Decision Made - We're Staying Put (55, communities, relatives, retired)
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Stair lifts might be a possibility. I live on the second floor of a condo building and noticed that one of the buildings in my complex has a stair lift going to the second floor for those with mobility issues.
Iowa. City, not that far from rural, which is pretty much true for any city here. None of them are that big. We're in West Des Moines. Except for winter it can be heaven on Earth...
That picture was likely taken somewhere along I-80 in western IA, or I-35 up north. We have a lot of windmills creating energy here. Corn doesn't stop wind.
Speaking of I-80, now that you've decided to stay in Iowa, maybe you can hop in your car, head about a hundred miles east of you, sign up for some adult enrichment classes, and then party with the young'ns in Iowa City!
Can you convert existing space downstairs to a master bedroom suite? Leave the upstairs to guests.
Thankfully, when house-hunting here in the Ozarks we refused to look at anything on more than one level for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Of course, that meant we had to pass on this delightful, hillbilly/redneck mansion:
Sometimes life just ain't fair!
Oh..... my.
Too many stairs.
Last edited by Tek_Freek; 08-05-2013 at 06:53 PM..
Speaking of I-80, now that you've decided to stay in Iowa, maybe you can hop in your car, head about a hundred miles east of you, sign up for some adult enrichment classes, and then party with the young'ns in Iowa City!
For us to stay where we are we'd need to spend half of our retirement savings reengineering our house. And since we already live in an apartment disguised as a SHF, downsizing would mean moving into someone else's house or into an RV.
Living in a high cost area with not enough retirement savings, our choice has been made for us whether we like it or not.
Ask Mrs. Tek about that. If she is in a car and can't see out see she gets motion sickness, and you'd better get a window down or the door open if you don't want to clean up a mess.
I get sick if I read in a car or bus. That includes maps. I also get sick if I have to ride backwards like on a train or in the old days, the back of a station wagon. The best one is, I get sick when I watch a movie that has a camera in the moving car and it is focusing either on the line in the middle if the road or the sun shining through the passing treetops.
Congrats on your decision. For some reason I thought you lived in Los Angeles. That's why I was also surprised about Las Vegas being more expensive.
I get sick if I read in a car or bus. That includes maps. I also get sick if I have to ride backwards like on a train or in the old days, the back of a station wagon. The best one is, I get sick when I watch a movie that has a camera in the moving car and it is focusing either on the line in the middle if the road or the sun shining through the passing treetops.
Congrats on your decision. For some reason I thought you lived in Los Angeles. That's why I was also surprised about Las Vegas being more expensive.
LA? I spent a month there in 1968. Lived on a hill above Watts. Place was still full of burned out hulks. I remember hitchhiking on the LA Freeway during rush hour. One guy leaned over as I was walking past his car and said, "I'll pick you up if you're still walking I get to you." LMAO!
we came to the decision to stay put as well after some intense search. but i miss my daughter and the grand kids and now and again wonder if we should revisit the idea. but i am very content where we are and i don't know how things will be where we move - So Cal. what i have seen of it, even the incessant sunshine, the miles and miles of freeways to get anywhere, the apparent lack of acultural life, all of it is very unappealing to me in addition to the higher cost of living and not as nice a house which is what we would be able to afford.
we have now settled on a plan to make short visits to LA, and are making our other travel plans.
I'll accept the downsides - heavy traffic, high cost of housing. But wow! That is the most amazing misunderstanding I have ever read on City-Data about the "apparent lack of a cultural life". As a matter of fact, the incredible abundance of cultural life in pretty much all of its manifestations is the number one reason I love it here. Where to start?
1. World class art museums: the Getty Center, the Getty Villa, the Norton-Simon, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Huntington, and more.
2. A proliferation of independent and foreign films - they tend to open here first, and not just in one district or neighborhood. One art house chain (the Laemmle) has seven locations in the greater Los Angeles area.
3. The (arguably) world's best concert hall acoustically - Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Many world premieres of serious choral music have been performed by the Master Chorale in addition to the classical canon. There are other, major, concert venues in different parts of the city.
4. Live theatre: L.A. is one of the best cities in this country - behind New York City but not that far behind - for live theatre.
5. Genuine ethnic restaurants of so many varieties, and all over the place!
6. The San Pedro harbor with its maritime museum and (since only about a year ago) the battleship USS Iowa, which is one of the four or five ships constituting the largest class of battleships ever built by the United States.
The foregoing six points are just off the top of my head, and do not do justice to the vast richness of this city. Some things, such as dance, I have no great knowledge of or interest in, so I can't write about them. I'm sure I must have forgotten a number of significant things.
I'm guessing it's not the LA I saw 45 years ago...
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A terrible misunderstanding
