I love the ocean. I grew up in a house that overlooked the beach. A sleepy little California west-coast surfer town that has since become a place of multi-million dollar mansions. But as a kid, it wasn’t so fancy. It was a place where all the dirty-faced neighborhood kids would get together and run down to the beach to play. Time has smoothed out the edges and made it even that town even more idyllic that it probably was. The effect is that when I think of home, I think of the beach and swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

For a large part of young adult my life, I lived near the beach would rarely go. Just knowing it was there was enough. I could always tell the cardinal directions because the beach was in the West. Even today, when traveling to a place with a beach on the East, or when living in a foreign country, I need think imagine that beach in California to orient myself in the world.