choosing a grad school - location suggestions??

[Maya_]

Hey from across the pond! Life in Japan in going well - I slalom kayak on the weekends and raft guide occasionally. The creeks here aren’t flowing especially well (slow typhoon season) so I am sticking to my local, the Tamagawa. While the severe lack of good play spots have kept me out of my play boat since I arrived, I have been learning about a lot of technique that I never new existed…which is cool.

Anyway, since my job here lacks any sort of movement, I have decided to come back to the US next August and go to grad school. I am considering 3 universities, at this point, and was wondering if you all could give me your opinion. Each school was chosen on the following “in order to live” required criteria: a place that I can kayak year round, a place that I can climb/snowboard (occasionally), and finally a place that has a good (kayak) community. Here are my options: Mars Hill, NC (15 min from Asheville), Portland, Oregon, and Colorado (although it doesn’t meet the `year round` criteria…it would be nice to stay native).

Any suggestions or stories/opinions would be greatly appreciated! Hope you all are enjoying the snow.

Cheers.
Maya

[FLOWTORCH]

Try to do a search on it, I think somebody asks that every other month.

[Force]

if you really want to boat year round, screw grad school buy a van and live down river. that's the best way i can think of to get 300+ days in per year. this whole grad school thing stinks.

portland is cool and has great boating and a good earth friendly community. on the weekday you'll be relagated to fighting the crowds at bob's hole and similar locals but on the weekend you can escape and get to the goods.

fort collins ain't a bad town in CO. you can get on the poudre every night after work/school when it's running and the crowds aren't to problem at all. we don't have much park and play but the river running and creeking rocks.

[knu2xs]

The Pacific Northwest has the absolute best paddling bar none, and somehow it has remained a secret. Hands down, PDX it is!

[russllmar]

Either are good or go to colorado for their four months of good boating.

[erdvm1]

Easy answer. North Carolina. (minus the snowboarding unless you're into torture).

[Izza]

I agree with FORCE grad school blows! Good luck getting in time doing anything you want to do. I've been living in Boulder for five years now and since I started gradschool my boating, climbing, and snowboarding have steadily declined.

My advice - screw school - and get a job that you can deal with that gives you as much time off as you want!

[GAtoCSU]

Go to Ashville for kayaking. It's Meca here in the US

[SWA]

I know it is not in the USA, but check out University of British Columbia, it fits your criteria well.

I am a kayaking grad student at UBC and find it to be wonderful.

[ToddG]

based on criteria you set forth, & throwing out the towns/schools you mentioned, squamish BC is your call, w/ vancouver coming in 2nd. kayaking: duh. snowboarding: heard of whistler? climbing: the "chief" is like half-dome on the ocean. cool, progressive people? yup.

ok, so that's not really an option. factor in the schools/towns & your only real option is Pdx. year round kayaking. year round snowboarding. year round climbing & mt biking. surfing. very cool & livable city w/ great culture & arts scene. seafood. damn good coffee (*jitter, jitter*) .. the other thing is BC is still weekendable from pdx, as is norcal.

i've lived btw the SE & CO all my life until about 2 mos ago & would consider moving back to CO at some point, more cuz of my freinds than anythign else. the SE is ok if all you ever think about is kayaking & nascar. & even then, if you don't live in fayetteville, yr waiting on rain, which is hardly guaranteed. i lived thru some pretty dismal loooong droughts on the east coast when even the daily releases on the green were too low. at that point, you just hunker down inside next to an ac unit watchin nascar & drinkin ol' mil. factor snowboarding outta yr life altogether.