Thanks to the hospitality and generosity of releatives, we moved from one welcoming environment in the Southern California foothills to another on the coast, to one of the most-coveted addresses in the country, if not the world.

Balboa Island, Newport Beach.

Hard to beat this. I grew up in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach, about 30 miles north of here, and was well into my teens before I really grasped that not everyone lived in a temperate zone so kind that you rarely expected summer highs over 80 or winter lows below 50.

It was like living in a land with no weather at all. No need for special clothes for special seasons. Unless a sweatshirt and socks in addition to the shorts and T-shirt constitutes specialized apparel. Or flip-flops and a ball cap in the summer.

The best climate in the world falls under the generic heading of “Mediterranean.” 

Not much of it, in the world.  Some long stretches along the Mediterrean Sea, of course. (Palestine, Greece, nearly all of Italy.)  A bit in Australia, around Perth. Some in South Africa, a bit in Chile, in South America.

And a stretch of a couple of hundred miles along the coast of Southern California, from San Diego up to perhaps Monterey.

This is where living outside is a year-round concept. Where teens go through four years of high school without once putting on long pants.

Newport Beach, and Balboa Island, are a more affluent, more polished area along this blessed strip of “Mediterranean” coast. A built-up, well-tended piece of land surrounded by a bay and sea vistas in every direction, with pleasure craft bobbing in the water.

When you feel warm, you open a couple of windows and let the gentle zephyrs move through the room. When you feel a chill, you pull on the aforementioned sweatshirt, and you’re covered.

The only down side to living in a region like this one is … that no matter where you go, it’s a climate comedown. Hotter, colder, wetter, more violent (blizzards, ice, tornadoes, hurricanes).

None of that happens, on Balboa Island, where an adventure is paddling a kayak in the bay or jogging around the edge of the island or buying an “original frozen banana bar” at “Dad’s” on the main street.

Some visitors tut-tut about the lack of “four seasons.” But if that means unbearable heat and dangerous cold, then we will live with the subtle gradations here that make for winter, spring, summer and fall.

I could get used to it … but, being older a bit wiser, I won’t. We will just enjoy it day by day.