Ah, Homestead. My wife grew up in Ft. Lauderdale - well, Plantation specifically, which was fun to explain to her mixed college class in Dallas! lol
I had a below-knee amputation three years ago and it made pants a real pain in the ass (because the leg comes with the shoe, so it’s like putting on pants with your shoe on) - so I basically wear shorts now. Gets me some odd looks, and it is a little cold, but I’m usually only outside long enough to go to the car or go from the car to inside. heh. But I layer t-shirts under my shirt for warmth - ever since Florida, I feel like I gained the right to wear Hawaiian shirts, and I like the reactions I get - I’m old enough now that I don’t care what people think except I like to make 'em smile. :)
I don’t know where Cradock is, alas. Well, I just looked it up, though. I’ve been through there a couple of times, but haven’t spent much time in Portsmouth.
We moved to VB in 2018 and lived for a year in the flight path of Oceana NAS - right up against I-264 just east of First Colonial. Then my wife got hired at Colonial Williamsburg and was making that 1h15m+ commute to Wburg, so we ended up moving to James City county, which I thought was awesome living in the county that Jamestown is in. But we just moved down to Newport News. I like Wburg, but we wanted to be with a little more variety of food, and with all the military down here, it’s much better.
So I’ve been on probably most of the major roads in every one of the cities except Poquoson and the nearby part of Hampton over there on that side of I-64, and I haven’t been much around Portsmouth to Suffolk, but Chesapeake, VB, Norfolk, most of the Peninsula, I have. heh.
Hampton Roads is wild. Before we moved here, I really didn’t know much about this part of the country at all, and I hadn’t really heard about Hampton Roads; I’d heard a little bit about Norfolk and knew there was some navy stuff here, but that was about it. heh.
Actually, in 2009 I did an internship in Seattle but had an orientation for it in DC, so I drove from Florida - but I wanted to drive through a few extra states to say I had, so I peeled of I-95 and came over to Hampton Roads so I could cross the CBBT (which was amazing) and go up into Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, then back down I-95 to DC for the orientation. So I think it’s hilarious I drove through here before we moved here 9 years later. heh
Oh, and forgot to get back to that bit - I am right now right off Jefferson just south of Atkinson, so not too far north of Denbeigh. hehe. It’s perfect since all my doctors are in Williamsburg and Rachel still works at CW, so while her commute had been like 7 minutes, now it’s still only just over 20, so it’s really not bad.
I really did like Williamsburg. After growing up in DFW, when we moved to Panama City with 150k people in the metro area, it was just so small. Moving to VB felt like civilization again, but after a year I kinda liked the small-town feel of Wburg. But now I’m back to liking being in a real city. lol. The traffic really isn’t bad, and there’s just so much more stuff down here.
I really hope South Carolina feels like home for you for as long as you’re there. I know every place has its positives and negatives. I definitely wouldn’t want to go back to DFW at this point. I miss the severe weather, but I don’t miss tha traffic, and I’ve grown to be spoiled on real trees. This winter has been damned long with the spate of really cold temps, but summer is just that much prettier, I suppose. I’m even getting used to fall. Winter even, for a couple of months. lol. I’m working on it. :)
I’m sorry about the amputation. That sucks. Of all the problems I imagined having to deal with with that, the shoe-through-a-pants-leg bit did not occur to me.
You said you were right in the flight path. I wonder how close my old place was to yours. Do you know where Laskin and Bird neck is? We used to live in the Link Horn apartments there. The planes were so low we could literally see the pilots as they took off and landed. We used to wave at the pilots and they would wave back!
Also, jealous you got to live in JCC, I always wanted to move to the historic triangle. My mom used to take us on day trips to York Town when I was kid. Absolutely loved it up there.
Life happens re: amputation. heh. Appreciated. Could be worse - could be dead :)
I do know where that intersection is. :) We were on the south side of 264 in Piper’s Landing - https://i.imgur.com/jSEjpVp.jpeg - so VERY close, although a solid few minutes to drive from one to the other. hehe. Oh, man, the jets were so LOUD there. And so often so late at night! I sort of got used to it, sorta, but I really was so very glad to get away from that. But yeah, it felt like you could just about jump up and catch the planes. lol.
I always though the 7-Eleven right around the corner from our apartments was wild - since it was in Williamsburg, there was no signage on the building itself, and only this out front: https://i.imgur.com/Flv7Spv.jpeg - that’s at 199 and Jamestown Rd. heh
I’ve come to the conclusion that given electricity, air conditioning, and good internet… I can pretty much live anywhere. But Virginia really is a nicer place to live than many places. heh. Nowhere is perfect. But it’s nice.
But I know a lot of areas have been getting better and better - I know more about North Carolina than South, but hopefully you’re in an area that matches what you want :)
That’s wild we’ve lived so close to each other, and we both ended up on Lemmy.
South Carolina isn’t my favorite, tbh. I love my family there, and the town I’m in is nice, but the area as a whole is… Depressing, I guess would be the word. I miss living in an actual city.
I love the internet for exactly that reason. I host a lot of the internet presence for Simutrans, an open source game that’s almost 30 years old. Because of that, I get to talk to people literally around the world - it’s a small community, but a global following. And then there’s times like this - finding someone who was very close in proximity that I never would have met othewise. lol. It’s awesome. :)
Well, I feel your pain on SC - that’s probably not unlike how I felt moving to Panama City. Well, not only was it a tiny community (I went from what was at the time I think 6 million down to 150,000. lol), but also I grew up inland, so it kinda freaked me out being on the water. I didn’t feel like I was gonna fall off the edge exactly, but it was weird to me not being able to just drive in any direction. lol.
Small towns definitely have some big disadvantages. I think the lack of interesting places to eat is my worst complaint. lol. But even moving from Williamsburg to Newport News has opened up - we have an African market around the corner, and apparently the Yemini community is well-represented in local restaurants. heh.
Hopefully you find sufficient comfort in the family and the town so long as you’re there. I do miss a very few thngs about Panama City. Not much. But a few. hehe
![[OC] Sunset on the James River](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/f4a84628-927c-4753-9ce6-a182a23217fa.jpeg){kind=link}
Ah, Homestead. My wife grew up in Ft. Lauderdale - well, Plantation specifically, which was fun to explain to her mixed college class in Dallas! lol
I had a below-knee amputation three years ago and it made pants a real pain in the ass (because the leg comes with the shoe, so it’s like putting on pants with your shoe on) - so I basically wear shorts now. Gets me some odd looks, and it is a little cold, but I’m usually only outside long enough to go to the car or go from the car to inside. heh. But I layer t-shirts under my shirt for warmth - ever since Florida, I feel like I gained the right to wear Hawaiian shirts, and I like the reactions I get - I’m old enough now that I don’t care what people think except I like to make 'em smile. :)
I don’t know where Cradock is, alas. Well, I just looked it up, though. I’ve been through there a couple of times, but haven’t spent much time in Portsmouth.
We moved to VB in 2018 and lived for a year in the flight path of Oceana NAS - right up against I-264 just east of First Colonial. Then my wife got hired at Colonial Williamsburg and was making that 1h15m+ commute to Wburg, so we ended up moving to James City county, which I thought was awesome living in the county that Jamestown is in. But we just moved down to Newport News. I like Wburg, but we wanted to be with a little more variety of food, and with all the military down here, it’s much better.
So I’ve been on probably most of the major roads in every one of the cities except Poquoson and the nearby part of Hampton over there on that side of I-64, and I haven’t been much around Portsmouth to Suffolk, but Chesapeake, VB, Norfolk, most of the Peninsula, I have. heh.
Hampton Roads is wild. Before we moved here, I really didn’t know much about this part of the country at all, and I hadn’t really heard about Hampton Roads; I’d heard a little bit about Norfolk and knew there was some navy stuff here, but that was about it. heh.
Actually, in 2009 I did an internship in Seattle but had an orientation for it in DC, so I drove from Florida - but I wanted to drive through a few extra states to say I had, so I peeled of I-95 and came over to Hampton Roads so I could cross the CBBT (which was amazing) and go up into Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, then back down I-95 to DC for the orientation. So I think it’s hilarious I drove through here before we moved here 9 years later. heh
Oh, and forgot to get back to that bit - I am right now right off Jefferson just south of Atkinson, so not too far north of Denbeigh. hehe. It’s perfect since all my doctors are in Williamsburg and Rachel still works at CW, so while her commute had been like 7 minutes, now it’s still only just over 20, so it’s really not bad.
I really did like Williamsburg. After growing up in DFW, when we moved to Panama City with 150k people in the metro area, it was just so small. Moving to VB felt like civilization again, but after a year I kinda liked the small-town feel of Wburg. But now I’m back to liking being in a real city. lol. The traffic really isn’t bad, and there’s just so much more stuff down here.
I really hope South Carolina feels like home for you for as long as you’re there. I know every place has its positives and negatives. I definitely wouldn’t want to go back to DFW at this point. I miss the severe weather, but I don’t miss tha traffic, and I’ve grown to be spoiled on real trees. This winter has been damned long with the spate of really cold temps, but summer is just that much prettier, I suppose. I’m even getting used to fall. Winter even, for a couple of months. lol. I’m working on it. :)
I’m sorry about the amputation. That sucks. Of all the problems I imagined having to deal with with that, the shoe-through-a-pants-leg bit did not occur to me.
You said you were right in the flight path. I wonder how close my old place was to yours. Do you know where Laskin and Bird neck is? We used to live in the Link Horn apartments there. The planes were so low we could literally see the pilots as they took off and landed. We used to wave at the pilots and they would wave back!
Also, jealous you got to live in JCC, I always wanted to move to the historic triangle. My mom used to take us on day trips to York Town when I was kid. Absolutely loved it up there.
Life happens re: amputation. heh. Appreciated. Could be worse - could be dead :)
I do know where that intersection is. :) We were on the south side of 264 in Piper’s Landing - https://i.imgur.com/jSEjpVp.jpeg - so VERY close, although a solid few minutes to drive from one to the other. hehe. Oh, man, the jets were so LOUD there. And so often so late at night! I sort of got used to it, sorta, but I really was so very glad to get away from that. But yeah, it felt like you could just about jump up and catch the planes. lol.
I always though the 7-Eleven right around the corner from our apartments was wild - since it was in Williamsburg, there was no signage on the building itself, and only this out front: https://i.imgur.com/Flv7Spv.jpeg - that’s at 199 and Jamestown Rd. heh
I’ve come to the conclusion that given electricity, air conditioning, and good internet… I can pretty much live anywhere. But Virginia really is a nicer place to live than many places. heh. Nowhere is perfect. But it’s nice.
But I know a lot of areas have been getting better and better - I know more about North Carolina than South, but hopefully you’re in an area that matches what you want :)
That’s wild we’ve lived so close to each other, and we both ended up on Lemmy.
South Carolina isn’t my favorite, tbh. I love my family there, and the town I’m in is nice, but the area as a whole is… Depressing, I guess would be the word. I miss living in an actual city.
I love the internet for exactly that reason. I host a lot of the internet presence for Simutrans, an open source game that’s almost 30 years old. Because of that, I get to talk to people literally around the world - it’s a small community, but a global following. And then there’s times like this - finding someone who was very close in proximity that I never would have met othewise. lol. It’s awesome. :)
Well, I feel your pain on SC - that’s probably not unlike how I felt moving to Panama City. Well, not only was it a tiny community (I went from what was at the time I think 6 million down to 150,000. lol), but also I grew up inland, so it kinda freaked me out being on the water. I didn’t feel like I was gonna fall off the edge exactly, but it was weird to me not being able to just drive in any direction. lol.
Small towns definitely have some big disadvantages. I think the lack of interesting places to eat is my worst complaint. lol. But even moving from Williamsburg to Newport News has opened up - we have an African market around the corner, and apparently the Yemini community is well-represented in local restaurants. heh.
Hopefully you find sufficient comfort in the family and the town so long as you’re there. I do miss a very few thngs about Panama City. Not much. But a few. hehe