One of the reasons I remain here where the population is "semi-civilized" (the Lakers' Phil Jackson's lovely characterization) is because while this town lacks culture, or even an identity of its own, it is easy to get around here. And most of all, as I tell people considering relocating here, from where I'm sitting right now, it's a left turn to San Francisco, a left and a quick right to the Napa/Sonoma wine country, a left and another left to Santa Cruz and the Monterey Peninsula and a right turn to Lake Tahoe and the Sierra. None of those drives (absent traffic or chain controls) takes very long. You go sort of straight ahead and you're in the Trinity Alps.
I can see the Sierras quite clearly from my office window, which is a good-news/bad-news deal. The bad news, of course, is that I wish I were up there on my skis instead of snowballing to oblivion behind this friggin' desk.
We need a couple more massive winter storms, since you guys down in SoCal are taking all of our water, and we'll need plenty to run all those hydro plants somebody thinks we're going to build......
Can't power everything with Interstate batteries.