Relocating

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I am a 22 year old engineer. I've lived in the same neighborhood my entire life a small town in SWFL. Its ok, but it's getting very old. I really don't do much except surf the internet, and go to the gym everyday after work. My best friend is 28 and now has a girlfriend, so I don't really have anyone to hang out with. I think moving to a new place will force me to meet new people and start fresh.

For college I went to school in Indiana just to get away. I lived there for 4 year with roommates and also by myself. I didn't mind having roommates and I actually enjoyed it. The Midwest culture was a little bit more conservative than I was use to. Also, I wasn't use to the changing of season or the cold.

Currently I am living with my parents in SWFL. I really have it easy they are not charging me rent so I can save up to pay off some of my loans, and they cook dinner for me..

I love to surf however I live 2hrs from the east coast of FL where the waves are more consistent. I've been thinking about moving to Southern California (San Diego most likely) or Hawaii. I am comfortable with my current job and coworkers. I have doubts about adjusting to a new office if I was to transfer or finding a job there. I find all of that very stressful.

Financially I won't be able to make this happen until the end of this summer. I just need something to look forward to.

Thoughts/Advice? Should I look at Craigslist for roommates? What are the people like in So-Cal? Hawaii? Can anyone recommend any cities around San Diego that would not be hectic? How is the smog and pollution in San Diego?

Thanks

SD is pretty awesome, especially North County IMO (Oceanside, Carlsbad).

Pros:
beautiful here pretty much all yr
some pretty laid back people (hippie surfers)
great produce and seafood
close to a lot of culture (museums, theatre)
you can live in a rural setting (a place like Fallbrook for example) but be very close to big cities and the coast
Population is less dense here than in Orange Co or LA

Cons:
Fire season (the whole of SoCal pretty much goes up in flames every Fall. It's a natural occurance for Chaporral country, made worse by Arsonists exploiting the condition)
it can be expensive, depends on where you go.
The job market here is practically nil (especially for engineers, I am assuming you are in IT- the same kind of engineer my husband is)
Along with the hippies are A LOT of right-wing crazy conservatives (not talking about normal right wing people, I'm talking people on the fringe). So if you are looking for a more liberal area I'd go further North like LA. That of course is VERY expensive and most areas near the ocean are VERY overpopulated.

Hope that helps

SD proper is pretty crowded, so IMO 30-45 minutes is fine for me. We moved here to get away from more populated areas.
Fallbrook and the surrounding areas are Fire Central I'm afraid. really anywhere except maybe SD proper and LA are more safe from the seasonal fires. Fallbrook practically burned down a couple years ago. Earthquakes are also just a part of life here. There really isn't anywhere in So Cal (or really Cal in general) that doesn't have them, considering the San Andreas Fault runs all the way through the state.
Traffic is pretty brutal everywhere in Cal. The closer you get to SD or LA the worse it gets though.
As for a Civil Eng. can't say how the job market is here.
Hope those details help

Lemon Grove is a pleasant suburb of San Diego. It is very close to down town San Diego and mostly not likely to go up in flames any time soon. While it has expanded in recent years, there are still some nice areas. But you may also need to consider proximity to Orange County where there is a lot of technology industry. I think most of it is computer related, but maybe because it is still a quickly developing community, there is also a lot of civil engineering work available. Orange County has a reputation for being quite conservative and I don't particularly like the excess of modern urban sprawl so I don't think it's a good place to live, but you may see it differently. If you live on northern San Diego county, you have the benefit of nice beaches but are still close enough to places where you might find work.

Air quality is generally very good in San Diego, but once you go over the hills inland a bit, the weather becomes very hot and unpleasant. Los Angeles has nice weather, but only if there are no hills between you and the ocean. All the smog collects inland so if that causes you problems, you should stay within a few miles of the coast in any part of California.

We've had a few tremors in the L.A. area recently. I guess one was centered in Mexico, but we felt it up here, so it would have been felt in San Diego too. These haven't been particularly bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if we get a good sized one in the next few years. We just haven't had anything particularly big in many years. But maybe some of these smaller ones have been relieving pressure on the San Andreas... Who knows...

Actually it's pretty rare to feel any earthquakes. You might feel a small one once a year or so. But when a big one comes, you really kind of notice. Construction codes being what they are here, the damage isn't anything like the recent quakes in Haiti, Chile and China. The Northridge quake in 1994 collapsed a few freeway bridges and caused 72 deaths. This is a huge amount for California but nothing like what other countries have endured.

But I wouldn't worry too much about a big earthquake. They will happen and they can be quite startling when you are in one, but that could be said for hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes and tsunamis. Anywhere you go, there is something lurking that will try to get you. Most of the time it doesn't.

I'd been planning on going to the University of California for graduate school in 2011, but after seeing what's gonna happen in 2012, I think I'd be much better off on the east coast.

Gold Coast