There is always a familiarity with the place you've lived for over 20 years. I know the lay of the land, how to find things, favorite roads and routes, where my favorite stores are, local attractions and restaurants. Yet these things are easily replaced with the anticipation of what will be new discoveries in Redding. Familiarity with those physical things I can leave behind without any stress.
I'll miss some people, not so much the actual people themselves but what they represent. There are people here who I've shared things with and we have a history together. I see adults who once were little children in church. I watched them grow up, mature, marry, and start families of their own. This is the type of familiarity that can't be replaced, not in what's left of my lifetime. Every relative we have in Southern California is moving with us to Redding so there won't be any to miss.
I can make new friends, frankly I've never really had many deep friendships; its something I'm sorry about. God changed me from being an independent and isolating being to one who likes being with people. I now enjoy people and want to spend time with them. To that end I actively sought friendships. One of the men with whom I was working to develop a lasting friendship committed suicide before there was any depth to our relationship. The other friend is Dan whom I've known for about five years. He is someone I'd like to spend more time with and we have had some good times together. I hope we can continue our friendship as much as possible with a 500 mile gap between our homes. I won't miss him because we'll stay in contact, but I'll miss the ability to drop in and say hello or to work on some small project together.
The surprise to me is how much I'm going to miss the ocean. Dan and I have ridden our PWCs there many times all up and down the Southern California coast. When I first moved to California and for many years after the ocean was a cold forbidding place. After Nancy and I started SCUBA diving in 1989 I learned of the wonder of what God has placed in the ocean. I've learned to love the beauty of the Channel Islands, the abundance of wildlife above and below the water, the joy of seeing 100's or 1,000's of dolphin breaking the surface, the power of the waves and swell, and the excitement of riding on the ocean in all kinds of weather and conditions. We went whale watching several times, SCUBA dived over 200 dives on almost every island in Southern California, visited Anacapa Island and had weekend trips to the wonderful little city of Avalon on Catalina Island. I guess the ocean got into my blood during my years in the U.S. Navy and continued to stimulate until today. Many trips carried us along the coast on the Pacific Coast Highway. Even trips to the airport offered a slower, even perhaps longer, drive to the airport but it beat the freeway by a lot. Trips north to Santa Barbara or camping at ocean beaches were a regular event during our time here. The ocean gives me a sense of freedom and space. It is wild and unpredictable. It smells different at the ocean and it's always more humid even on hot days. There are 100's of miles of wonderful uncrowded beaches here with tide pools and waves for body surfing or just to watch the surfers who seem always to be there. I'll miss the ocean.
Southern California has huge expanses of city. It isn't one of the attractive things about this area but the dense population does result in a lot of things to see and do. There are numerous attractions like Disneyland, water parks, museums of all types, multiple sports complexes with major league teams of all types, amusement parks galore, aquariums, horse racing venues, shopping beyond one's wildest imagination, and events in mind numbing numbers. We've enjoyed the availability of these things for almost 25 years and it has been great. But there is also a lack of excitement that goes along with this availability. One can say on any given day, "Lets go to Disneyland." It is only 85 miles from our house so just an hour and a half drive. It is so accessible that we frankly don't bother. Compare that with the anticipation of traveling from afar to go to Disneyland for two or three days. It has been nice to have all of this available but I don't think I'm going to miss those things much.
The weather. Now there is a subject. I grew up in Rochester New York. Talk about bad weather - that is just about all there is in Rochester. Then I spent a little over a year in Chicago which was more bad weather. My first months in California were like a dream. Could it really be this nice and why did my parents make me grow up in that horrible place. I also lived in France for three years which isn't too bad but overcast quite a bit. It has now been over 45 years and I'm still mesmerized by the wonderful California weather. But it just doesn't get much better than the Southern California section of the state within 20 mile or so of the coast. I mean when you compare SoCal with just about any other place on earth it seems like everywhere else has weather and SoCal doesn't. It is wonderfully mild and sunny most of the time. The number of days in SoCal when the sky is completely blue without a cloud in sight is unimaginable elsewhere. That, I believe, is why there are so many people here. It is rarely too cold here, and rarely too hot. Winter daytime highs are regularly in the 60's and summer daytime highs are about 75-90 degrees. For those who live in humid areas 90 degrees might seem very hot but when it is dry 90 just isn't bad at all. Oh overnight temperatures can drop to 25 on the coldest winter nights but you won't need a coat for the 60 degree afternoon on the same day. It can hit 100 for a few days in August but it cools off at night. Humidity? What's that? On the cold days the humidity might be a bit high, like 70%, but you don't notice it. On the hot days in summer the humidity can be very low, like 5%. You're more likely to be dealing with static electric shocks in the summer than sweat.
Southern California is a place that you can go snow skiing or water skiing... on the same day. And you can to that for much of the year. Oh the winter days will be cold for water skiing and you'd have to wear a wet suit, but you could do it. I own jackets but rarely wear them because it just isn't cold enough to bother. We own umbrellas too but with an annual 15 inches of rainfall you just don't end up using an umbrella much if at all. The rain here is a joke. It drizzles. In 45 years of living in California the hardest rain I've ever seen would still allow me to see mountains 3 miles away. In New York there were times when from our second story apartment window we couldn't seen the large red church across the street. Give me a break. I'll truly miss the weather.
Flowers grow in your garden the year around here. Normally there isn't enough rain, even in the "rainy season" to keep the grass or garden watered so watering is a year-round necessity. Most of the trees don't lose their leaves in the winter here so a warm day seems just like summer. We usually get about two weeks of summer like weather in the 80-85 degree range in late January or early February. My son Keith and I took the jet ski to a lake one February and it was so nice we rented a hotel room and spent a second day on the lake. Most winter days are short sleeve shirt days even on the beaches. Yes it can be nasty, windy, cold, and even rainy on some days but that doesn't last long and the wonderful regular California weather returns.
For all the reporting about the heavy traffic in California, even boasting some of the busiest freeways in America, it really isn't that bad. I've driven in Boston. That's bad. California traffic moves along; sometimes at 30mph and you can come to a stop on the freeway. But unless there is a big accident you will be moving. We can leave our house to drive 60 miles to the airport right through the busy freeways and it will take an hour on a good day or two hours on a very bad day. It is rare to have one of those situations where you are just creeping along as in some cities. I won't miss the traffic though.
