The first time I moved away from Southern California I was 7 years old. It was the middle of second-grade, Christmas break 1975.  Up until then I was a resident of Huntington Beach, Calif. Ed Reading was an editor, and when the cushy gig at Road & Track evaporated, the next gig moved the family 1250 miles north to the wiles of Edmonds, Wash. 

I remember loving the beach. I remember it being sunny all the time, and I remember rain inspiring actual dancing in the streets. I remember walking to school and seeing "big kids" (sixth- and seventh-graders) hosing off in their front yards after catching before-school waves. Everyone was tan, and skateboarding had started to catch fire as the coolest way to spend any waking hours not spent at the beach, school or eating. All the kids would build jumps to skate off, or put a broomstick across two five-gallon buckets and try to skate between the buckets, jump off the board, over the stick, and back on to your board. I remember the first non-wood board a neighbor made cutting a piece of fiberglass in the shape of a deck. The same neighbor made a run of shirts for all the kids with a one-color screen-print (blue on a white shirt) depicting a fat guy on a skateboard with his big-ass crack showing and the phrase "BUST YER BUNS" across the bottom.  

The last time we went to the beach a few weeks before the move north, I remember figuring out the secret to body surfing. 

Somehow, my memory seems to think my mom thought the Puget Sound was ON the Pacific Ocean. I distinctly remember hearing the words "beach" and "waves," although I can't say I remember the word "sun" getting thrown around much. Our first trip to the water in Washington ended poorly. I was pretty torqued. I stood on the shore at the Edmonds "beach," next to the ferry dock, thinking, "These rocks are NOT sand. These wakes are NOT waves. And this water is FAR too cold to swim in - even though it's fucking August. This is NOT a beach."

I felt like we had moved away from "greater than" to reside in "less than." I felt that way from the time we arrived, in 1975, until the music arrived in 1991. The head-to-toe goose-bumps I got during the two Nirvana shows (mentioned last week) marked the first inklings I had that I was in a place and time to witness convergences that would come to be seen as monumental. 

Ironically, two years earlier, in 1989, I had almost moved back to Southern California to study music and reacquaint myself with the sun. But even as the music all around me began to "shape and define" Generation X (yawn), I still longed to move back to the sun. 

Seven months shy of exactly 30 years later I would move away from Southern California for the second time in my life. I was 37 years old. It was May. It was to be the beginning of a long and spectacular Seattle summer. The previous five years had been spent in the Echo Park high ground of Angelino Heights, just above downtown Los Angeles, across the street from Chavez Ravine and Dodger stadium. 

I would be moving my own family north to the promise of home ownership and fiscal supplements - for as long as our self sufficiency took to root - in exchange for my services as the drummer in a rock band. There was no way to say no.

I also couldn't begin to realize the true cost of what I was leaving behind. 

In Echo Park, I had found a home and family few are ever lucky enough to create in a new environment - some of the closest friends I've ever known, hewn from the honesty of adult experience without the barbed adhesion associated with obligatory geographically induced long-tenured friendships.

Chan, Shelly, Eric, Kim and Christina, Lyle and Jen, Joe, Christie, Mark, Amy, Howie, Miiko, even fuckin' Yed - these are all people that have continued to mean the world to me through these last five years of character-building life lessons. 

Over the next nine days, as I travel back to California and enjoy the lovely glowing orb that is so prevalent in the 213, I will be introducing almost all of these splendid people to my greatest accomplishment as a human - my son.  This will be my/our first trip back to the place of his birth. 

From a rooftop barbecue with a downtown view, to a kid friendly 44th birthday party over the hill from the stadium, to Disneyland, to slumber parties at the Melrose compound - this should be a week we'll all remember and cherish for all the rest of our years.

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.