybe throw in a confused and frightened mountain lion here and there. And cut all the trees down at the top of the ski mountain and replace them with lightning rods. That's alpine riding in the U.S.

Not to jack DT's thread (but then again he DID ask a bunch of mountainbikers to give him advice on where to live, so he kind of gets what he deserves), but that brings up an interesting question: if you are choosing where to live solely on the riding in that area, where are you moving to?

For me, I've ridden and/or raced all over the country - literally, in every region save for Hawaii and Alaska. I liked the Pacific Northwest for the trails themselves, and the upper midwest for the riding community vibe. But as far as what I'd choose, I think it'd be between Grand Junction, CO and Sedona, AZ. GJ has more variety (it's an hour and a half by car to Moab, two hours from Aspen, and the local trails are among the best in the U.S.) And Sedona has like a billion miles of incredible trails that are rideable all year round. I think if I had to choose one or the other, I'd probably lean toward GJ. You can literally ride out your front door there, hit a trail within a mile, and then ride all the way to Moab without ever going on the road again. If I were to include other factors in the decision, like Mexican food, I'd probably go with Sedona. But for riding, personally I don't think it gets better than GJ.
 
onetracker said:
Wow, this shocked me. I would have never guessed USAC MN would have found that park. Super fun and techy; been a few years since I was out that way. Wonder if much has changed in terms of the trail system.
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one piece crank said:
Dave - I hope you can find what you're looking for, but I can't imagine it being easy or quickly accomplished.

I live in a bubble - worked every day thru Covid, no commute to speak of, no traffic to deal with, no NYC re-loco's & plenty of property to isolate us anyway, parks and River only a few miles away, restaurants if we want (usually don't), and 1.5hrs from our Bay destination. Now about those property taxes...I'm toying with investments that would solely generate that annual burden.
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It’s more better now.
 
cassinonorth said:
I don't disagree, but complaining about having to drive 30 whole minutes to an incredible authentic restaurant of a different country's cuisine is absolutely hilarious to me. Move to bumfuck, GA and you'll be lucky if you have a single diner within 30 minutes of your house.

Spoiled is the word that comes to mind.
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This is very true. I am not complaining about all New Jersey. I do love the good things but the problem is the bad things are outweighing the good things now in my opinion. I do envy people that work from home. But that’s my own problem I am not working from home. It’s not that I want to work from home but it’s that I want to not commute so far. The areas we are looking at in Middletown and Meyersville Maryland are all 20 minutes from the places I’m looking to work and also downtown Frederick which is a booming city. I have been born and raised in Jersey but I have no desire to live within a half an hour of any city. People that live in the suburbs aroundAre very brave in my opinion.
 
1speed said:
Yeah, this is a fair point on this region's upside. About the only thing we don't have close by is true alpine riding. And, having done some of that, if you want to get an idea of what it's like, just go ride on any ski slope here while breathing through a swizzle stick while bears are allowed to walk around the grounds free. Maybe throw in a confused and frightened mountain lion here and there. And cut all the trees down at the top of the ski mountain and replace them with lightning rods. That's alpine riding in the U.S.

Not to jack DT's thread (but then again he DID ask a bunch of mountainbikers to give him advice on where to live, so he kind of gets what he deserves), but that brings up an interesting question: if you are choosing where to live solely on the riding in that area, where are you moving to?

For me, I've ridden and/or raced all over the country - literally, in every region save for Hawaii and Alaska. I liked the Pacific Northwest for the trails themselves, and the upper midwest for the riding community vibe. But as far as what I'd choose, I think it'd be between Grand Junction, CO and Sedona, AZ. GJ has more variety (it's an hour and a half by car to Moab, two hours from Aspen, and the local trails are among the best in the U.S.) And Sedona has like a billion miles of incredible trails that are rideable all year round. I think if I had to choose one or the other, I'd probably lean toward GJ. You can literally ride out your front door there, hit a trail within a mile, and then ride all the way to Moab without ever going on the road again. If I were to include other factors in the decision, like Mexican food, I'd probably go with Sedona. But for riding, personally I don't think it gets better than GJ.
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Flagstaff on paper is a great place to live if you like Sedona. Sedona itself seems like a horrible place to live, but awesome place to visit.

Flagstaff gets you:
-Sort of temperate. You get the seasons. There's real winter. And you gotta deal with the elevation.
-Interesting downtown w/ some of the culture that comes with a college town.
-HUGE trail system. However it's not rideable half the year.
-45 minutes to Sedona for the cold weather riding. While I love Sedona, I'd be sick of it if it was my only option. Plus it's HOT in the summer.
-Near the Grand Canyon and driving distance to a ton of UT parks and riding.
-2 hours to Phoenix and all the winter riding down there, along with other city perks.

And yeah, I think people underestimate getting sick of trail systems. For instance we all go to Kingdom Trails and love it, but I know I'd get sick of the trails there quickly and then there's no easy to get to variety.
 
Santapez said:
Flagstaff on paper is a great place to live if you like Sedona. Sedona itself seems like a horrible place to live, but awesome place to visit.

Flagstaff gets you:
-Sort of temperate. You get the seasons. There's real winter. And you gotta deal with the elevation.
-Interesting downtown w/ some of the culture that comes with a college town.
-HUGE trail system. However it's not rideable half the year.
-45 minutes to Sedona for the cold weather riding. While I love Sedona, I'd be sick of it if it was my only option. Plus it's HOT in the summer.
-Near the Grand Canyon and driving distance to a ton of UT parks and riding.
-2 hours to Phoenix and all the winter riding down there, along with other city perks.

And yeah, I think people underestimate getting sick of trail systems. For instance we all go to Kingdom Trails and love it, but I know I'd get sick of the trails there quickly and then there's no easy to get to variety.
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We are visiting Frederick Maryland this weekend. If you haven’t been you should check it out sometime. It has a really nice old town on a canal yet it’s booming like Jersey was in the 90s. And to the other guy, despite driving 30 minutes to a restaurant The current level of service sucks. Rarely am I able to get in and out of a restaurant and under an hour.
 
cassinonorth said:
I don't disagree, but complaining about having to drive 30 whole minutes to ANY restaurant of a different country's cuisine is absolutely hilarious to me. Move to bumfuck, GA and you'll be lucky if you have a single diner within 30 minutes of your house.

Spoiled is the word that comes to mind.
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FTFY
 
One more thing if you say traffic sucks everywhere than you have lived in New Jersey too long. The only places I have been that or worse or LA and Atlanta. I know a lot of NJ people are on this board given the name of the website but in reality you can’t polish a turd. Even the school systems in this area are generally going down. When I went to Bernards 20+ years ago it was one of the top 100 schools in the country now it’s barely a B rated school.One thing you cannot take away from New Jersey as we do have the most diversified trail system probably in the world everything from sand hard pack clay roots rocks glaciers Appalachian trail etc…
 
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