My big complaint right now is the Subway - I take the 1 train to 66th. That stop has 3 MAJOR problems - 3 High Schools. The stop is way over crowded, they usually have to have 5-6 Police Officers on the platform, the kids think it's fun to scream to their friends on the platform across the tracks. After 10 years commuting to this stop, I've had enough (the summers are better, but then you get the HEAT instead of the kids)
For 10+ years before that, I went down to Wall St - the commute was a lot more civil
Once you are truely rural (or at least exurban) driving isn't a chore, it's something you do. Traffic is having 1 car in front of you, and you probably know who it is, and where he is going to turn. I've spent enough time in that kind of situation that I know it. _I_ like it, but it is different. You don't plan on running to the local store - you PLAN your shopping, and if you work in town (most do) you do it on the way home from work
IF I could twist SWMBOs arm, I'd be small town/rural, and deal with the commute (but I want to be close enough to town to get broadband). I want to live where a 5 acre lot is about as small as they get. LOTS of trees is a good thing. The old stone walls and woods roads are good. Where you have a small patch of grass that you mow sometimes because you feel like it, and it just tapers off into the woods
Sigh
Probably the closest I'll ever come to it is a small vacation house someday.
Sometimes in the fall, I nominally go hunting at a friends place - often times, we are not even carrying anything to hunt with. It's just time to go out in the woods, sit quietly, away from people, and re-connect with nature, instead of the concrete that is rapidly replacing the trees that were in Flushing
