Foo - Web programmer job opening in bike friendly California city

I saw the following job opening online today. It's in Davis, CA - one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country. Any takers?

http://jobs.hr.ucdavis.edu/jm/PositionDescriptionView?id=7147

Ugh... that's right up my alley... sigh. Maybe in a few years, if I haven't found the man of my dreams here. :lol:

california....so dreamy. aaahhh..

Unfortunately, the fact that it's bike-friendly is about the only positive thing Davis has going for itself. Unless you're married with kids and want a really, REALLY quiet and isolated place to raise a family.

Okay, it's not THAT bad, but it is pretty boring there. Oh, and if you want to live there, be sure you don't mind the smell of livestock occasionally wafting through your kitchen window.

Unfortunately, the fact that it's bike-friendly is about the only positive thing Davis has going for itself. Unless you're married with kids and want a really, REALLY quiet and isolated place to raise a family.

Okay, it's not THAT bad, but it is pretty boring there. Oh, and if you want to live there, be sure you don't mind the smell of livestock occasionally wafting through your kitchen window.

I'll take horse/livestock manure smell over thick LA smog any day;)

Davis is a combination of college town (U.C. has a major campus there) and bedroom community, surrounded by the wide open spaces mainly occupied by cows. It definitely qualifies as Suburbia, with all that is good and bad about that. The place is very geared to cyclists and has been for decades. That is because the college students have long used bikes to get around far more than the norm, which in turn is a function of the campus and town being (a) kind of spread out (suburbia, remember?) and (b) flat as a pancake. Maybe flatter. The closest thing to a "hill" within 20 miles is a freeway overpass. That is not an exageration.

Other things to know about Davis and environs:

Summer = hot, sometimes windy, hot, dry and hot. Oh, did I mention it gets hot in the summer?

Winter is not at all cold by most people's standards (freezing or a hair below is about as cold as it gets most winters), but it can get nasty-foggy (as in, stay off the road unless you like driving with blindfold) and be gray, dank, dark and in the 40's 24 hours a day for days on end. Beats the heck out of the open prairie in February, but it still can get pretty depressing.

Since Davis is a college town, the populace is better educated and a bit more cosmopolitan in overall tastes than average.

Since Davis is a college town, way too much of life focuses on beer. Or pot. Or other various recreational pharmaceuticals.

There . . . are . . . no . . . hills . . . anywhere. Really. You can see some 20 miles or so off to the west. A whole range of them, actually. But that's it.

Sacramento is a half-hour drive away. That's a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective.

San Francisco is an hour and a half drive away. Ditto. (Me, I'll take SF over Sacto in a heartbeat.)

Great skiing at any one of a bazillion places in and around Lake Tahoe is about 1-1/2 to 2 hours away.

If you have allergies, especially to grasses, Davis is absolutely brutal. When my then-girlfriend was going there, she had non-stop respiratory tract symptoms that slowly got worse and worse and worse. Nothing helped, although the medicoes finally figured out she was allergic to, you guessed it, grasses. She finally managed to get a transfer to Berkeley for health reasons, and she got better. It took several years to undo the damage, but at least she wasn't in the equivalent of a never-ending case of bronchitis.

Flat, hot, allergenic, foggy.

Yup. That's pretty much it.

I'll take horse/livestock manure smell over thick LA smog any day;)
Haha, well, I can't say I'm with you on that one, but to each his own. :)