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Old 07-02-2017, 12:57 PM
JerryLBell JerryLBell is offline
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People say you will acclimate and I'm not 100% sure that's always true. A number of years back I was asked to fly out with my wife to Utah to interview for a job. They had us spend a day with a realtor to get to know the area. We noticed immediately that the aridity was killing us. People say that living in hot, dry areas is great because the air is easier to breathe and the low humidity means you didn't notice the heat so strongly. We've always found that hot, dry areas cause our sinuses to dry out to the point of bleeding, our lips to split and our eyes to burn and that the sunshine feels like radiation poisoning. My wife's brother and sister, on the other hand, have moved to Nevada and Arizona, respectively, and both love it.

We moved from Michigan to North Carolina 19 years ago during a record hot summer in NC. I thought for the first couple of weeks that I would literally melt. I would sweat to the point of feeling oily while mowing my lawn. By the next summer, we had acclimated. Now we've moved to The Villages and it isn't so much hotter or more humid than NC, it's just hot and humid earlier in the year and for longer than in NC. It's July now, it's plenty hot and humid (with a "real feel" temperature of 120 degrees today) and we're not minding it at all. As others have said, you tend to hide out in air-conditioned homes, rec centers, movie theaters, bowling alleys or wherever during the worst part of the day and do your outdoor stuff in the morning (like the bike ride I took at 7:30 AM today) or in the evening (like our going to the squares to listen to music last night). For some people though, hot and humid is a bad combination. I doubt I'll ever get my sister or one of my wife's sisters to visit us here as both complain about heat and humidity, even back in Michigan. Your mileage may vary.

One other thing that's hard to prepare for is the change in allergens. If you have allergies, you may find they go away here as the allergens here are different than where you're from and you may not react to them as much or at all. Equally possible is that you'll find any number of new things to be allergic to. That's not so much a statement about Florida though as it is about moving to any other location distant from where you're moving from. My wife and I both have several allergies. So far, it's been better for us. There are still some things here we're allergic to but not as many as we had in NC or in MI.

Good luck with checking the place out! It's not for everybody but it sure is right for us! We always knew we wanted to live in an active retirement community and The Villages is a hyper-active retirement mega-community. It's not without faults, but it's as close to perfect as any place we've ever found, much less lived.