“Right back where I started from”

“Right back where I started from” July 26, 2016

 

Sameer Khan's Huntington Pier
The Huntington Pier at evening
(Wikimedia Commons photo by Sameer Khan)

 

It’s good to be back in California, which will always seem like home to me.  I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, eastward of Los Angeles, and San Gabriel and the cities round about (e.g., Alhambra, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Arcadia, South El Monte, Altadena, Whittier, and so forth) were the focus of my first two or three decades or so, along with greater Los Angeles in general (especially Westwood, Santa Monica, and etc.)  But I spent a lot of time along the south coast of California, in places like Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, San Clemente, Newport Beach, and San Onofre, and I had relatives (now all gone) down in San Diego County.

 

So it’s fun to be here.

 

I always rather imagined myself, in fact, eventually living in or around Newport Beach or Irvine.  How I ended up a Utahn is something of a mystery.  But it happened, and now I’m a visitor in a place that, for many years, was my home.

 

Even so, it dawned on me a while back that, apart from my mission in Switzerland and (possibly) one section of my sojourn in Egypt, I’ve never gone an entire calendar year without spending at least some time in California.  It’s like recharging my batteries.

 

Today, after picking up my sister-in-law and her twins at the airport in Long Beach, we had a seafood lunch at Duke’s Huntington Beach and then watched several heats of the 2016 U.S. Open of Surfing from the Huntington Pier.

 

I really like California, despite its politicians and its politics.  Culturally, I’m probably still more Californian than Utahn, in many respects.

 

Posted from Newport Beach, California

 

 


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