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Moving to California


DeLorean

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I finally landed a job in California, a place I have wanted to move for the past 4 years. I'll be in the San Jose area, a little south of San Francisco. I have visited the area a bunch of times, found some really awesome roads near a town called Ben Lomend and went to the Z car garage, but I would love any suggestions you locals can recommend in terms of nice roads and meet ups.

 

On a side note, anyone have a recommended car transport company? I am driving my Cooper S out, but want my Z as soon as financially possible.

 

I hear there is a cars and coffee meet Saturday mornings at Santana Row, just curious if any Z guys drive out there ever. I am looking forward to the change in scenery immensely, I'm sure I'll see some fellow HybridZers around. Here is a recent photo of my Z:

 

post-3338-081091500 1320888702_thumb.jpg

 

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I live just north of san fransisco, in marin. Funnily enough my DD is a cooper s too. I literaly just posted it for sale on craigslist a couple hours ago though. San Jo is supposed to have some great roads. I haven't driven any of them. But up north in marin, I know of a few really fun roads that I like to take my mini on. I haven't driven my Z yet so I don't know how it does on them :P. I assume you have to move your stuff out too? I got my car from a guy 3 hours away and used a u-haul trailer. You can haul a car behind the uhaul trucks too, and the trailer works great. Plus they let you leave the truck and trailer at a different location, so I'd reccomend that route, it only costs like 50 bucks for the u-haul rental. Anyways I just found it funny that we both have the same two cars. Maybe we can go on a Z drive someday when I get my Z driving, assuming thats anytime soon. And it is a great area to live in, I'm sure you'll love it!

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Mount Hamilton is the nice one. The actual road quality out here is atrocious in my opinion. It's funny, so much money here in Silicon Valley, but the infrastructure is crumbling away.

 

Where you working at out in these neck of the woods?

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Mount Hamilton is the nice one. The actual road quality out here is atrocious in my opinion. It's funny, so much money here in Silicon Valley, but the infrastructure is crumbling away.

 

Where you working at out in these neck of the woods?

 

yes the roads are crap for the most part. but in marin they seem to be doing a lot of road work lately. i think it's from the economy bumping up and them giving people jobs.

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I'll be working for Apple, at the Valley Fair mall...it's not the big leagues haha

 

I found this one awesome small road in Ben Lomend, you basically drive up to this little camping site and take this road that's not much larger than a golf course path. It's super curvy and has nice views along the way, pretty short drive but very fun.

 

Baltimore has some of the worst roads ever. This past winter, there were dozens of main stretches that had at least 6 inch deep holes, for months. Then, when they finally fixed the holes, they did such a bad job that within another week the hole was worse than before... it was comical.

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I live in Campbell about 5 min north of San Jose, I have lived in this area my whole life and i can tell you, some of the best roads are up on the Santa Cruz mountains. Try sometime going up Highway 9 through downtown Saratoga, great drive and once you get to summit road, you have endless amount of side roads and main roads to explore and enjoy the woods and views. Sadly their doesn't seem to be much a community for the south bay, from what ive seen if you wanna hang with Z guys, go visit them in the east or north bay!

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The main drawback to most of the fun roads that are truly "in the bay area" is that they're generally crowded with cyclists and foot runners. Be very careful out there. That's one of the nicer things about having moved out to Vacaville for me, is that for the first time in my life there's SEVERAL local roads that are awesome drives that I rarely see traffic on. Not that I endorse crossing the lines, or speeding, but things happen on windy roads and the less traffic the safer they seem to be. Road conditions are also better out here too. Roads in the bay area are fairly abysmal.

 

Regarding meets, I throw one at least once a year, usually mid/late summer. Pretty good size shindigs with burgers, plenty of diversity, and all around good people.

 

One thing you'll probably notice is that many of the south bay car guys (z car guys are better, but not immune) tend to be pretty exclusive to their area. While guys from the Sac, modesto, marin, and even modesto regularly drive several hours to get to a car meet, south bay guys like to stay within a 30 minute drive. Part of it I'm sure is the fact that traffic is so bad out there that many have little desire to go further than needed, but it's gotten past being humorous for me. A good example is that I've sold a lot of stuff on craigslist, and the only times I've had people ask for me to drive to them, or meet them half way is when they're from the south bay. It hasn't just happened a couple of times, but a lot. One time a guy wanted to buy a $20 oil pump from me, and wanted me to travel an hour to meet him.... yea right...

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I work in Santana Row, and live in the South Bay as well. That is a beautiful Z you have there.

 

I am surprised no one has mentioned Highway 9 and Skyline Blvd. The BEST hill climb roads IMHO as far as NorCal goes.

 

Send me a PM when you are in the area, we could all have some small group outings :) I am also a frequent attendee of the SR Saturday meets.

Edited by spitz17
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I live in Campbell about 5 min north of San Jose, I have lived in this area my whole life and i can tell you, some of the best roads are up on the Santa Cruz mountains. Try sometime going up Highway 9 through downtown Saratoga, great drive and once you get to summit road, you have endless amount of side roads and main roads to explore and enjoy the woods and views.

 

I will second that! Almost every fun drive I do ends up involving 35, 84, Alpine, etc. It's absolutely beautiful up there. I very much enjoy packing some food, driving up to 4-corners, and relaxing while checking out the bikes and cars that come through. Good luck with the move and I look forward to meeting you and your Z!

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You should definitley come up north sometime too, a nice drive out to the coast is always fun. And even further north in the wine country are a lot of fun roads that I used to go on with the mini club. I'm still getting familiar with them, but there are some really fun ones. And one in particular that takes you down near the jelly belly factory... can't remember what it's called, but it is one of the most fun roads I've ever driven. My local hill that I get most of my fun out of is called fairfax-bolinas road, or dubbed bofax by most locals. It's a fun, tight road that you can't go too fast on, so it's pretty fun and not that scary. It can take you to the coast too but I've never taken it that far. It's probably not worth the drive for you though.

Edited by luseboy
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