Quote:
Originally Posted by DHallerman
Hello friends -
All your responses have been fascinating. I stated my original questions broadly so as to hear a wider range of thoughts. But yes, most definitely a bunch of other parameters. I turned 70 this year, and my wife just retired, so that's part of our thoughts too. So we're also looking for things like:
* A lively center, with street life. I don't want NYC anymore (or any other large US city), moved away in 2006, but don't want suburbia anymore either.
* Relatively flat compared to much of Westchester, where we are now. Age matters.
* A network of trails for connecting places. We like avoiding too many cars.
* Not far, too, from unpaved roads which are typically quiet and are much fun with our gravel bikes.
* The ability to minimize car use for things like grocery shopping.
* A state we feel comfortable in. We're increasingly seeing that the state you live in here in the United States can greatly affect your life.
So in fact, Northampton has been on my radar since I've started this quest. We've been there a few times, cycled there too, although it was a while ago. And we like the idea of being in a college town, in this case a locus in a college area, for a few reasons.
But I wondered where else, hence this thread. We will have to explore more.
Smiles,
Dave, who says one advantage in downsizing would be translating a NYC suburban single family home to a Northampton condo for instance
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Well, Saratoga is a college town (Skidmore, a rich kids school, but, a college), has an awesome bar and restaraunt scene that exists primarily for the track season (a six week party in the heart of summer) but is running all year round, is home to SPAC, which has many great concerts, both pop and classical, and even a few weeks of ballet. I wouldn't call the cycling flat, probably statistically comparable to Westchester, where I live, but hardly any traffic once you leave town, and traffic in town is fine most of the time. There's plenty of unpaved roads over in Washington county, a short drive away, home to the famous Tour of the Battenkill
https://tourofthebattenkill.com/ that is pretty well marked for the rest of the year (except winter, when it seems all of the roads over there are dirt, due to the amount of dirt they use on the snow covered roads). Scooch a little over to Vermont, and, plenty of dirt. It's a poor state. Not like NY, which seems to have an endless budget for paving up there. I was just riding up near Saratoga last week, and there's a ton of fresh paved roads. Thanks, downstate taxpayers!
Winters can be tough. It can be cold, much colder than downstate, but, hey, you always can look down on Saranac Lake, which is usually ten degrees colder than anywhere else when it gets bad. But, you're that much closer to the ADK and Vermont for skiing.
I used to live in Saratoga, miss it a lot. It's the nicest small city in upstate NY, including Ithica, which is cool, but is surprisingly sketchy in some neighborhoods, and a little isolated. Saratoga is about 3 hours to NYC, Boston, and Montreal. Albany airport, about an easy half hour south, is an excellent second tier airport that Southwest serves.