Dobbin Dental is great.. they were really helpful when I had severe tooth pain recently.

I had a broken bike that I wanted to get rid of but didn’t feel like dealing with sitting on my front porch not locked up. It took a year to finally get stolen 😆. Probably just some neighborhood kids.

While this doesn’t totally answer your question: I usually take mine to the VW dealership in Catonsville (Heritage). It’s just over the border from Howard County and just a 15 minute drive from Columbia. I once took it to Ourisman in Laurel but didn’t have as good of an experience.. felt like they saw my obvious lack of car knowledge and tried to upsell me, plus my car drove a little weirdly afterwards.

I’ve never had a problem with black ice (I’ve been driving in Columbia for 20+ years). They’re pretty good about salting the roads so it’s usually not an issue, you’d just of course drive slowly and leave extra space in front of you on an icy day. Once or twice a winter snow may be an issue… again they’re good about plowing and such but for a bigger storm it can take time (usually within hours). I’m sure the medical facilities all have policies for how to handle that though.

I would assume but I’m not really sure. There are some big medical buildings with various suites which I assume would have outpatient surgical centers, just haven’t directly experienced that.

As an RN there are tons of potential places you could work in Columbia.. Howard County General, Gilchrist Hospice, many clinics as well. I live in Columbia but have been to CA (especially the LA area) many times, and the traffic is nothing compared to LA. If you’re heading down to the DC area it can be comparable though, so working down that way would be best avoided. Columbia is diverse, liberal, and safe. (I’ve never had an issue). As far as culture, it’s also a bit like LA in that there are lots of suburbs and strip malls, but cool independent things interspersed.

Oakland Mills/Stevens Forest is a nice area - lots of woodsy walking trails with tot lots.