Life in or near Mojave, CA?

I've got some interest from a group in Mojave, CA as possible place of employment. I've never been there, I'm reading a lot of... non-positive stuff about the area. Does anyone have an opinion on being out there? Tehachapi sounds like about the nicest town but it's really small. I'm trying to avoid a situation where I move somewhere for a new and exciting opportunity only to be ruined by the fact that there's no other positives to being there. Does anyone have some first hand experience? I'm single with no children if that makes any difference.

I have been in the area a few times but I don't live terribly close. There is always interesting stuff going on at the airport in Mohave (aircraft testing etc).

Very hot in the summer, cold in the winter, very dry. Lots of sand and dry dirt. Tehachapi will be a good amount cooler. Good access to the Sierra mountain range and skiing (Mammoth). Lancaster is pretty close, and I think the largest city around. Not exactly a paradise, but a well developed desert city.

It is very close to Willow Springs. Reasonably close to Buttonwillow in the (San Joaquin Valley).

Did I mention the sand?

Do the sand and dried dirt make for cheaper housing than the other places? That alone would be worth it IMHO.

Now going through my head: "And I been from Tuscon to Tucemcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah..."

yamaha wrote: Do the sand and dried dirt make for cheaper housing than the other places? That alone would be worth it IMHO.

Definitely some cheap ones there (you power bills will likely be high of course):

http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Mojave-CA/32910_rid/35.086414,-118.107576,35.002652,-118.24542_rect/12_zm/1_fr/

My wife is a military Housing Manager, she finds rentals and homes for military folks moving to the area (upstate New York).

Here's a link to the Housing Office at Edwards' AFB. From there you should be able to poke around. MWR gives entertainment etc. information about the area.

You're not military, but information is free.

Dan

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/airforcebaseprofiles/ss/edwards_6.htm

http://www.militaryinstallations.dod.mil/pls/psgprod/f?p=132:CONTENT:0::NO::P4_INST_ID,P4_INST_TYPE:430,INSTALLATION

I'm just up the road in Ridgecrest. Mojave is a dump....Cal City is a bit better. Tehachapi is a whole lot better. The Palmdale/Lancaster area is like little Los Angeles...good parts and not so good parts. Ridgecrest is an hour away and a nice place to live....but it's remote and things can be a bit more expensive. Shopping is also limited. If your into dirt bikes etc, it rocks! lots of offroading around here.

In general, it gets hot (100-110 average mid summer) and it gets cold (mid teens) in the winter. The wind blows a lot. Did someone mention sand? yeah, it moves around and gets into everything. Low humidity year round and lots of sunshine.

Oh yeah, and Willow Springs is close by

In reply to RoadRaceDart :

Yeah, Tehachapi seems like the best compromise of distance to Mojave vs. quality of life.

The job seems like an amazing opportunity (I don't want to talk about it in any depth here, I will later if I I like what I hear and interviews go well, etc etc) but that part of the world... seems a little non-awesome. And I'm not about to take a job in some rat hole just to have a job that seems cool. Not remotely worth it.

Isn't there desert there where speed trials were run ?

Scaled Composites. Google it. Go live at the airport.

iceracer wrote: Isn't there desert there where speed trials were run ?

You're thinking of El Mirage Dry Lake. Speed trials still run there once a month for about six months of the year, not to mention about a jillion car commercials. There's no direct route to El Mirage from the area in question but one could get there in an hour from the locations under discussion.

In reply to Appleseed:

Understand that I already have a company interested in me. Don't worry about the work, if I like the area I'll have something very curious to do there. This is much more a question of "would life out there be cool or whack?"

To the folks talking about speed trials; you're missing the point. This is not an automotive related question in any real sense, although I am wondering about cleaning sand out of my VFR now...

well.... getting crank should not be an issue....

I think it really comes down to if you can deal with rural desert living. The barren wastes can take some getting used to, but of course has it's own beauty. It is pretty clear that people can get used to living almost anywhere.

A good place for aviation, off road sports and some very rust free cars. A friend bought a 70 ish MG Midget out of the desert a few years ago.... a British car.... was absolutely devoid of ANY rust anywhere, it was crazy, and he DIDN'T keep the car! He gave someone back east a HUGE break in restoration labor.

Yup, time to get into off-road sports for sure. But it's still CA, so you'll have to deal with that.

The whole "but it's a dry heat!" joke is actually true, it should be a lot more comfortable than you'd expect if you're in a humid area. Rob, do most people use swamp coolers or refrigerated air? The former is a lot cheaper to run.

I'd give it a shot for a while, especially if there's an interesting job involved. You're single. No kits. Better to give it a try and decide no than to regret not taking the opportunity later. I did something similar a decade ago and don't regret it one bit. I love the desert.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Yeah, I've already decided to just trade my Mustang in on something completely stock and OBD-2 equipped like a Focus wagon because of the inspection process on vehicles if I go to Cali. That's minor vs. everything else involved in such a move though. And a long way off from where I'm at today. I guess I just don't want to end up bored and lonely out in the desert... I didn't do well with Denver a few years ago so it's a real threat. Oddly I find more to do in Wichita than I did in CO.

What sort of stuff do you like to do?

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Motorcycling, working on projects in the garage, travel, photography... some of which seems to jive with this and some of which doesn't. Having a decent place to get a coffee and the paper. I don't care about skiing or much of anything involving snow save for "driving past it". I'd love to be restoring my Capri but I don't know about dragging a car half way across the country to start cutting it up.

This is a lot of trying to decide based on liking my current location but wanting a change in work somehow, and maybe having a shot at it but it's to a totally different place that I'm not sure if I could find enjoyable. I grew up on a farm, I don't get turned on by returning to some really small town and trying to have a shot with one of the four women that are both single and have the majority of their original teeth.

Keith Tanner wrote: Yup, time to get into off-road sports for sure. But it's still CA, so you'll have to deal with that. The whole "but it's a dry heat!" joke is actually true, it should be a lot more comfortable than you'd expect if you're in a humid area. Rob, do most people use swamp coolers or refrigerated air? The former is a lot cheaper to run. I'd give it a shot for a while, especially if there's an interesting job involved. You're single. No kits. Better to give it a try and decide no than to regret not taking the opportunity later. I did something similar a decade ago and don't regret it one bit. I love the desert.

Indeed...swamp coolers rule the roost out here. The few times a year when the humidity levels shoot up they tend to not work as well. But that doesn't happen much. Dry heat is much better than that awfull sticky humid stuff IMHO :) We built a lean-to over our swamp and it reduced the temps in the house considerably just from the added shade. Our place is just under 2K square feet, 4 bedroom and 7 people inside on the hottest days....110-115 outside and it's about 85-90 inside.

Sounds like it might be worth a trip to check out. Bring a camera - and there you go, photography and travel checked off the list There's certainly a lot of interesting stuff within a few hours, including that big mass of stuff called Los Angeles.

I do find it interesting that you didn't like Denver but do like Wichita - seems to me that pretty much everything you could do in the latter you could do in the former, plus more.

I think Denver would be alright if I had known people there, but it was a lot of alone-in-the-crowd. Philly wasn't like that before it, and Wichita has always been alright once I started finding a few places to waste time or what have you. I lived in Littleton and it was probably alright if I was married with kids but otherwise it was a lot of commuting to a few things that exist in any other American city of any size.

pres589 wrote: In reply to Keith Tanner: Motorcycling, working on projects in the garage, travel, photography... some of which seems to jive with this and some of which doesn't.

No. All off that jives with being in CA. Maybe not right in Mojave, but hop on the bike and you'll quickly have some nice rides to interesting places to photograph. Draw a 4-hour radius circle and you get to some really nice places to ride to, hang out for an evening, and ride back the next day. Good food and good beer are plentiful.

I will third that "but it's a dry heat" isn't a joke. I will take a dry 110 over a humid 90 any day. As long as you have shade, water, and airflow, you're good. I've spent summers driving an un-airconditioned Miata in Sacramento. Top up for shade and no rear window actually kept me reasonably comfortable. I've been to Thunderhill when it is 116 out. I sucked down about a gallon of watered down gatorade, but my cooling system fared better than the car's.

Any new opinions on the Mojave in the past few years?  I have a job interview out there and am curious about living situations.  The town itself looks like a glorified rest stop with a giant airstrip.

How are bad are Cali emissions?  My VW (well the one i would keep if i moved) is a '71 so its not like i can really make the emissions worse...

I've developed a theory about California. Everyone seems to think it's split into SoCal and NorCal, but really it's split into coastal and desert. Warning, broad generalizations ahead based on my recent frequent travels to the Golden State.

The coastal folks are the stereotypical Californians. All planning to make it big so there's a constant hustle. There's also the constant threat of apocalypse and the opinion that CA is the best possible place to live. There's a buzz and they all clump together in megacities. The ones that can't live in the middle of the city will commute for hours to work there.

The desert folks are the ones who have checked out and want space and no neighbors. They might build weird art in their yards or land speed record machines or run pirate radio stations ranting about aliens, but that's not your business. And your business is not their business.

Mojave is desert California. Lancaster is coastal.

I like Mojave. I'll sometimes stay there when I'm doing press tours in the LA area, because we usually meet on the Angeles Crest highway and it's actually faster to get there from the desert side. Plus you can do late night tuning runs in the dark empty back roads. Sometimes I'll stay in Lancaster instead. I try to avoid staying on the other side of the mountains. Just too much traffic. Driving from Lancaster to LA, I've been in stop-and-go traffic on the interstate at 4:30 AM.

I wondered what brought this thread out of the grave.  

Everything I heard about that part of the world since then has been negative.  Would not move there for any reason.

I'll be the dissenting voice on "dry heat".  That's complete BS.  If it's 95+ I could care less if it's humid or not, its just damn hot!  I live in Denver and whenever it goes much over high 80's here its damn hot, let alone when it hits triple digits or more...