Only in Southern California

There are days when I wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere else. Yesterday was just such a day at the beach. Alma and I actually did our entire 3 mile walk barefoot. The sun was shining pleasantly, there was only the slightest of breeze and the faintest whispers of clouds. All in all, it was a perfect day to walk at the beach.

I love the feeling of loose sand between my toes when I walk if the sand is warm. It's like having a million foot micro-massagers working over the soles of your feet. Even though as a child, I never spent much time at beaches, I can say that walking in the sand barefoot allows me to feel somewhat like a child again. It's a nice feeling.

Now nothing remarkable happened yesterday. No dolphins, no starfish. No scintillating stories or gloriously eccentric personages. Just gorgeous weather. But it was January 26. I moved out to Southern California in 1994 from Wisconsin. The last January I spent in Wisconsin saw a 7-day stretch where the windchill (the combination of temperature and wind speed) never got higher than a -70 F. We always talked about a warm front in Wisconsin if the temperature would only reach 0 F and stay there for a day.

Only in Southern California can one greet each January day with the entirely reasonable expectation that one will be able to walk barefoot on the sand at the beach that day. There are a lot of reasons not to stay in Southern California, the 12.5% unemployment rate I blogged about yesterday being only one, the horrible traffic and cultural vacuity being others. But the chance to walk at the beach barefoot in the height of winter is one of the main reasons to live in Southern California. We would not trade it for the world.

Weather looks like it will be nice again today. So here's hoping Alma and I will again walk barefoot in the sand.