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Comment by wallflower | Hacker News Reader

It is almost a cliche but my friends who moved to LA truly do miss the seasons, especially leaves changing colors. It is like living in a giant open-air mall all year long. When nothing changes but the store displays, the seasonal heartbeat is lost. Living in LA, of course, means they can go to the beach all-year long with a short commute though. Snapchat is particularly smart for having its corporate headquarters almost on the beach.

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I live in LA (somewhat new, but I have been in CA for years), and I do not miss seasons at all. It has been many years since I have seen snow, and I plan to keep it that way. I cannot recall the last time I was in below freezing weather.

I am an avid cyclist, and it is amazing to bike year round. My tan lines are very prominent from the amount of cycling I do in sunny weather.

+1. I absolutely do not miss seasons in Southern California. On the contrary, I'm much happier when I (almost) constantly have great weather.

Illinois transplant to CA, casting another vote for "I don't miss the seasons at all." After 5 years in CA, I moved to PA for 1 and immediately regretted it at the first sign of significant weather variation.

After about 10 years out of the Northwest (and a particularly severe drought here in CA), I've finally started to miss the rain a little bit. But I sure don't miss the constantly-ruined plans or the incessant depressing grey.

Cycling is fun. Skiing is orders of magnitude more fun.

You are just doing it wrong. :) Since you ski, you probably mountain bike. Mostly downhill. Boring. I am a climber (road bikes of course). The longer the climb, the better. California has great climbs.

Showshoeing is the road bike climb of the winter months. You just have to get them to stop plowing the roads.

I ski, I do not ever mountain bike, mainly because it's the same terrain I ski on without the snow to protect me from the rocks, stumps, and fallen trees. Downhill mountain biking is insanity. Cross country mountain bikers go up the hills and down fire roads. Downhillers go up gondolas.

Climbing on skis is a lot more fun than climbing on a bike, and you have access to much more interesting terrain, as they don't generally build roads over mountain peaks, and certainly they don't build them on slopes nearly as steep as what skis let you access.

LA has skiing. Big Bear and Mammoth are nearby.

See, I too am a fairly avid cyclist, and I too hate any weather that prevents me from doing it.. but when I lived in LA, it was hard to find good cycling routes. It's a very car-centric area.

I think youd be surprised at the number of people that bike year round in places with snow like Minneapolis and Chicago. I did a year of part time bike delivery in Chicago and had many days of 50 miles in the snow.

Don't people travel? I have lived all over the country and currently love living in San Diego because I can visit areas of the country enjoying the seasons for a week at a time. A week of raking leaves, a week of shoveling and scraping windows. And even in LA, the mountains are less than an hour dive away. They can experience all 4 seasons in less than an hour drive.

I loved living in San Diego but nothing in the mountains compares to the lush spring, deep winter, hot summers with water temperatures warm enough to not wear a wetsuit, or crisp fall you get in other parts of the country you've undoubtedly visited.

Southern California is wonderful for a variety of reasons but the "I can drive to all 4 seasons" disregards some of the important details you don't get anywhere in semi-arid California weather, fauna, and ocean you have in the rest of the country.

I personally find California weather unbearably arid. When I travel for work etc. I miss the lush leafy vegetation and throbbing humid summer of my great lakes basin home...

> It is almost a cliche but my friends who moved to LA truly do miss the seasons, especially leaves changing colors.

I lived in Orlando for eight years and suffered the same thing. At least, I think I lived there for eight years. It's hard to tell, because it started to feel like an unbroken smear of days.

I live in Seattle now, and I love the cadence of seasons. It helps mark the passage through my life and I get filled with positive anticipation of every single seasonal change. I love picnics and playing in the sun in summer, mulling cider and carving Jack-o-lanterns in fall, snuggling under blankets and driving to play in the snow in winter, and, uh... OK, so spring here doesn't have too much to offer. But it's a good lead in to the incredible summers here.

You can go to the beach whenever you want, but even in July the water is friggin freezing.

Winter surfing in January/February in -20C (-4F) is a thing in my region.

I know two guys who surf on Lake Michigan and Superior. They mostly go in the late Fall/early Winter because the waves are bigger, but the water is absolutely freezing.

No, no... you stop when the water hits absolute freezing. Before that it's really cold, and really harsh... I found it very difficult to surf/jet ski Lake Michigan in the winter as the surf was random and violent...

Ice Balls

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/563161128374171906/

Unnavigable Surf(Lake Erie)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/photographer-dave-sand...

edit: need a thesaurus

A few years ago, I was visiting a friend in San Fransisco, and it was a warm, sunny day (to my friend's surprise). We were hanging out at a beach when we see a guy in a speedo walk by, towards the water. Before anyone could warn him, he jumped in the water, immediately jumped out, then ran back to the parking lot.

My guess is he was European - people from the West coast would know not to go in the water, and American men rarely wear speedos. I imagine the concept of being at the beach on a warm sunny day, but the water is too cold to enter, was completely unknown to him.

Are you sure that you didn't simply misunderstand what he was doing? When you're used to five degrees celsius water in the summer there really is no such thing as "too cold to enter"...

Entirely possible - but based on his reactions, he was not expecting the water to feel like it did.

Yours and the parent comment are really amusing. The best time to swim in the Los Angeles area is December to March. I try to hit up the Dolphin Club whenever I am in San Francisco. And no, you don't need a wetsuit.

Water got up to 75F at a lot of beaches in Orange County, CA last summer, not exactly the 80 of Belize, but pretty enjoyable.

We visited in September, and the warm clear water was a very pleasant bonus.

I walked by their office the other day and I think the venice snapchat office has moved. Ran out of space maybe?

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