I’m in California right now. I’ve been here for several days. And I like it. (Cue the sounds of disillusionment and dread from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets movie.)

I always feel like a Manhattan traitor when admitting that I genuinely like another U.S. location. When that location is Southern California, I feel like the femme fatale double crosser who’s sleeping with rival naval officers in Germany and England only to play them off one another for riches. It’s worse than cheating. It’s cheating and liking it. Morphing into a California lifestyle sympathizer as a staunchly New Englander is like betting against the Yankees. I’m hoping no one in my family finds out.

See, a ‘true’ New Yorker would be immune to the constant sun’s charm, the seventies weather, the effortlessly fresh fish tacos and fact that everyone here is always smiling. Yet I find myself smiling back, occasionally faking a twang, and reveling in the numerous outdoor sporting options. A true New Yorker would enjoy the birds of paradise flowers and the beach before leaving, cell phone on ear proclaiming, “I can’t wait to get back to my one bedroom apartment above a Chinese restaurant.” Instead, I think I’ll reluctantly board that plane thinking, “I can’t wait to somehow ditch my life and move here.”

I’ve visited California before. It’s never had such a profound effect on me. So something’s ‘going on.’ So Cal just begs the questions: Why work so hard? Why not spend 80% of your waking day outdoors? Why would you ever live anywhere where things like ‘snow’ and ‘rain’ exist? Why not surf every morning before work? And for the first time, I’m listening. Think about with what an extra special ability I’d be able to appreciate all this cloudless sky and humid-less air as a former Manhattan-bot accustomed to inhaling bus fumes and being spit on? No one would appreciate it more than me.

The fact that every waiter looks like a pro-surfer / a regular on General Hospital doesn’t hurt either. Neither does that fact that these guys change out of their wetsuits on the wide California streets with only their car door to shield them. I saw a sandy, hotty skateboarding in bare feet, his wet suit hanging around his sculpted abs, carrying a surf board yesterday and instead of experiencing my normal reaction which is: ‘He probably doesn’t know his six times tables,’ I just thought, ‘I wish I knew how to be more like him.’ Carefree. Athletic. I bet he doesn’t even have to use mortal things like sunblock.

I also went horseback riding all the way to the Mexican boarder, finding myself mildly attracted to my cowboy wrangler. The fact that he looked like a Western stunt double (which apparently he is) and said things like my horse would move ‘like molasses’ if I didn’t use a little spur, didn’t bother me at all. And when we were cantering along the beach and came smack up against the fence that marks the Mexican border and he dared me to jump it, I almost did. Then he quickly slowed us and pointed out that while the guards in the lighthouse above would let us gallop across, they’d never let us back. For a brief moment this didn’t bother me. Disappearing across the Mexican border with just my horse, no money, no passport and a wrangler that could pass for handsome somehow didn’t seem like a bad ending to a story. At all. I feel like there are a lot more miserable situation in New York.