Differences Between Raleigh and California

1. We don’t have sourdough bread!! It’s weird, it never occurred to me that sourdough bread was a San Francisco thing. I’ve looked everywhere. No dice. Straight White or Wheat!!

2. We have Thunder Storms!! It’ll be 95 degrees and sunny one minute, the next its pouring rain, then 5 minutes later, its sunny and clear again. Then after the thunder storm, you go outside and it feels like its 110 degrees because of the 95 percent humidity. The crazy part is if you are driving through a thunder storm, after the storm, the water on the roads evaporates within about 10 minutes so there is a huge cloud of steam above the roads. It’s weird. I now understand why we have a 24 hour news channel and weather reports every 10 minutes.

3. People don’t understand the concept of traffic here. People complain about the traffic here and I get on the freeway to find traffic flowing smoothly at 25 MPH. no stop and go action at all. To be honest with you, there is more traffic on the one lane roads getting to and from the freeways.

4. At night, it’s the same temperature inside and out!! It’s crazy, if you walk outside at 3:00 in the morning, it’ll be 70 degrees out. It’s nuts, the LOW is 70. Definitely different that California, that’s for sure. It’s weird though, you’ll be in a bar and it gets hot and sticky since there are so many people there. Then you walk outside for some refreshing night air only to find it’s the SAME TEMPERATURE inside and out. You have to experience it to believe it. BTW, move to the East Coast and humidity will be part of your daily vocabulary too. I don’t think I even understood the concept when I lived in Cali.

5. Freeways are WEIRD in North Carolina. I’ll be driving down the road, doing whatever my GPS tells me, and boom, I’m on the freeway!! No onramp, no sign, nothing, the road I was driving on turned into a highway out of the blue. 5 miles later, there’s a stoplight and it’s back to city road again. It’s strange.

6. Sports!! And by sports, I mean Nascar and Hockey. The closest thing we get to professional baseball is the Durham Bulls. For those of you who have seen Bull Durham, yes those Durham Bulls!! They’re huge around here. See the stadium, and you’ll understand they are far more than a minor league baseball team here. And don’t clown on Nascar here. People love their Nascar around here. It’s no lie. And hey, if you are a diehard sports fan, you better not be much of a fan of sleep. I was out at a bar one night, I check out the plasma and see the A’s playing. I see that it’s the 2ND INNING, the I look at my watch and it’s 11:00 at night. CRAZY!! Hell, the other night, I was in bed, ready to go to sleep and I turn on the TV only to see the KICKOFF of the Niner game at 10:30 at night. Now that’s just ridiculous. I would’ve had to stay up until 1:30 AM to see the end of the game. Hell, sports bars are open until 2 AM every night of the week.

7. You have In N Out, we have Waffle House!!

8. Land is cheaper out here, so everything is bigger and more spread out. We don’t just have Walmart, we have Super Walmart where you can buy just about everything you could possibly need: groceries, clothes, kitchen supplies, tools, etc. It’s like a full on grocery store/hardware store/department store/Walmart. It’s crazy. And parking, no problem. Parking lots are HUGE around here. They wouldn’t even think of building a parking structure around here, they just have giant lots everywhere.

9. You can only buy liquor from a liquor store. You can buy beer and wine from a grocery store, but that’s it. And on Sunday, you can’t even do that before noon.

10. The phrase “our neck of the woods” takes on a completely different meaning here. There are trees EVERYWHERE!! I feel like I live in the middle of the forest. I’ll be at work in a conference room, look out the window and see a small forest and a lake. Our campus is basically cut into a forest. We even have 2 lakes on campus. It’s kinda nice, I feel like I am camping when I am at work sometimes :-P

11. Smoking in public places is legal!! I hadn’t been asked “Smoking or Non Smoking?” in years, but now I get it all the time.

12. Tipping a waiter of waitress “Double Tax” in NC doesn’t work, since the tax is only like 3%.

13. Gas costs $2.79/gal here, not in Cali.