I live in a small town in a rural county. The closet population center is Olympia which is 75 miles away. The nearest "metro" area of any size is Aberdeen-Hoquiam (around 25,000 pop.), 35 miles to the north. When you live far off the beaten path, there are certain pluses and minuses.
On the bright side of the ledger, you don't have to worry about traffic jams. No crowded malls exist here. Air pollution is minimal. Violent crime is almost nonexistent. All the clerks in our small number of stores know their customers by name. And there is one blessed thing that we have here that is the envy of almost any city dweller: peace and quiet.
However, for the many positives, there are some definite drawbacks. There is little economic development and a fairly fixed number of available jobs. Area residents often have to drive to one of the population centers in order to purchase a number of routine consumer items. There is one other drawback that may surprise you. For some odd reason, South Bend addresses don't seem to show up for a lot of online retailers.
We don't have a shoe store in this area. So, last night I decided to try to find a pair of my beloved Converse hi-tops on Amazon.com. I found several pairs in my size in a wide assortment of colors. As I dickered around trying to decide between a plaid, bright green and yellow pair, I finally decided on the plaid ones.
I added it to my cart and proceeded to checkout. I entered my usual shipping address (a PO Box -- we have no home mail delivery in South Bend), but was soon informed that the shoes could not be sent to the post office. This was quite perplexing because I've ordered numerous products (e.g., books, videos, clothing, a battery-powered chainsaw, etc.) from Amazon.com in the past and I have never run into this problem.
Next I tried entering my street address. It was still a no-go because the system informed me that the address was not valid. I tried entering a friend's address in the east side of town and received the same result. At random, I tried two other South Bend address and both of those came up as invalid too!! In other words, it seems that any address in South Bend, WA somehow is not in their system.
And it's not just Amazon.com either. Last month I purchased some more memory for my computer from NewEgg.com and ran into the very same situation. In the end, I had it shipped to my dad in Bend, OR and I will receive the part...when my dad finally remembers to mail it to me. :-D
When ya choose to live far off the beaten path, you have to learn to live with the good AND the bad.
On the bright side of the ledger, you don't have to worry about traffic jams. No crowded malls exist here. Air pollution is minimal. Violent crime is almost nonexistent. All the clerks in our small number of stores know their customers by name. And there is one blessed thing that we have here that is the envy of almost any city dweller: peace and quiet.
However, for the many positives, there are some definite drawbacks. There is little economic development and a fairly fixed number of available jobs. Area residents often have to drive to one of the population centers in order to purchase a number of routine consumer items. There is one other drawback that may surprise you. For some odd reason, South Bend addresses don't seem to show up for a lot of online retailers.
We don't have a shoe store in this area. So, last night I decided to try to find a pair of my beloved Converse hi-tops on Amazon.com. I found several pairs in my size in a wide assortment of colors. As I dickered around trying to decide between a plaid, bright green and yellow pair, I finally decided on the plaid ones.
I added it to my cart and proceeded to checkout. I entered my usual shipping address (a PO Box -- we have no home mail delivery in South Bend), but was soon informed that the shoes could not be sent to the post office. This was quite perplexing because I've ordered numerous products (e.g., books, videos, clothing, a battery-powered chainsaw, etc.) from Amazon.com in the past and I have never run into this problem.
Next I tried entering my street address. It was still a no-go because the system informed me that the address was not valid. I tried entering a friend's address in the east side of town and received the same result. At random, I tried two other South Bend address and both of those came up as invalid too!! In other words, it seems that any address in South Bend, WA somehow is not in their system.
And it's not just Amazon.com either. Last month I purchased some more memory for my computer from NewEgg.com and ran into the very same situation. In the end, I had it shipped to my dad in Bend, OR and I will receive the part...when my dad finally remembers to mail it to me. :-D
When ya choose to live far off the beaten path, you have to learn to live with the good AND the bad.
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