> Yeah, but at that point, you're back to the whole car commute thing, or a really long bike ride. And you're significantly farther from the mountains by bike, too.

Ahh, right, car-free commute is a good point.

> Fort Collins was something else that looked pretty interesting, but I didn't see many jobs there.

My reaction to Fort Collins was similar, really liked it too, but seemed more like Bend as far as lack of jobs/backup-plans go. I like smaller cities and I work remotely, so backup plans shouldn't matter as much as it does to me. I'm probably too risk-averse in that sense, as I also had the same fears when looking at a move to Corvallis before. I suppose I'll always need to be near a bigger city to compensate.

I'll be on the lookout for meetups as well.