Back from a weekend trip with the church youth group, doing outreach for a new mission work in Capistrano Beach, CA (Trinity OPC, if you're in the Capo/Dana Point area, you should check it out at Palisades Elementary School, 9:30am on Sunday). It was an excellent trip, but being away from the Mrs. and Jr. for two nights was rather lonesome.
California is interesting. It has some of the most varied scenery and climate of any state, vast inhabited areas, and vaster (more vast?) uninhabited deserts. It is subject to a certain level of tyranny from Sacramento, and in many ways warmly embraces a certain level of tyranny from Uncle Sam (there was a US Ad council billboard about brushing your teeth - for serious).
And yet there are people there, just like people anywhere, who need the gospel, who live their lives, who congest the freeways, and generally behave much like people elsewhere in the US.
It seems like a wonderful place to live, and a terrible place to work. You can garden, surf, hike, minimize your heating and cooling bills, make beer and wine with local ingredients, and get fresh fruits and veggies for fairly cheap from local sources (meat and dairy are pricey, though). Thus, for a Mustachian individual who is willing and able to take advantage of the many benefits offered in CA while minimizing the drawbacks (related mostly to traffic, expensive housing, and taxes - all of which are much less burdensome to a Mustachian), California could be a pleasant place to live.
The Phoenix area has its own advantages, of course, but they again relate more to the aspects of life that a Mustachian tries to play down (cheap big houses, lower gas prices, and lower taxes). Phoenix does have two growing seasons, though SoCal is a growing season unto itself. I did not see many edible gardens, though, possibly because people are too busy navigating freakish freeways in expensive cars going to distant jobs so they can afford bigger houses.
And the wife likes SoCal very much. Perhaps in God's timing we may end up there, but for now we are happy to be in Phoenix, working hard, growing our 'stache, and looking out at faded blue cloudless dusty skies.
- wait - maybe there's a thunderhead out east. The monsoons always remind me of a big reason I like Arizona.
Follow up to the last post - I WILL get paid to teach, and not terribly poorly, either. It would be enough for Jacob of ERE to live on about twice over. Thus, the pay cut works out to only about 15%, which is pretty fantastic.
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