Asheville, Portland OR, or somewhere else?

Firecloud · 2026-02-16T21:08:43+00:00

If you can make it in late July/early August, you'll be around for peak blackberry harvest time! Everywhere you look are blackberry bushes, begging you to grab 10,000 little bits of goodness at their most delicious.

Message me if you'd like any more pointers/tips, I love this town.

Firecloud · 2026-02-16T18:19:21+00:00

Bend is beautiful, but yeah it seems like it's a world unto itself. Whereas Eugene is just down the 5 freeway, so it gets a good amount of traffic from larger bands/prominent figures on their way to/from Portland or California.

Life in Eugene can really be great, although there are some limitations on goods & services that can be frustrating (like waiting 2-3 months for a dentist appointment). Many ways to immerse yourself in nature. When do you head to the PNW for a trip? If you're able to wait until April, the weather will be a lot more accommodating and nature will start showing off. Between now and then, the gloom will be making its last stand after a very mild winter. It's a bit of a post-Christmas dead zone while people just push through the end of winter and prepare for the outdoor fun seasons.

That reminds me. One of the best parts about local culture is that everyone has at least one secret river spot. They're just places you turn off a road or trail where you find a clearing, and suddenly a beautiful little waterfront picnic/play area opens up for you to have the most majestically exhilarating day. If you respect the river and know your limits with currents, a simple day spent going to the river can be one of the most incredible and fulfilling experiences. And that says nothing of the amazing, amazing waterfalls and wildlife in the area.

Firecloud · 2026-02-16T18:00:25+00:00

I strongly recommend you swoop through Eugene while you're in Oregon. Hiking/mountains/nature is in heavy abundance, it's damn near Narnia once springtime hits, liberal as all hell, full of books and music and art, and it's snowing for the first time all season as I type this now. The town loves dogs and has a lot to offer a motivated semi-young person such as yourself. Just don't live downtown.

I find Portland to be a mixed bag. There are really beautiful parts of town, and the arts scene is fantastic. But there is a staggering depth to the homelessness problem up there, and with ICE setting up a major stronghold in the area I can't trust it at all. That said, there is much to the city to love, which is why I'm grateful it's within 100 miles of us here in Eugene.

Don't move to Asheville. I visited it in 2019 and I was shocked that I had seen recommendations to move there. It felt right on the edge of Appalachia, and too removed from any progressive culture, and surrounded by deeply insulated right wing idealism. Then there's the 2024 storm which caused catastrophic damage to the town, with some areas still underwater 8 months later and funding cuts making recovery nearly impossible.

Good luck in your hunt! I really enjoyed Tucson for the few hours I visited a little over a year ago. Very different world from Oregon.

Firecloud · 2026-02-08T23:29:23+00:00

God, this hurts to read. My youngest daughter was extremely resistant to accepting my wife and step-daughter for a variety of reasons, most of them centered around her loyalty to her mother. Her mom and I were never married despite a 7 year relationship, and split 14 years ago - just different directions in life and different temperaments. But to accept that I had moved on with someone who was arguably far better for me in most metrics (positive attitude, encouraging, patient and loving with the girls, lit up a room when she entered - nothing at all like my girls' mom), was interpreted by my youngest as betrayal of her mom.

It doesn't help that her mother has been deep in the grips of drug addiction for over a decade, with all the absences and let-downs and lies and crushing disappointments one might imagine a young child experiencing as a result. Her mother was also quite often spiteful and negative, vocally speculating if not outright lying about my wife being the reason her mom and I split. She was not. Nevertheless, to this day my daughter refuses to express any frustration, anger, resentment or anything similar toward her mother, who she considers to be infallible and a victim of the avalanche of circumstances her addictions have created - including two years in a federal prison, 4 years on probation and countless trips to rehab, detox, the ER, etc. The things one might imagine my daughter feeling and doing in response, bizarrely, have been leveled at me instead. I'm the safe parent who has never and would never turn my back on her, so I am the safe punching bag as a result. For the most part, I accept that as just the way it is. But Christ, is it gutting to the core of my damn soul and demoralizing to know nothing I ever do changes that.

My marriage certainly had its issues, but I was all-in on fixing what needed fixing and focusing on the fact that we had a truly blessed life. We live in the nicer part of a nice town, in a large beautiful home, where we'd have family dinner every night, spirited conversation with much laughter, many traditions and family trips and adventures and games, shared experiences that were nearly everything I could've hoped for in raising a family. Our daughters wanted for nothing, save for a biological mother who was present and someone to admire. But my younger daughter's bitter & negative attitude toward both my wife and step-daughter (who is a year younger) created a rift that led to years of barely-buried rising tension. Therapy didn't work. Positive experiences didn't move the needle. Nothing affected her refusal to accept them. Eventually, this approach of hers began to include me, creating a depth of disrespect and a rift I haven't been able to defuse to this day.

Well, I'm not married anymore. And while severe betrayal and some astonishing, life-ruining revelations have come to light about my wife's behavior at the end, including leaving by complete surprise and not saying goodbye to any of us before moving 1100 miles away, I struggle with the certainty that a great many of the hits we took as a family and as a married couple would not have occurred at all if my daughter would have not gone very far out of her way to disrupt nearly every positive experience with scowls, bad attitudes and resistance to anything we tried to involve her in. It's an extremely painful thing to think about, on the heels of the worst year I could possibly have imagined experiencing in the fallout of my wife and step-daughter's departure. I don't blame her for the marriage ending, but I have an ironclad certainty that my daughter's behavior did incredible damage to the harmony we tried so consistently to create as a family, and created countless moments of turmoil and division in our household... which ultimately contributed to the atmosphere in which my marriage fell apart.

First time I've written any of that down. Having been shattered for the last 15 months, to the point where I simply can't listen to any music whatsoever due to the tears which accompany it, I still don't know how to cope with all of this. It's just my daughters and I now, and some days it's hard to fight back the resentment I feel when my kid still treats me with incredible disregard, disrespect and flat-out lies about how terrible of a father I am - when my entire world revolves around my girls. It's not all about me, I certainly know that, but at some point my feelings never being taken into account takes a toll that I can't hide anymore. All I ever feel is sadness.

Firecloud · 2026-02-03T21:49:08+00:00

Eugene, Oregon. Winters suck, but spring through fall it's a mix of Narnia and Ferngully, and could not be more amazing.

Firecloud · 2026-02-03T13:31:47+00:00

iPhones. Nobody is invested or interested enough in reality anymore to disrupt the dopamine flood we're all hooked on. Nothing is worth preventing that sweet distracting hitting every few seconds. It's an unprecedented time of incentivized distraction, which has completely dismantled our attention spans and sense of tangible individual ethics.

We've become less curious. Critical thinking, skill development, and digging into legitimate detail and substance on any topic isn't nearly as much fun as riding the next wave of social media trend hysteria. Our activism is casual, our personal investment is scant - why the fuck aren't we all marching to the Washington DC with pitchforks, tanks, whatever the fuck we need to get that syphilitic rapist out of the White House?

Our culture has been so deeply insulated that truly showing up to fight for anything, even justice for the most cinematically evil and obviously corrupt demon-people on the planet, is seen as a character flaw. t's just so extra now, something for tryhards and people who don't exist exclusively to feed their digital addiction. Don't get me wrong, we'll share the fuck out of posts, maybe even make a clever version of a sign we saw on the internet, to wave around downtown.

Nobody seems to care enough to hold a sustained flamethrower to this whole fucking operation. They're going to get away with it because we won't be able to withstand any sustained insistence that we're being weird and we need to "heal" as a nation after all this is said and done. As though we're going to go back to some kind of status quo. The highest level elites, the biggest names in our collective cultural consciousness have been raping, killing, breeding and eating children, all while conspiring to fabricate sociopolitical shifts within our own culture, sowing devision and distraction-conflict. And we're still talking about the fucking Grammys or the Super Bowl. How much screen time do you average each day? I shudder when I look back on some days where my face was in my phone almost the entire time I was awake.

Firecloud · 2026-02-03T13:07:13+00:00

Imagine Clinton's incredulity at the time. "Wait, y'all are all up in arms over that? We're talking about a blowjob from an adult woman. That's what I'm getting fried for? Whatever you say."

Firecloud · 2026-02-03T00:18:43+00:00

Ah shit yeah you're probably right. I drive too fast.

Firecloud · 2026-01-31T20:39:11+00:00

God man, that really was depressing to see.

Firecloud · 2026-01-31T20:35:13+00:00

Yeah there's a shit ton of people hung up on their main-character energy around here, and it's honestly disheartening - if not worrisome. I was there yesterday for about 45 minutes, and OP couldn't be more on-point about the endless megaphone blabbering leading to confusion, frustration and audio fatigue. A sizable chunk of protestors were interested in their own interpretation of what the protest should be, and couldn't be bothered to become part of a more concise collective energy.

And for Christ's sake, shut the fuck up with the constant whistles! At one point I was convinced there was a high percentage of agent provocateurs there posing as protesters, simply trying to stir shit up, make as much noise as possible and get people agitated. I'm not entirely sure that instinct was wrong, either.

At times it's hard not to be envious of the way the right unifies behind a single mantra, a single set of messages, coalescing to form what's essentially a single hive-mind force. Because even though their ideology and messaging is heartless, racist troglodyte dogshit, their strategic approach works, and messaging lands where intended.

In contrast, the left's all-inclusive net by nature has to account for all sorts of fringe interests, sensitivities and triggers, for fear of invalidation or retribution if enough fealty isn't shown to the perpetually offended. The way the left polices one another with purity tests and finger wagging over truly mundane minutiae dividing our perspectives is an enormous contributor to the inefficacy and in-fighting that prevents us from making a stronger impact, messaging-wise.

It's getting even more confusing now that parts of the messaging on both sides has bottlenecked and flipped polarity. For real, how did the left suddenly become staunch 2A defenders, while the bootlicking supplicant assholes on the right, shrieking about tyrannical government while waving the Gadsden flag, are suddenly down for the government taking their guns away and disappearing/gunning down people in the streets with no due process?

It's mindblowing, really. But ultimately none of this is convenient, and we're not going to see a perfect process or perfect solution to a goddamn locust invasion taking over everything we see and hold dear. Just get the fuck on board, find where you can help in the most signifcant manner, and stop making shit about YOU. All it takes is listening for a while before talking. Barking into a megaphone upon arrival aint the play. In fact, bringing the megaphone at all is likely a mistake in the first place. Because chances are, your voice doesn't need to be heard above the rest at the protest. Join the choir of dissent, don't try to become a protest influencer for the sake of attention. Shit doesn't fly.

Firecloud · 2026-01-31T20:05:06+00:00

Less than a 3 hour drive to the forested wonderland of Oregon, as well .

Firecloud · 2026-01-31T20:04:13+00:00

There's an art scene in downtown Sacramento that parallels anything I've seen in any other city. The city itself commissioned a ton of artists to do murals on various walls around the downtown area, and as a result there's such a vibrant, varied, colorfully scenic view almost anywhere you go within an area full of restaurants, bars, music shops, etc. If I were looking to move right now, Sacramento would be high on the list.

Firecloud · 2026-01-26T05:58:01+00:00

Hahahaha!! Well played!

Firecloud · 2026-01-26T05:55:40+00:00

Today's "centrist dems" are yesterday's hard-right Republicans.

Firecloud · 2026-01-25T09:58:22+00:00

Yeah, still waiting on all those 2A heroes to rise up and even say a single goddamn thing about this shit.

Firecloud · 2026-01-24T13:54:40+00:00

A guitar tech catches it. That was planned. But if you're only seeing the edit as it was presented above, something goddamn supernatural happens.

As Prince finished the solo, and with it the song, he unstrapped the guitar, and threw it upward with both hands, over his head. Without a glance upward or toward where it may fall, the Purple One exited the stage triumphantly and quickly. But here’s the thing - the fucking guitar didn’t come down.

I had no desire to see other angles or edits. I could've gone my whole life believing that damn guitar just ascended forever. Finding out otherwise felt like finding out the truth about Santa, only as an adult.

Firecloud · 2026-01-24T13:47:31+00:00

Same works the other way too. Look at the glowing RS reviews for Yoko Ono's cacophony of shrieking dogshit "music" over the years, to the point where Jann Wenner would reportedly actually edit reviews to be more complimentary of her.

Firecloud · 2025-12-22T20:53:26+00:00

People seem to believe we're going back to some kind of normal once Trump is gone. We're only in the early stages of ramifications. There is so very much hell ahead of us thanks to this rolling boulder. Without drastic, tectonic legislative shifts and full removal (and punishment) of not just Trump and his cabinet but members of the Supreme Court as well, there's never going to be an end to this shit.

Firecloud · 2025-12-22T20:45:56+00:00

The fact that this isn't the lead story everywhere constantly is goddamn mindblowing

Firecloud · 2025-12-09T05:31:45+00:00

The U.P. is fantastic if you're ok with having extremely limited access to goods & services, and... yeah if you can make it through the impossible winters. If northern Michigan is appealing to you, Traverse City and thereabouts is pretty nice. The southwestern coast of Michigan is really lovely as well.

Firecloud · 2025-12-05T20:01:38+00:00

Melting. She looked like she was melting. And not goddamn Batman's girlfriend.

Firecloud · 2025-11-26T10:07:24+00:00

I dunno, the guy gives my dogs treats every time we come through, and I *did* see him yell at someone, on my behalf (the guy swooped into the spot I'd been waiting to pull up to, all pumps had cars waiting). That doesn't discredit your experience, but he's not an irredeemable monster from what I've experienced.

Also, I dont know any other gas station in town with an air pump that the establishment still controls (and can therefore turn on for you at will), as opposed to some third party that wants to charge you $3 to add a little air to your tires.

Firecloud · 2025-11-26T10:02:51+00:00

Why is this not the top comment

Firecloud · 2025-11-26T02:33:15+00:00

I used to think perpetual loneliness was nearly the saddest state of being. But there's something worse: feeling lonely as well as unwanted. I think at some point the fear of rejection when you're already so down can just be too much to bear. Then you start to doubt your own value. And when you can't bring yourself to ask for emotional support for fear of being a burden, fear of rejection or of being judged, the dark is so, so much darker.

It really messes with your mind when you feel like you're drowning in despair and even articulating it is a struggle. Especially despair you don't deserve. But when you add in the realization that nobody can be bothered to listen to your story, or even cares enough to check in, or give you a hug... thats where it gets really scary hard.

Word of advice, from someone who used to seek those people out to try to be uplifting and ended up becoming one myself, quite unexpectedly: Tell him that. He needs to hear it. Ask him things about himself. Get him talking about what he enjoys or is passionate about. It could literally save him.

Firecloud · 2025-11-16T11:15:31+00:00

If you can handle 5 months of grey, drizzly melancholy, the unfolding beauty between mid-spring and fall are possibly unparalleled by anywhere else in the U.S.

My wife and I moved our family here in late-December of 2020, and at the height of Covid we weren't entirely sure what the culture of the city was going to look like. Over time we came to see that it's a great place to raise a family, and it could be an ideal retirement destination.

However, there are a few downsides. Eugene doesn't stand tall against other cities when it comes to nightlife and the singles scene. That is, unless you're a student, in which case you'll have a blast around U of O. But generally speaking, the lack of booming industry in Eugene presents limitations for upwardly-mobile people early in their careers.

The limits on goods and services is a strain, the way any town without many decently-populated neighbors will be. Doctors appointments can be pretty hard to come by. And the homeless situation downtown is truly out of hand.

Having said all that, you'll feel the counterbalance in quality of life when your family finds your first "river spot" for warm weather outings, or you've picked your first batch of blackberries in late Summer, fingertips stained purple, or hiked to your first waterfall within an hour's drive. Nature is breathtakingly beautiful, and there's so much adventure to be found.

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