Why Minnesota? (Part 2)

Job prospects aren’t the only reason we moved to Minnesota, though employment opportunity certainly holds the highest rank. We looked at a number of factors, and a variety of cities before coming to a decision.

Cost of living: On a limited budget, and making a leap with no “job” safety net and no relocation reimbursement, cost of living was a huge factor, that all but eliminated our prime choices on the coast. The Twin Cities proved compatible with our former region - slightly more expensive, but not as outrageous as other economically stable regions we considered (like Chicago).

Distance from home: Minnesota has the advantage of being a day’s drive from our parents homes. Granted at 11 to 13 hours it’s a long, somewhat tedious drive, and Chicago traffic can prove to be a hassle at times, but it can be done. If we want to visit family for a long holiday weekend, (Thanksgiving, Christmas) it’s not out of the question.

By plane, the trip is an hour and a half, which means we’ll likely spend more time in the airport than on the jet. If we can’t afford an airline ticket, and don’t want to make the drive, we can always hop on the Megabus, and leave the driving to someone else. Round trip tickets start around $20 per person, per leg of the journey (two legs total) with about an hour and a half layover in Chicago.



Public Transportation: while not an immediate priority, with only one car between the two of us, we needed to account for other ways of getting around. The Twin Cities have a robust bus line, but more surprising to us was their Light Rail Transit, a relatively new addition to the city. Groundbreaking on the project began in 2001 and the train that now travels from the Twins stadium in the heart of downtown, to the Mall of America in Bloomington started running in 2004.



Think about that for a moment - there’s wasn’t a single rail of track on the ground prior to 2001, and yet they had a system up and running 3 years later. Most cities would still be arguing the logistics of such a feat (as well as fighting the NIMBY crowd). How was so much progress made in such a short amount of time?

Blame then Governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura, a staunch advocate of the rapid transit system. Sure, other people had their hand in it, but none of them were ex-Navy SEAL professional wrestlers capable of an overhead gutwrench backbreaker rack, with intimate knowledge of waterboarding. HUAH!



Light Rail aside, the Cities boast a third, viable means of transportation: bicycling. Bicycling Magazine recently named Minneapolis as the #1 Bike City in America. Exploring the area in the month since we relocated revealed that this is truly a city built for bikes.

We mentioned the Greenway in a previous blog post, a series of trails that run for miles, upon miles of uninterrupted pedestrian paths. A superhighway for cyclists that is at times broken down like any other highway - with speed limits, construction detours, off ramps and even occasional medians splitting traffic headed in opposite directions.



Since arriving we have literally ridden our bicycles to places faster than we could drive there, and have switched most of our routine errands (post office, grocery runs) from gas to pedal power. As a new feature here on Minnesota or Bust, we’ll be updating each post with our odometer readout, to give an example of just how much we’re riding.

When I posted the Vogon update last week the cycling odometer read 1258 miles. Today, it’s at 1406. Stay tuned to see how much farther we’ll have gone next time we post!