Here: Low cost of living.
A never ending supply of fresh water.
Easy to get around town.
Move to San Diego. (Cough, cough.)
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I love San Diego and (most of) its people.
Diversity.
Great weather.
The Southern California lifestyle.
The proximity to Mexico.
The city’s prestige worldwide.
This place is nostalgic for me: even though I was not born and raised here, or perhaps partially because I was not born and raised here, I have a special affinity for this place. I first came here from my hometown in the Midwest at the age of 18 to attend Marine Corps boot camp. Of course, that meant that I saw extremely little of the city of San Diego itself, and learned next to nothing about it, but after those three months were over, I look back and see how much San Diego continued to play a role in my life for months and years to follow.
For about a year after boot camp, I was assigned to (1) Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, (2) El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and (3) Tustin Marine Corps Air Station for advanced training, all three locations are very close to San Diego. I made short excursions into the city for various reasons, both on duty and off. I was transferred to Hawaii next, but as my Hawaii unit was scheduled for overseas duty in the Western Pacific aboard a Navy ship that was homeported in San Diego, just weeks into my time in Hawaii, I was selected as one of the men on the Advance Party to fly from Hawaii to San Diego in preparation for our six-month cruise. My unit rotated from six months at sea to eight months back in Hawaii, and five years later, I had gone through three such deployments. I was then reassigned to North Carolina for the next three years. I saw San Diego at the end of those three years when I returned to boot camp, this time as a Drill Instructor. That meant that for the first time, I finally lived in San Diego for an extended period of time, two years. After that assignment, I transferred to Okinawa, Japan for a year and then eight months in The Philippines, then back to Camp Pendleton again. I finished my active duty Marine Corps time from there two years later, and could have moved to any place in the continental US, but I said, “I’m forty minutes from San Diego; why would I ever live anywhere else?” Since then, more than twenty years later, I have made my home in San Diego, and just a few months ago, retired here.
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*Randolph D: “Now is my chance to move to Paris, France!”
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(abundent abundant)
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