Cruz-ing on a Sunday Afternoon

Last Sunday, I had an itch that needed to be scratched. I was feeling penned in. I needed to get out of Silicon Valley and stretch a bit. I hadn’t thought about it until the following Monday when one of my colleagues remarked, “wow, you felt like you had to get away – but you’re hardly ever even here.”

Special K refers to this as my ongoing restlessness. I prefer to think of it as my own personal tribute to Newtonian physics: “A body in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by some outside force.” I’m just the larger, more obvious embodiment of all those vibrating atoms and molecules that comprise my rarely-at-rest body and mind. (For the record, the only “outside force” that has been able to regularly cause me to illustrate the corolloary to this law of motion, “A body at rest stays at rest”, is Special K, primarily when we are curled up together on the couch, drifting off for an unplanned mid-day nap. But I digress.)


Back to last Sunday… I enthusiastically caved into my restlessness and jumped in the car and headed south to Santa Cruz. I’d never been before, but I’d read a few things that made me curious about the seaside town where Ferrari-driving yuppies and tofu-eating bohemians peacefully co-exist in their own little slice of beachy paradise. Santa Cruz also seemed to have a kind of interesting, albeit non-traditional history, really coming into its hippie-self in the 60’s when the University of California system dropped anchor on what would become the UC Santa Cruz campus.

It was a gorgeous day in NoCal and it seemed like the perfect day to hit the beach. I took a sweater thinking it would be cooler by the water, but I ended up leaving it in the car because it was over 80 degrees. I pulled off the winding highway that leads to the small town and eased my way through the quiet late Sunday morning streets until I came to the water … and the Beach Boardwalk.


The Beach Boardwalk is NoCal’s answer to Coney Island. It’s a stretch of beachside amusement park, packed with arcades, games, a rollercoaster, merry-go-round, fun house and no end of kiosks selling more types of food on a stick than you ever thought possible. A fun place for families with small kids for sure, but it also smacked of the sort of seediness that only idle teenagers in their hoodies and Vans can bring to a scene.


I wandered along the Boardwalk towards the wharf and made my way out over the water, passing by a number of small shops and restaurants. I started to hear a vaguely familiar sound – almost like horns, but at irregular intervals and from more than one source. As I got a few steps further, the bleating got louder and recognized it as the barking of sea lions. I scanned the water for any sign of them, but didn’t see so much as one slick little head peeping out from the surface. But every step I took, the barking got louder and louder. Then I realized that they must be UNDER the wharf.


When I rounded the corner of the last little building on the pier, I came across three sections that had been cut out of the deck of the pier, outlined with railings so that people could lean and look down and watch the sea lions slumber on the wharf’s cross-beams, slip in and out of the water and of course, bark at one another. I watched the various characters for the better part of 45 minutes and also managed to get *this* close to multiple pelicans who would alight on the railings in search of scraps from the fisherman who cast their lines into the ocean below.


Next, I climbed West Cliff Drive, one of the most gorgeous coastal drives I’ve seen. This well-known street winds its way along the top the cliff and separates some unbelievably beautiful homes from the Pacific Ocean down below. The surfers were also out in full force, enjoying some great waves.


Santa Cruz truly lives up to its identity as a town of juxtaposition. West Cliff Drive with its million dollar-plus homes and luxury car-filled garages is literally just half a mile from the battered 50’s style motels that dot the streetscape across from the boardwalk, right where a Rastafarian-esque busker strums a guitar, seemingly less concerned about the money he’s collecting than he is about how his sleepy, slightly skinny mixed-breed dog seems to be enjoying the fruits of his latest song-writing efforts.


A few hours and a couple of snacks later, I climbed in my car and made my way to the highway, pointing myself north back to the Valley, still warm from the sun, happy because of the sea lions and pelicans and decidedly less restless because I’d followed my nomadic urges, even if just for a 30 minute jaunt to the beach.