Thankfully, the passage of time and a pleasantly hectic life have contributed to the gradual dimming of those memories. But, they remain nonetheless, as I'm certain they will for quite some time to come. Such is the legacy of monumental events.

Like most folks, we truly loved the street where we lived, and, despite everything, we found leaving a very painful but necessary thing to do. It seems that we, like many others, had become increasingly discouraged with the foreseeable prospects of the Golden State. We found that, strangely, this same distress was widely held, but rarely voiced.

We had gradually begun to feel as if we were members of this huge captive audience in a macabre Theater of Disasters, watching each dreadful scene unfold, stained from the ashes of the one before. It was a grueling play, featuring stark portrayals of the "World Series" quake and a major flood with fatalities in the San Fernando Valley; a sickening police scandal in Los Angeles and the senseless riot that ensued; the annual brush fires and mud slides that were even more disastrous than previous years; and finally, the 7.2 curtain call, in honor of Mr. Richter, that literally brought down the house.

As we watched the garish play develop every night on the tube, we both knew, deep in the dark recesses of our collective subconscious, that there existed the very real possibility that those sobering scenes of surreal destruction on the evening news would one day be shot on our street.

Picture all of the above against the gloomy backdrop of a region who's tourism-based economy had for at least the last two years been steadily spiraling into recession and you may just begin to appreciate the effort it took to sustain a level of denial sufficient to carry on from one day to the next.

Without a doubt, economic and other real-world concerns aside, once the decision to leave had been made, the most difficult factor to deal with was the fear that we would not find another place, another street as physically and psychologically satisfying as the one we were leaving behind had once been.

You can only imagine our delight when we discovered that there are many, many streets, indeed, right here, just east of the Colorado River, and such wonderful streets at that!

We found streets, wide streets that woundnd gracefully up into Central Arizona's ponderosa-covered mountains, streets that took us high up to the majestic beauty of the Rim Country. Once there, we found more streets... small-town streets... picturesque, colorful, tree-lined streets, busy with friendly, upbeat people, eager to share their hospitality, their optimism and their pride. Streets flanked by a full spectrum of businesses flourishing in the rarefied atmosphere of a scenic mountain community seemingly untouched by the madness of the world outside.

And, there are more streets yet... streets that can take you, in just over an hour, to the outermost suburbs of Phoenix, down to the Valley of the Sun. Phoenix is a truly magnificent metropolitan jewel by anyone's measure, a twinkling oasis of culture and comfort in the vastness of the Sonoran desert, offering all the modern amenities of any contemporary population center in a much cleaner, safer environment than one might have guessed.

Do we miss our old street? Of course we do, and that's only natural. That, too, will fade with time. What really helps are reports like the one we saw on CNN the other night. They're saying the latest figures show that the highlands of Central Arizona have become the number one relocation destination in the nation, and that thousands are coming in from other states.

Not that we take any pleasure at all in the trials and tribulations of others, but it does give us some assurances, at least, that Destiny has not singled us out, that we're just one of many families who have taken the initiative and found something better. We just got started a little earlier than some. We have a new home now, on a new street that shows all the promise of any street we've ever seen anywhere.

Strange thing, this Destiny. Though we thought for a while that the world really had it in for us, we think now, as we watch the waves wash in from the West, that there just may have been a method to the madness.

PS: If you have a few more minutes, you really ought to see what things look like around here. Take a cyber-stroll thru any one of our four Galleries in the RIMages section of the site. Click the button and enjoy!