Day 405 - get it

I grew up in a very different California than the one you can visit today.

Huntington Beach was a quiet, sleepy, beach town.  I can still remember when a skyscraper was built on Beach Blvd.  (actually I think it was a 5 story office building), the strawberry fields, and miles of undeveloped land.

The first house I lived in was on Honolulu Lane. 

My friends all had sunny, happy, California names, piles of siblings, and the embarrassment of riches that is California beach weather.

As a teenager we would drive up and down PCH looking for nothing more than the next good song on KROQ, and dessert at Harbor House.

During the summer we would hang out at the beach - all day, eating strips and cheese, hugging our boogie boards, never putting on sunscreen.

When it came time to choose where I went to college, for some reason I wanted a complete change of pace.  So sick of the Southern California sunshine, that when I visited the University of Oregon campus one rainy weekend I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Every May, when the rest of the country is celebrating the start of summer, I long for the warm sunny nights of my childhood, the Pacific, and sand under my toes.

But eventually June arrives.  Then July.  Then August. 

And I realize.

I am right where I belong.