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Re: [OM] Florida (WAS: Strawberry shortcake)

Subject: Re: [OM] Florida (WAS: Strawberry shortcake)
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 10:49:02 -0400
Well, we wouldn't live in Florida full-time either... at least now. We lived in Boca Raton on the east coast from 1985-1995 before moving to Boston for a post-IBM job. But, 11 years later, when it came real retirement time, Boston was too expensive. In 2006, While considering where to go to retire we traveled up and down the east coast of Florida in a fruitless search for a retirement place. My wife finally summarized the situation with: "I think you're looking for the Boca Raton of 1985 and it doesn't exist anymore." She was spot on. We ended up going back to New York to my wife's home town, where we were married and I had first started working at IBM. Upstate New York is quite beautiful, has a lower cost of living (despite New York's taxes) and where we still had a few mutual friends as well as my wife's brother and sister.

Some of those mutual friends also wintered on the west coast of Florida and convinced us to try it. We did and have been wintering here for the past 6 years. While we initially came here to escape very cold winters, what we really discovered was our desire to live in a 55+ community. We now have a lot of new friends from all over the US east coast and beyond plus Canada and enough activities to keep us perpetually busy. Although we're on the far south end of Tampa Bay, where we live is still largely rural and agricultural. It's rare that we have to venture into really heavy traffic and congestion.

But the friends who initially invited us to join them in Florida have run into health problems and have retreated back to New York to be near their kids... but in a different part of New York. They were half of our reason for being here and in New York and we asked ourselves what we wanted to do. We decided that what we really wanted was to live in a 55+ community full time. But we also wanted to be warm in the winter and live in a single story home on a slab. Multi-story homes, winters and basements are not kind to senior citizens. I could probably live in Florida (near the Everglades) full time but such it not for my wife. That started a 6 month internet and driving search to locate the ideal 55+ community in a warm environment. We believe we've found it on the coast of South Carolina and will complete our permanent move there in less than 3 weeks. We plan to stay in South Carolina through this coming November, December and January... first, to meet our many new neighbors and second, to see what it's like to live a winter on the South Carolina coast. Whether we return to Florida for winter living after that depends on what we find.

I've never been to Spain but did live in Germany for 13 months and also spent a fair amount of time working in Paris and the south of England. I've also toured around much of the UK. My wife and I'd be very happy to visit any of those places again but, culturally, they're too far removed from us to ever consider any of them as a place to live. And, I'm sure, none of you here will find that as any surprise. :-)

Chuck Norcutt


On 10/31/2014 2:51 AM, ChrisB wrote:
Well, I don’t know what Florida’s like now, but we enjoyed our time
there, even if it was living in part of Tampa.  Dale Mabry seemed to
us to be part of the culture of the USA: a long, straight road with
loads of different signs set up, higgledy piggledy, along it.

It wasn’t far from a good beach at Fort de Soto; parts of Florida
were very pretty and we lived in a decent little condo on Bayshore
Boulevard, not far from Ballast Point.  Yes, Hillsborough Bay was a
bit smelly at times, and having only 2 seasons was a bit boring, but
we enjoyed our stay and made some good friends.

I was glad to come home to the UK, but then that would have been the
case for any part of the USA; I couldn’t live there.  I wouldn’t mind
visiting again, with our sons, for a bit of nostalgia, but that might
not work either.

Chris p.s. Ken, that should be “. . . are two reasons . . .” :-) cb

On 31 Oct 2014, at 06:25, Nathan Wajsman <photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Well, depends. I lived in Gainesville for 3 years. It is the site
of the main campus of the Florida state university system, and is
therefore a very pleasant college town with relatively progressive
politics and much more cultural offerings than many big cities. I
then moved to Tampa for my first full-time job out of graduate
school, and found that my quality of life had plummetted. Tampa had
all the disadvantages of a big city: congestion, crime, etc., but
none of the advantages (culture, Latin spirit like in Miami etc.).
The road on which I commuted to work, Dale Mabry Highway, was
elected among America’s 10 ugliest roads in some travel magazine
during the time I lived there, and I cannot really disagree. So
when I got a job offer in New Jersey, I was happy to accept it for
a variety of reasons, and getting out of Tampa was one of them,
albeit not the main one.

Cheers, Nathan

Nathan Wajsman

Alicante, Spain http://www.frozenlight.eu http://www.greatpix.eu
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws Blog:
http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/

Cycling: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator

YNWA


On 30 Oct 2014, at 17:51, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Reminds me a bit of my 3 years living in Tampa in the late 80s,
a place I was only happy to leave when the opportunity arose.

There really is only two reasons for me to even contemplate
Florida: January and February.

AG --

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