Hi there. I’m Eric and I moved from San Francisco, CA where I grew up and lived for my entire life until I turned 55 and decided it was no longer a place where I could raise a family so my wife and I moved to New England where she grew up and I have to say I’ve learned a lot in the two years since we’ve been here.
My house that I grew up in in San Francisco had a beautiful view of the ocean and I thought that I would always need to live by the water, but as time went on I figured if for some reason if I ever moved and couldn’t be near the water I would want to live in a forested area.
I kind of got my wish when we moved back here. Our house is on a ⅓ acre with lots of trees in our backyard. We have lots of wildlife that come to visit from squirrels and chipmunks [that come up to our kitchen door begging for food] to rabbits and foxes, deer and yes, even a bear or moose upon occasion.
Life here is much more different than in San Francisco and I liked to throw out numbers for my friends in San Francisco so they can understand the differences. Western Massachusetts where we live, which is ⅓ of the state of Massachusetts has less population than San Francisco which is approximately 7×7 miles.
We have lots of space here and while for big city folks it might seem kind of rural with the lack of traffic we can get to a big city or shopping mall in about the same time. Hell I can get to Vermont or Connecticut in less time than it used to take me to get out of San Francisco.
We’re in Northampton which in many ways is a lot like a mix of San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. I’m not really missing any food I could get in San Francisco except for Filipino food which I think I have a line on. We don’t have Dungeness crab, but I was never into crab other than crab cakes which…we have here.
Even though we’re a couple hours from the coast [i.e. Boston] we still get seafood that doesn’t have that stinky seafood smell like it usually did in San Francisco. I’m actually eating a lot more seafood here, but part of that is because it is cheaper than it was in San Francisco.
So yes, expect for a short while to see me doing a comparison and contrast to life in the 415 vs the 413, but I’m seeing a lot of nice things here that I’ll be focusing on in the near future.
Regarding our current pandemic outbreak. Just remember to Stay Safe. Stay Distant.