Small world….

Best cars for Boston seem to be beaters
At least the “Big Dig” is done – I think

Daughter was smart, sold her car before we moved her there.

Check your mail, sent tips, before I saw this post.
Ciao
Chip

As for Caltrain’s influence on Silicon Valley, dunno. So far it seems to have minimal influence except on commuters.

Here this morning I took my car in to the dealer, walked to the bus, took that to the Harvard Square tstop and took the train to a station a short walk from my house. Was back home in minutes, all told. Totally rocked.

My wife and I have lived in NYC (56th and Broadway, which is around where Doc lived I think), London, and then in Hong Kong. Neither were totally walking cities, but within walking distance was nearly everything I needed, from breakfast, to groceries, to bookstores and parks. They had options (subways and the such) that allowed us to walk & ride to many other things as well.

As I look at mixed used development (residential, shopping, etc in a close in environment) that is starting to occur on the East Coast near things like subway stations, I wonder if the Caltrain stations will soon spur on small little oasis of walkable living up and down Silicon Valley.

You guys are making me feel homesick for a place I’ve never lived. It sounds like a whole different world out west, one I’d be so happy in…

Andrew hit on another one: food. There are so many great restaurants here, with so many cuisines, and so much character — far more than you tend to find anywhere in the Bay Area outside of pockets in San Francisco and Berkeley.

Public transportation rocks, too. I took my GPS to work today. The walk to the bus was .28 miles and took just a few minutes. The bus came immediately. It always does. I can also walk to a “T” station and fly underground to Harvard Square. Within two blocks of where I catch the bus are at least three outstanding restaurants, plus a coffee shop where the cappucciinos are even *better* than Peets, which is a lofty achievement. Plus there’s a homey little movie theater, a first-class diner and bakeries for several ethnic cuisines, a handy cleaners and several shops selling stuff you won’t find anywhere else — all with a neighborhood feel I haven’t experienced since i was a kid in New Jersey in the Fifties.

Did I mention that the schools rock too? And the sports love?

The only other downsides are the drivers and the roads. There must be something in the water that makes drivers — many of them, anyway — just freaking nuts. Maybe it’s the poorly marked roads, with their lanes that appear and disappear, their five+ corner’d intersections with no clear rights of way, their tunnels and bridges that are perpetually under construction or reconstruction… the list goes on.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Silicon Valley. Business-wise, it will always be my pole-star, if not also my home. I also love Santa Barbara, where we built the dream house we’ll return to in a year or two. And I love North Carolina, where I spent a third of my life and where I still have more friends and relatives than i can count. But Boston and the Cambridge area are a fun new place to explore and get to know.

Every place is home in its own way. And there’s no other place like it.

I haven’t checked, but I suspect as well that there are more PHP/MYSQL guys than you could shake a stick at.

What more could you want?