A letter from a local
Yes, it costs more. Here is what you get.
I'll say the hard part first: Boulder isn't cheap. But you can keep a real career here — labs, startups, aerospace, the works — and still be climbing in Eldorado Canyon forty minutes after your last meeting. That combination basically doesn't exist anywhere else, and it's why I stopped apologizing for the rent.
The Flatirons sit at the end of every west-facing street like a screensaver that follows you around. Three hundred miles of trail leave from the city limits. I run Chautauqua before work, ride the canyons at lunch, and ski Eldora on weekdays when the snow's right — no I-70, no sufferfest.
And it's a real city under the spandex: proper restaurants, bookstores, lectures, a farmers market that takes itself slightly too seriously. You will never lack partners for a 6am anything. That's a promise and a warning.
Stop running the spreadsheet for one weekend. Come run the Mesa Trail at sunrise when the rock goes pink, and then tell me what the spreadsheet says.
— Priya