Welcome to Bend, OR! Where everyone smiles and the traffic laws don't matter!

After living in the Portland/Vancouver area for five years, I've moved back to my hometown of Bend, OR. Bend, if you are not aware, is home to 80,995 people(except in the summer when the population jumps to 100,000. Tourists, right.) A number which is rivaled only by our brewpubs and roundabouts. If you're going to move to any city in Oregon besides Portland, there are plenty of arguments to be made for Bend.

1. Bend has over 300 days of sunshine each year.
2. Mt. Bachelor is in spitting distance for those of you who love both winter sports and spitting.
3. The Deschutes is floatable in the summer time, and unlike those pesky "cool" rivers that make you shiver, Dessie is all snow melt. After a good 10 minutes your body will stop hurting and just go numb.
4. SMILES! Everyone is nice to you. I heard that we were voted one of the most welcoming cities in the country, but all I could find was an award we got last year for being the Dog-friendliest city. The official title is DogTown USA. It's less impressive.
5. If you look us up on a map, we're right in the very middle of the whole dang state!
6. There's plenty of culture to mix in with your small town America. And by culture, I still mean Caucasian.

Of course, being back for about two weeks, I can tell you a thing or two that you will not find in Bend.

1. Efficient drivers. Move to a small town, they said. There won't be any traffic, they said. They were right, but whatever traffic there is is probably being caused by a woman in a minivan letting every person in because she's horrible at life. People are so nice here that they break traffic laws.
2. Burgerville. We'll go ahead and label this one a blessing and a curse.
3. Gourmet coffee. GOTCHA! This place is neigh overflowing with cafe's. I know because I just gave my resume to nearly all of them.
4. Reliable public transportation. This doesn't really matter to me as I'm pretty white collar when it comes to transpo.
5. The best Autumn in the state. That prize goes to PTown. Even the sex trafficking capital that is 82nd is magical when you're driving up Fremont in October.
6. Anything open after 10. Except McDonald's, but somehow they take longer at 10 than they do at 4.

These are the things I never noticed about Bend until I moved away and then came back. Still, Portland doesn't have my family and they were the 8 reasons that sealed the deal and brought me back home. Good to be here.
PTown, stay crazy. See you soon,
Victoria

Post Script: Bend never smells like pee, Portland never smells like rain. Bend gets this round.