I have made two big moves so far. I was born and raised in Orange County, Lived there until I was about 22. I went to college at UCI, I chose that at the last minute over Oregon State. I just liked being 30 minutes from home. I wasn't a big fan of the school looking back, but I don't know if I could have done it so far from home. Life is full of trade offs.
After working for about a year and a half post-graduation, I got a job offer in Eureka , up in Humboldt County. I made that move and enjoyed it for a bit. I think I convinced myself I liked it, but it's not easy living up there. It is so isolated up there, when I was living there a decade ago there were maybe 3 flights a day, all to Sacramento and it was a three hour drive through the mountains to the nearest city, Redding. Longer if you wanted to get to Santa Rosa with more stuff. After college my fitness really dropped, and I gained 100+lbs and hardly rode. I never once rode dirt in Humboldt, something I regret now however I just didn't have the fitness to do it. I would ride my hardtail to work but no trails. It's a beautiful area but the isolation and constant dreariness wore me down.
After about 2.5 years there I wanted to make a major career change. I ended up getting a job offer for a dream job, where I currently work. Its with the federal government working engineering for Dam Safety projects and to add a cherry on top they paid to move me. That is how I ended up here in Tulsa. Without the relocation assistance not sure I would have taken it. I've been here 7 years now and it's been nice. The weather is wild here. I moved here mid May 2017, coming from a bay in California where the average temp year round was 60 degrees to the hot humid (but not deep south humid) weather out here took a while to get use to. That first summer felt like actual hell for me. I've come around and tried to become heat adapted, and changed my riding schedule to make sure I can still get it in. I still love riding my road bike in the heat. The feeling of sweating out during a hard ride just makes me feel good.
I've met some good people out here, I am really lucky that all my coworkers are great people. The weather is fun too, spring storms are a delight; I've become a weather nerd after moving here. But after 7 years I have an itch to move again. I really miss the desert and mountains. The flatness out here just sucks for what I like to ride. I didn't really consider trails out here when I moved, I hadn't ridden dirt in close to 3 years by the time I got back to it in Tulsa. It has been nice to have a place to ride, I can pack my bike up and be rolling at the trailhead in 15 minutes from my house. But after a month of riding once a week here, you can ride every trail twice. Not much local variety, but NWA is a 2.5 hour drive. I've done long weekends and day trips out there.
I'm looking to move to Albuquerque. I am a single dude so moving is not a problem, plus I can ride whenever I want to
![Wink ;) ;)](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png)
. All of my family (except my dad) is back in California and it would be nice to be a bit closer to them. My dad followed me out east and has a place about 45 minutes from me now. At least in Albuquerque I would split the difference almost exactly between the two. Plus it's desert, at altitude, and has mountains. It would also be easy to do long weekend trips to some great riding in AZ, UT, and CO. Just gotta start going through all the stuff I've acquired and pack up, but that's a daunting task.