Adventures in Santa Cruz

For years I have heard from friends, family, co-workers and people on the internet that Santa Cruz is an amazing town, full of life and adventures. I realized recently that I have a lot to do while still in California and very little time to get it all done. When talking to my friend Sara Jane recently, we discussed that an adventure needed to be planned.

Sunday (May 22 – my last Sunday as an Undergrad Student) after church I drove back to my College Town, grabbed some food from my house and picked Sara up from her house.

Armed with some Kleenex for allergies, the Biohazard Triangle Adventure Playlist, and various other things that writers tend to always have we headed south.

The drive was magnificent. We got to chat about life, the last week of school, future plans, past events, memories and recent assignments. I am very glad Sara is one of my best friends.

We took a small detour when I mis-read my GPS (I know, this happens a lot) and ended up driving through the city of Campbell. But we soon found our way back on track.

So there’s this bit on the last stretch into Santa Cruz where the road jackknifes like crazy. It’s absolutely gorgeous though, because there are a ton of beautiful, tall, amazing redwood trees. The windy road reminds me a bit of when I drove through Oregon – one of the passes there (I forget which one) is windy and downhill on a 7% grade and it’s ridiculous. This road was a lot like that. Except not downhill. It was more flat-uphill-ish-ness.

Then we got into Santa Cruz. At first the road was weird – some kind of process of repair that was full of fail. The road was torn up in strips – obviously for pipeline replacement – and the effect this had on my car was like speed bumps. But the opposite. So… speed…dips? And there was a whole strip the length of the road that was a pain to get out of – when I turned to get out of it, my wheels were pushed back in and I just had to drive straight out. Then there was weird train-trackage. And we found the famous boardwalk!

Parking, on the other hand, was interesting. I can be a bit of a timid driver at times, especially when other cars are around. I don’t like pissing off the people behind me. So I finally found a lot, drove in and parked. We parked right by the main entrance of the boardwalk, which was a spectacular unplanned coincidence.

We took stock of the situation, grabbed some water, a handful of kleenex, my camera, and whatever else Sara had in her bag. Then we locked the car and began our adventure. We walked the length of the boardwalk, then down to the beach. I kinda wanted to go on the rollercoaster, but Sara does not like rollercoasters and I didn’t feel like going alone. Plus, I didn’t even want to know how much it cost to ride.

We walked along the beach, teasing the waves with our feet. Closer and closer, then moving away as the water came close. Sara knew of a cave-passage-way-thing, and we were walking towards it.

As we got to the cave-passage-way-thing, it became quite apparent that our timing coincided with high tide, which meant the cave-passage-way-thing was not going to be easily accessed. We then stood by the cave-passage-thing, staring at some people in the water near it.

Upon some further wandering and discussion, we decided that we should find Pizza-My-Heart – our food destination of the day, as recommended by my co-worker. We then realized that the Nickelodeon Theater (which was showing Morgan Spurlock‘s film “POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold“) was right next to the pizza place, and the show-time started in 15 minutes. So we drove to a parking lot between the theater and the pizza place.

The theater was adorable. It was smaller than what used to be the Rialto, in Santa Rosa. The screening room was about the size of a living room, just with theater seating and no one (besides Sara and I) under 30.

The film was incredible. Spurlock’s creativity and style is completely brilliant. He is the main speaker at my graduation in a few days and I am the student speaker. I really hope we get a chance to chat, because that would be absolutely amazing.

After the film ended, Sara and I walked over to Pizza-My-Heart. All the pizza’s were about $4 per slice. $5 for a slice and a T-Shirt. Needless to say, I bought a T-Shirt. After all, it was only $1 more. Cheapest T-Shirt ever. I really enjoyed my Bacon Chicken pizza. Or BBQ Chicken. I forget exactly. We also split a salad. That was delicious.

After pizza, we drove back. Sara was exhausted and slept much of the way.

All-in-all, great adventure. Wonderful way to spend the last Sunday before I graduate college.