My experience of living in Houston for 4 years. Now Returning to Calgary.

[Ekliptix]

Dear Beyond, you may know me mainly from my snowmobiling adventures and photos. I've not been active on here much but I've happily decided to move home to Calgary after living in Houston, TX for 4 years. There is a lot I'm going to miss so I'm using this post as a way to express/document what this experience has been like, the good, the interesting, the weird and the bad. I also suspect others here have considered relocating to the US for work, so this may provide some insight for you if Houston is the place you're considering.


Feb 2011 - The 180 person 35 year old Calgary oil and gas engineering consulting and software company I worked for 5 years at (technical sales) asked if I wanted to help them start a US office with 4 of my colleagues. YEP! Why not? The people they were sending me with, I'd already traveled with to Italy, Australia, China and the US for business so were were already a tighter group then just coworkers. 2 of the people relocating with me were owners of the company (7 owners total), so I felt honored to be thrown in with this group. My GF (2yrs) agreed to come with me.

July 2011 - After a look-and-see trip, in July I moved into a new 3,800 sq ft house with a 3 car garage, 100' wide yard, etc for a dream-like $328,000. This is from selling my 1,100 sq ft house in Bridlewood for $360,000. It was nuts. I felt guilty living in such a house for that cheap. The first few nights sleeping with my mattress on the floor, I'd get up at night and walk out into the vast open space to make sure this was real. I'm actually still pinching myself today, even with the $11,000/yr property taxes..... My house is in an area called Missouri City which is 10 min SE of Sugarland. I don't have to work downtown (thankfully, more on traffic later), but my commute is 45 minutes each way.

As it turned out, a Canadian family friend and their kids happened to be living in the same master plan Community I'm in! And, the husband is big into cars (Elise, Boxter Spyder, etc) and got me introduced to DE (Driver Education) courses down here. This family has basically adopted me and has been like my own family down here. I can't imaging what these last 4 years would have been like without them being 5 minutes away. I drop by whenever and use their pool, dinner with them, etc.

It just so happened that the summer of 2011 was one of the hottest on record here. Max temps in Aug 2011 reached 109F/43C. 33 days in a row were over 100F, which had not occurred in 31 years. Basically, with the humidity, it was a sauna. The heat bounced off the pavement into my face.

I had the main floor professionally decorated and painted.








July 2012 - Was camping for July long weekend along the Guadalupe river when I got a call that one of my 5 friends/coworkers had been shot 4 times. He lived and I won't go into the details, but it reminded me that there are dangerous places and people in Houston.

May 2013 - After 37 years of being private, the company I worked for was sold to a 6000+ person company. Since then, the atmosphere has changed a lot as I imagine it does for any small company that's acquired. Policies, politics, etc.

Now - The GF and I are on separate paths now and I am ready to escape this land of milk and honey to get back to beautiful Canada, family and all the amazing activities that are within a few hrs of Calgary. I'm keeping my same job, doing it from Calgary.

What's next - I plan to move back July/Aug. With the current economy, I plan to rent for 1 year as housing prices fall. I've never rented or lived downtown so I plan to do both for 1 year. $3,000/month seems to be what's needed for a 2 bed 2 bathroom appt/condo within a 20 min walk of the core, but I've only started my searching. 2 car garage is on the wish list.

[Ekliptix]

List in progress....


Things I'll miss from Houston:
- Owning a massive house for cheap.

- Gasoline. So cheap. Was $1.60/gallon a few months ago and is $2.00/gallon now. That's about $0.50/L before the exchange rate. I give zero shits about fuel economy.

- TX2k. This is an annual car event which includes many cars with well over 1000whp. The events include a dyno contest, roll racing at a facility, and a lot of street racing (which I avoid). You've probably seen a lot of youtube videos with the street racing.

- Cheap Mexican labor. I pay Pedro (yes really) $30/week to mow my lawn, edge the beds, weed, etc. Why would I own a lawnmower, plus it's damn hot here. Also, is $180 for 4 people to clean my entire house. My side car window needed replacing and a guy came to my work place and did it in the parking garage for $200 all in. I'm actually worried I'm a lazy bum now. I have to shovel my own driveway?! Waaah.

- Movie theaters and booze. There's chains called Star Cinema Grill and Alamo Draft house. You walk in and the setting is really nice. There's a full bar, seating area. You order a double vodka, wine, etc. When it's time, you walk into the movie seating area....with your drink. The theater is full of super comfortable theater seats which individually recline. In front of each seat is a table to put your drink on. Also on the table is a menu, paper and pencil. You write your order down (pitch of beer, chicken wings and steak). The lights dim and the movie starts. You hit a red button on your table. 10 seconds later a waiter comes over and ducks down to read your order. He looks at it with a red flashlight then leaves. 10 minutes later, all your food comes and you eat/drink while watching F&F7. I love taking visitors there.

- 24 hours of Lemons. - If you have not heard of this, it's a 24 hour car race with the objective of your car doing as many laps in 24 hours. We usually rotate through 4-5 drivers. The trick is that the car is a POS and is not suppose to cost more then $500, so durability is a challenge. I was invited, through my Canadian neighborhood friend, to be a driver in 3 events. It was so much fun and I got a ton of seat time. 100mph into a corner with a car on each side bumping into you, at night! Really fun.

- The food. I know why most Americans are fatasses. Not only is the food soooo good tasting here, but it's cheap and there are more places to eat then I could ever run out of.

- Booze. Yes, it's cheap. We all know that. There are also a ton of micro breweries in Texas. Southern Star is one I like. Shiner bock is ok, and made in the town of Shiner, 90 minutes away.

- No snow = drive your sports car all year! The drag strips (2 of them actually) are open all year round. Sea level sure helps too.

- Car selection. If you're into cars, you can find anything here (the US), especially collector cars. In 4 years here, I've bought 4 cars from other states (3 of which I flew to and drove them back). Flights within the US are usually cheap too. There's also car shows every weekend here or in the surrounding towns.

- Amazing nice weather in the spring and fall, supper hot summers are ok if there's a pool or cold beer near, which there usually is.

- High speed limits. My commute is 45 minutes but that's doing 120-130km/h for much of it through the city via the massive 4 lane highways, or the 2 lane tollways which you can usually see a cop in advance. No speeding tickets for me yet.

- Fishing. I fish a bit on Shuswap and a little fly fishing on the Bow. Down here, you fish on the coast, the gulf of Mexico. I got started with a friend at the Galveston pier, where you bring some rods, bait (frozen squid, live shrimp, crab) and toss your line off the pier with a big weight and wait. There are usually people every 20' along the 1000' foot pier. I've caught shark (hammerhead, blacktip), catfish and my friend has caught stingrays, red drum, croaker and sheephead. It makes for a nice day, bringing the cooler, jambox, a hat and just relax. We took an offshore trip (12 hrs, $140) and caught red snapper, big sharks), so much fun. I've also started shore fishing which is interesting to wade out to your waist, cast out between two sand bars and wait with the rod jammed into the sand. Can catch all kinds of fish this way including some big sharks. I'm definitely more into fishing now then before.

- Interesting places not too far: Austin, New Orleans.

- HEB grocery store. The food this place has, there are 100 different BBQ sauces to pick from, dry ice to buy (cheap, awesome for coolers), a 10,000 sq ft wine and beer area. I actually took my visiting parents straight to HEB from the airport to show it to them.

- Amazon. I pay $80/yr for Amazon Prime which not only gives me free movies/TV but FREE 2 DAY SHIPPING ON NEARLY EVERY ORDER. I've ordered SUGAR on Amazon. A fish tank. Massive 200lb tower speakers. A BBQ. Clothes. Plants. Truck and Car parts. Shoes. Fertilizer. Tools. I just checked and I've made over 250 orders (multiple items per order) in the last 4 years. The online reviews plus free shipping is amazeballs.

- My friends/coworkers here. We landed here at the same time and have relied on each other as a family would, to help out, share solutions, come to with problems. We've been on crazy trips to las vegas together for halloween dressing as airline pilots (even during the flight to LV). We've been to a rodeo at a prison in Louisiana where the prisoners are the competitors and they get destroyed by the bulls. The Texans who we've befriended have taken us Canadian under their wing and proudly show us their state and country. They've all been up to Stampede with us and we've got to show them what -30C feels like in Calgary. Fortunately, I'll be back down here for business and will grab my fishing gear from a friend's garage to go pull a shark out of the dirty gulf.

- I have loved having family visit me here from Canada. I think I've had 6 or 7 visits over the 4 years. Showing Canadians Nasa, the food, an nearby alligator park, fishing, my house, the culture of small Texas towns outside of Houston (hill country), has been a gift.


Things I won't miss from Houston:
- $11,000/yr property tax on a $330,000 house.

- Traffic, holy hell, the traffic here makes the deerfoot seem like a wet dream. Houston is so spread out, nothing is close. If you leave at the wrong time of day to go anywhere, your 20 min drive can turn into 75 minutes. For me to go to or from the airport at the worst times will take 2 hours minimum. I won't miss the traffic.

- Safety. The whole gun thing in the US, well it seems alive in Texas. We hired a Texas sales guy (one of my best friends now), and his hand gun was stolen from his truck where he leaves it in the door pocket. So many people here are packing. It makes you really hesitate honking your horn when someone cuts you off, and even pumping gas at the station, looking over your shoulder in case some hood punk is going to rob you. My female coworker was robbed at the gas station. I am not really into guns myself, so locals are like 'you don't have a gun? how are you going to protect yourself?'. As mentioned above, my friend here was shot 4 times and lived while in a bad area. Just recently he was about to head to work and found his wheels had been stolen off his 2014 F 150, with the truck right on his driveway. It was on blocks, just like in those online photos.

- The ladies. I find that the average woman in Houston is not attractive. That's partially because I'm mainly attracted to white girls, and they are not in the majority here among africans and mexicans. Other US cities (Denver, Pittsburgh, etc) do better but I still think Calgary is winning on this front, for me at least. I did date a nanny here from Spain, which was a good experience.

- Allergies. Wtf, I didn't have allergies in Canada. Once a year I get stuffy and if I don't do anything, it turns into a cold that I can't get over without antibiotics. The solution? Taking a daily allergy pill, specifically Zyrtec D. In some states you need to have a prescription for it, but not Texas!

- FLAT. Houston is flat as a board. I'm into mtn biking and you really have to stretch your imagination here to find a 'hill'.

- Dirty ocean. When I say 'the coast' it is nothing like the Caribbean. There's a lot of clay in the water so you can't see 1" into it, meaning there's probably a shark or stingray about to hit you. You can also see the offshore drilling platforms from shore.

- Distracted driving. It's unreal here. I saw a lady reading a novel on her steering wheel while doing 110km/h on a busy highway, like driving was her time to catch on her a story. People putting on make up, eating soup, texting while the light has been green for 15 seconds. I really want to get a motorbike but I would be killed by one of these idiots in 10 minutes.

- Drunk drivers. For some reason, it seems more socially acceptable for people to drive after having 5 beers. Even my TX friends, who I really take their keys from early in the night. People seem to think the worst that will happen is a $10,000 fine that they can pay. I was starting to fall into this mentality too so I resolved to not drive buzzed which has helped keep my Canadian standards of not drinking and driving. Also, a lot of people down here don't have insurance!

- Racism. More people are racist here, plain and simple. This includes black people being racist, plus white people. Just a small town, southern, old school thing I believe. When katrina hit Louisiana, a ton of low income black people migrated to Houston and have not left. Local Houstonians say this has increased crime in Houston.

- Paying tax when you register a used vehicle. This pisses me off. If I buy a used car from my neighbor, when I register it I have to pay 6.25% the purchase price. Even to add someone's name to the title, they want me to pay this tax. So, there's less incentive to buy private.

General observations:
- Sports, especially collage football. It's an obsession down here. I've been tailgating once and loved it. I made it to a LSU vs Alabama game in Baton Rouge at night. It as loud. I'm not that into sports so the $350/ticket price was not something I'll do again, but I'm glad I got to see what it was all about.

- Louisiana people are different. Not just from New Orleans (awesome), but it's apparently ok for them to call each other a "coon ass" even in a business environment. Apparently it's like saying 'good ol' alberta redneck'.

- Health care. This is a pro and a con. I'm a healthy guy now, so I don't use much of the Canadian social health care system. Down here, my company has a health plan which I pay each month but i also have a $1,500 deductible which i need to spend out of my pocket before my health plan will kick in. However, if I'm willing to spend some money, I can see a doctor immediately. So, if I needed frequent medical care, I think it may be better here for the faster response.

[eglove]

Welcome back!

[max_boost]

Whoa! Welcome back bud!

[J.M.]

Welcome back man.

3,800 sq ft house with 3 car garage for $328k

[Penguin_Racecar]

Just in time for mountain bike season!

[bourge73]

Welcome back can I buy your truck? Or.....too soon?

[Ekliptix]

Originally posted by J.M.
Welcome back man.

3,800 sq ft house with 3 car garage for $328k

Yea, and I just sold it on Monday for $415k without even listing it. Real estate is strong here.

Originally posted by Penguin_Racecar
Just in time for mountain bike season!

Hell to the yes. I'm doing a whistler trip next year for sure. I rode vancouver island for the first time this past summer and had so much fun. Will be starting with powder face and COP for 2015, once I get a more beefy bike.

Originally posted by bourge73
Welcome back can I buy your truck? Or.....too soon?

Har har, not happening. I'm driving the bitch all the way up there in July.

[Ekliptix]

Highlights and photos of activities while in the US. In progress.

Cars - lets start with the good stuff.
Z06 - Bought my dream car 2 months after moving down here. 2008 Z06 in Jet Stream Blue. Got it down to 11.39 at 125 with cat back, CAI, mail order tune and drag radials. Dynoed 450whp. Was planning on using it as my DD (why not), but ended up using a chevy cruze eco to reduce the wear and tear.

I have LOVED this car. I was considering bringing it back to Canada but getting $45k US + 20% exchange rate is too attractive. I really can't think of another performance car I want more, or better performance for the dollar but I don't think I'll drive it enough in Calgary.





Pickup - My Dad has a 1971 Chevrolet C10 shortbed big block pickup. That got me into them. In the spring of 2013 I started looking online and finally found one I like in Palm Springs, CA. I had it inspected by a guy in CA then flew my Canadian neighborhood friend and I out there for what turned out to be an epic drive 3,000km back to Houston.

You can read the full thread describing the trip here: http://forums.beyond.ca/st/373995/ne...uper-cheyenne/

I am definitely bringing this truck back to Calgary. I'm already thinking about my Dad and I, each in our C10's, driving from Calgary our to Sicamous for a guys weekend. Will be so sweet. So far, I've lowered it (my biggest mechanical feat yet), replaced the seat cover, replaced the trim and pretty much have been driving it and loving it. I hope to find a shop to do a 6L LS vortec swap before July and I may drive it all the way to Calgary, stopping at sights for my 'goodbye USA tour'.




Jeep LJ - I actually bought this for the GF and we had some good times in it. It's a LJ which means it's longer then the normal 2 door jeeps, with more room the the back, a smoother ride and generally way more awesome. 6 speed manual. I drove it with the top off a bit and it's kinda fun but a) the wind and noise get's old at highway speed and b) you'll get damn sun burnt here without protection.

I added a winch, seat covers and rubber floor mats. It'll be for sale soon.






Fiesta ST - I got this earlier this year since it took me this long to realize the Cruze Eco was boring as shit. It was tough to find one in the color I wanted with the Recardo seats. I found it in Mississippi, flew there and drove it back. At 400 miles, I added a COBB tune, COBB filter. It's so much fun, maybe even more then the Z06 in some instances. A catless downpipe arrived yesterday and I have a Level's intercooler on order. Put a Curt hitch on in for the bike and also to carry more cargo in a hitch rack.

I'll be bringing this home as my DD for now. Maybe get the 2016 Canyon diesel when it comes out for more space & towing.





The Baja Trip
Last year, I got on a Honda 450F and rode 1,200 miles through the Mexican Baja, from just south of California all the way to Cabo on the south tip. It took 6 days. It was guided and equipped by the Chris Haines company. http://www.chrishaines.com. They are first class.

I cannot express how this investment in an experience has been the best money I've ever spent. The trip was so incredibly challenging and rewarding. My hands were bleeding after 2 days. Duct tap fixed that. Of 10 riders, we all crashed. 3 people didn't finish due to their injuries. We were riding without lights on our bikes, through mexican streets at night with cars on both sides of us, pulling into a PEMEX gas station, filling up and trying to get to our hotel before the police caught us. The desert in Baja is beautiful. I made a great friend with another rider who was my room mate, from Massachusetts. At the end of each day, I made and audio record of the day's memories. When I listen back to it now, my heart starts beating like crazy.

The trip deserves it's own thread, but here are just a few of the hundreds of photos I took.

[TomcoPDR]

Welcome back, beautiful write up. Hope you keep adding to this thread.

[JudasJimmy]

Welcome back. Good write-up. So you quit your job? or transfer?

[Ekliptix]

Originally posted by JudasJimmy
Welcome back. Good write-up. So you quit your job? or transfer?

Keeping the job. Can do it from Calgary.

[nismodrifter]

Welcome back G

I spent a few months down south (Shreveport and Dallas) while in med school, I found a huge difference between Dallas and Houston. Totally different feel to the two cities. I loved Dallas, felt just like Calgary to tell you the truth......and the heat was DRY. Houston on other hand, while just a few hours away, felt grimy and the humidity was just disgusting.

God I remember buying a 4L jug of milk for 99 cents at wal-mart (heaven for us EI's )

Can't wait to see some more insane snow mobiling pics!

[jwslam]

Welcome home. I spent 2 full weeks in Houston on business Mar 2013

Things that are vivid in my mind:
-Driving from Hobby to Sugarland to see a family friend during rush hour, I left at 4:30pm and didn't get there til 7:45pm. Was pretty much bumper to bumper the whole way. I'd be very impressed if anybody in Houston owns a manual
-The house the family friend had in Sugarland: 3000+ sq ft for $220k
-Korean taco food truck parked right outside the club at 2am
-The Galleria mall: a glorified version of Chinook
-Ordering a vodka redbull: given a tall glass full of ice, watch them fill that with 80% vodka, opening a can of red bull, slamming it down and asking me for $2.50. Can you even buy a can of red bull for $2.50 here?
-Trying to down a $10 fish bowl
-Was totally smashed on $40
-Chick-Fil-A: The YYC one tastes exactly as greasy and salty as I remember if I ever miss that
-The fear of ever honking at somebody because there's a high likelihood they're carrying a gun
-Racism, lots of that
-Mexicans, lots of that

Probably more, but I really don't see it as a place I would live in... Takes forever to get anywhere. You'd figure their impressive infrastructure of 6 overpasses crossing over eachother with 4 lanes each would move people more efficiently...

[Canucks3322]

$11,000 in property tax???? Is that because you aren't American??

[Ekliptix]

Originally posted by Canucks3322
$11,000 in property tax???? Is that because you aren't American??

No, it's just a lot here. Other taxes are lower. At least the house was cheap.

[sexualbanana]

Originally posted by Canucks3322
$11,000 in property tax???? Is that because you aren't American??

I don't think Texas has a state income tax. I may be wrong though. I'm just basing it off things I hear when people talk about NBA free agents and where to go.

[Graham_A_M]

So I heard some crazy rumor that you've been wanting to sell your C10 to another guy that goes by the name is Graham.... especially for like $3k.

[D'z Nutz]

Wow, welcome back Graham! I remember when you moved, I thought you were totally living it up now. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

Originally posted by bourge73
Welcome back can I buy your truck? Or.....too soon?

The same thing crossed my mind as soon as I clicked the thread too

[Maxx Mazda]

Great thread! Thanks for sharing your experience!