Living Good

It’s pretty much the same kind of morning as we saw yesterday and according to the ‘experts’, it’s the same as the one we will see tomorrow. Rain and more rain.

With that description of the weather, I can easily segue into the focus of today’s post on Time Goes By; why do you live where you do? Wow! What a complex subject to explore.

The post starts off with a link to Chris Pirillo’s description of why he wouldn’t live in Hawai’i. Of course he is all wrong. But that’s good! That’s one less person that wants to go there and he’s telling plenty of others. All good.

Back to the subject; why do we live on the Planet Orland? Because that’s where time and fate has delivered us. Every place we have lived has been for that reason. We never had a grand plan to live in a specific place for the rest of our lives. We live here because we are close to our children and grandchildren. (And now a great grandchild) Not too close, but not that far away.

We both grew up in Manhattan Beach during the 40’s and 50’s, long before it became a place for the rich and famous to live. It was all middle and lower-middle class back then. And we spent all of our time at the beach. Surf, sun and volleyball. Barefooted 365 days a year.

When we married, in the early 60’s, we couldn’t find a place to live in Manhattan so we moved next door, to El Segundo. But work soon had me commuting to the San Fernando Valley so we looked for a place there. And we lived all over that valley before we bought a house, our first, all the way out in Ventura County; Newbury Park. More time and fate.

Work then took us to Orange County for awhile and then a momentous decision to leave Southern California. I didn’t know where I wanted to be, so I drove north until I stopped, attracted by the scent of burning cedar in a logging town; Susanville. We moved into Janesville (All in Lassen County) and I worked in Reno, Nevada.

11 years later and fate made me follow work to Roseville and I was back in the midst of people. A crowd. Some would say that Sacramento is a cow town still, but I would say that it’s a huge metropolis and far too many people live there and after 16 years and retirement, it was time to go somewhere quiet and still be close to the children, etc. So now we’re on the Planet Orland.

During those 16 years in Roseville, I spent quite a few of those years commuting to the various offices of the corporation I worked for. There were offices in almost every region of the country and I didn’t miss seeing any of them. And since I was traveling during all of the seasons of the year, I got a chance to experience both the good and the bad. Mystic in the winter. Bad. Orlando in the summer. Bad. Albuquerque in the spring. Good. Knoxville in the fall. Good. Hawai’i in all seasons. Good. Yes, we had an office in Honolulu. Now closed and that makes me sad.

Sure, I have favorite places where I wouldn’t mind living at all. And they all have drawbacks of some kind. If I lived in Hawai’i it would be on the Big Island and on the ‘wet side’. Away from the tourists. When we stayed there, we found a small hotel in a residential district of Hilo. We shopped where the local shopped, ate where they did and just tried to blend in. It was the same on Kauai. We stayed at what had to be the smallest hotel on the island; 4 rooms to rent. We took the one luxury suite for $90 a night! And whenever I had to go to Oahu, I stayed far away from Waikiki.

Let’s see…where else could we live? Asheville, North Carolina. Taos, New Mexico. Boulder, Colorado. Woodinville, Washington. Little River, California, Cannon Beach, Oregon. And probably a dozen more that I haven’t been to. Yet.