Could I live here?

When my wife Jane and I travel to different areas these days, I have a question in the back of my mind: Could I live here?

It's not that we're actively looking for another place to live. But as I think about where I want to spend my so-called "retirement years" I look at the places where we travel as a potential new home.

The classic retirement move isn't so classic among Baby Boomers.

The stereotype had been to retire, pull up stakes and get thyself to the Sun Belt -- Florida, Nevada, Arizona ... anywhere folks could escape the cold and snowy parts of the country.

But the first wave of retiring Baby Boomers hasn't followed the stereotype.

The migration to the Sun Belt states has cooled as Baby Boomers like myself, because of finances and other considerations, take a more analytic view of where we want to reluctantly grow older, if indeed that's anywhere different from where we are right now.

Certainly, there's a lot of research that's available in this analytical approach. There are any number of "10 Best Places to Retire" lists out there.

It's an interesting shift of sensibilities, a process of age.

When we graduated from college, we went where the jobs and opportunities were. When we were married and had kids the quality of the school system was a consideration.

But as much as you can assemble data about a place you have to have a good feeling about a place.

It's like when my children were looking at where to go to college.

They could do all the research they wanted about a school's academics and tuition and acceptance standards. But they also had to have a good feel about the place.

It's why my daughter Elizabeth never got out of the car when she got to the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She just didn't have a good feeling about the place. It's why my son David never applied to Brown in Providence, R.I. He didn't have a good feeling about the place.

You have to know in your gut that something is a good fit to who you are.

So when we visited various places in Florida a couple of weeks ago, I assessed the locales both in my head and from my gut. I did the same thing when we spent some time in Alabama and Delaware.

There are some places on my radar that I want to check out, such as Cape May, N.J. We traveled through there after getting off the ferry from Lewes, Del., and I'm curious to spend some time there.

One component in the process is the availability of work. Retiring for Baby Boomers doesn't mean shutting down professional productivity. It might mean a shifting of gears and doing something different, but it doesn't mean we just idle as we age.

Certainly the internet and the ease of access has made work much more portable. The work I do in my study in New Hampshire I could also do from another study in another state.

The other important component, at least for me, is the proximity of family.

Jane and I can get to a good chunk of our family -- and they can get to us -- within a half a day's drive.

There's a comfort in this access to my mother, and some of my siblings, and nieces and nephews, and my children and some of my stepchildren, and someday to grandchildren.

Do I want to be a plane ride or train ride away from that? I'm not sure. Probably not.

But I'll keep investigating in the meantime. If nothing else, it gives us a good excuse to get away from where we are to maybe appreciate where we are a little better.