Surf City USA

If I tell you Santa Cruz, California is the real Surf City USA, someone will pipe up and point out the Beach Boys were singing about Pacific Palisades (or Redondo Beach, take your pick of anonymous Southern California Beach communities). They are right but the fact remains that great waves appear around here, on the north shore of Monterey Bay, about 70 miles south of San Francisco. Surfers fight each other, literally, for access to the best waves. I am not a surfer, never have been, but I am reliably informed Duke Kahanamoku brought surfing to mainland USA here, from his Hawaii'an home in the early 20th century. In the distance you see a little pimple on the point which is a lighthouse now used as a surfing museum. It is the Mark Abbott lighthouse built by grieving wealthy parents lamenting the victim of one more surfing death. It overlooks Cowells Beach, on the far side of the point, and waves that break alluringly under the lighthouse.Off the lighthouse is the only island in Monterey Bay next to Santa Cruz, a rather forbidding lump called Seal Rock thanks to the ubiquitous symbols of the frigid, wave filled waters of Northern California.
People who find Santa Cruz and make it their home will tell you with utter sincerity that it is the most beautiful place in the world, and they have a point. But you don't read Key West Diary for platitudes and bromides so I will be forced to spill the beans and explain why I chose not to live there and made my home in the Keys instead. Santa Cruz is cold wet and windy. Summer temperatures hover around 70 degrees and a high of 80 is practically a heat wave. Summer clothing is long pants and sweatshirts. With the setting of the sun temperatures typically drop to 50 degrees. The winter months are worse with rain, howling storms and temperatures close to freezing. earthquakes, floods, mudslides and forest fires make up for the absence of hurricanes. Traffic is dreadful as anti growth groups have blocked improved roads and Mexican gangs have infiltrated the city and the murder rate is horrific. They also hate dogs around here. It's Beach used to be an off leash area for dogs.I told you summer beach weather in Santa Cruz in no way resembles the fabulous Florida Keys:It turns out It's Beach is still dog friendly. Hurray!The water temperature is around 55 degrees so don't expect people to swim in it. There is a reason Jack O'Neill invented the west suit in his home town of San Francisco in 1952. He moved to Santa Cruz where he and his world wide company are still based. Cheyenne was having none of the foaming cold salt water but she surprised the dickens out of me and started playing with the local dogs (their owners huddled in their cliques as Californians are wont to do. Another strike against the Golden State and in favor of the friendly Florida Keys).She ran and ran like a young Labrador.

She overdid it a bit and we rested in the sand for a while as she got her breath. I admired the scenery and waited for my winded dog to get her puff back. I carried the winded dog up the steps to the road up above and dinner was served roadside. I played with the picture in the computer and have mixed feelings about the result.West Cliff Drive is the epitome of tourist Santa Cruz. I avoided the Boardwalk this trip but there are plenty of pictures on the web if you want to see the waterfront playground that has made Santa Cruz famous as a beach resort. This despite the cold. Santa Cruz also is home to the University of California, Santa Cruz, which used to be a hive of subversive hippie students. They settled in the conservative little seaside town and turned it into a center of Eco-environmental, anti-nuke activism. The activism has died down, the campus is more science oriented and the aging hippies now support meditation centers, past life searches, aromatherapy and various kinds of non sexual massage centers. Hybrid cars are the badge of honor in this town, though electric cars and scooters and motorcycles are far outnumbered in this frigid climate by gasoline automobiles.Activities considered family friendly and normal in recreational areas elsewhere in the country are banned everywhere in this unfriendly paradise.As lovely as it is, all this is banned to Cheyenne, and by extension to myself. Natural Bridges State Park.

Body surfing is gentle fun, if you don't mind being tumbled in the waves with sand ending up in your shorts. West Cliff is a bicycle and pedestrian path along the cliffs above the waves. Expect cold wind and dress accordingly.

The view, with the mountains in the background, is fantastic.

Some people go to great heights to get a better view. I asked for a big smile and this was what I got.

I have never taken Santa Cruz's physical beauty for granted. It is something worth seeing.

Even Cheyenne took the time to drink it all in. She loved the cold summer weather.

I am a big fan of flat waters and easy swimming access.The temperatures favor vigorous exercise. A home along here is a multi million dollar proposition. Housing in Santa Cruz has long been notoriously expensive, similar to Key West.

Eventually one has to suppose it will all fall into the Pacific Ocean, much the way Key West will sink below sea level.

Floating around like this waiting for a wave sounds horrendous to me.Up and at them!

People fish but it seems rather more strenuous than you might see along Florida's gentle shores.

Even taking the dog to the beach is an effort if she decides to get to sea level.

People watching is the sport best practiced along West Cliff. Or wave watching. You can get a ride on Monterey Bay with Chardonnay II, a Santa Cruz 70 sailboat easily identified by the colored stripes on her sails. This is a rather more challenging sail than a drunken booze cruise on a Key West charter catamaran. The brown smear in the water in front of the sail boat is a local seaweed called kelp that sets roots among the rocks at the bottom of the ocean and grows rubbery trunks and leaves that spread over the surface of the water fowling boats and divers while feeding sea life at the same time in the great circle of life.Winds around here are strong and predominantly blow down the coast. The trees know, look how they grow at an angle.

Cheyenne, fed and rested wanted to go back to It's Beach, for a gentle stroll and sniff.

The porous rocks seep water onto the sand and are home to graffiti. Sara is enshrined.

It's a tough life being a surfer if you want to get to the best waves.

It's far from Key West, but Santa Cruz is a hell of place. I was lucky to be a young man there.

Oblivion By The Sea

When I lived in California, a visit to Los Angeles would always set my teeth on edge. It's a vast metropolis, an agglomeration of metropoli, and it never did anything for me but remind me that I am an insignificant pimple on the backside of the Earth. I must be in a better space now because i don't mind it so much, but it remains a city I could never see again and not miss it. California allows motorcycles to lane split, which in Los Angeles is a critical advantage as traffic is appalling, especially for those of us who have no clue where the bottlenecks are likely to be. My wife's iPhone found us alternative routes with ease, though this would have been much faster:

To photograph the city of angels would take several lifetimes and most such pictures fall into the category of cliché, Hollywood has photographed everything we think we know of Los Angeles (the letters "e" are short- the English sound ridiculous when they say "Los Angeleees"). Here's a cliché, squats in the foreground and executives in the back:
The thought of Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf of Mexico's gusher are never far from our minds. These rigs off Santa Barbara have been grandfathered in after a spill sent tar balls to the beach in 1969.
When people ask us about the oil and Key West we just shrug and say we hope it never arrives, though it seems inevitable. I dread the day we have to even consider leaving to make a new life- uff, again-and i look at the cloudy July skies in my former home state and wonder if i could ever cope with this again. 65 degrees of a July afternoon? Taking Highway 101 inland north of Santa Barbara one is exposed once again to the wild variety of climate and vegetation that makes up the vast state of California. Deserts and mountains and a sudden climb to 85 degrees in the sunshine. We had planned a left turn at San Luis Obispo (Saint Louis, Bishop in English and soon enough we were plunged back into the coastal gloom of the famous Highway One. This is the other Highway One, California's state road up the coast, but unlike our own Overseas Highway this road twists along impossible cliffs far above crashing waves below. You don't swim around here unless you like 55 degree water and an impossible climb down to the minuscule beaches at the head of wave wracked coves far below the road. Then there are the rental campers farting slowly along the 100 mile road.Winter wrecks the road between Cambria and Monterey and we had to sit around in three sets of one way lights as crews repaired the road in time for some more mud slides this next winter.
Just because this area is remote and relatively uninhabited doesn't mean there aren't homeless fruitcakes stumping along the road. I should have liked to stop and hear his story, it would be bound to amaze, but we had a date with a hamburger up the road... the most expensive burger in the country actually.If one thinks of the canyons of condos that line the coasts of Florida and then one takes a peak along California Highway One the question has to come up: how come they preserved their coast like this?

The answer is a little known legislative body called the California Coastal Commission, created by Democrats and hated by Republicans. All attempts to dismantle it have so far failed and the result is a coastline that the whole world wants to come and see. Houses are few and new construction cannot be permitted to be seen in any from from the highway. Permits are rare as California Condor eggs and the result is a socialist's dream: nature preserved.The road is an endless series of curves and turn outs that a few slow people were kind enough to use. My wife and I agreed (and I think Cheyenne would have too) that this was a once in a decade drive. Been there, done that- where's lunch? And then finally Oblivion came into view, at the top of a multi layered parking lot and a number of stairs.The home of the Ambrosia burger. Nepenthe in Greek means peace or oblivion and is often used as a synonym for the state of mind induced by grass. We were hungry at this point and sought easier gratification.I was hardly alone in my use of a camera, however we skipped the outdoor seating (62 degrees):The mushrooms are actually outdoor propane heaters, a common sight in California's hip coastal communities. People even keep them in their back yards to radiate heat down on out door parties. It is that cold after dark in July around here. The place was built around the middle of the last century as the back to the earth hippie movement took root and they proudly point out local logs were sacrificed for the building,which strikes a discordant note in our current obsession with preservation, but the result is excellent.

The food is first rate, a crisp fresh salad, chopped steak and French/American bread.

Two burgers and an iced tea (the driver needed a caffeine jolt!) and the bill was, as expected, enormous. Had we had cheese, that would have added a buck fifty to each burger. I should note the price of the Ambrosia burger hasn't gone up as long as I can remember.It's the scenery that does it, and the view is excellent, though trying to capture it on a pocket camera seemed nuts to me. They tried though.

Droves of them.

Jolly family souvenirs. We toasted ourselves in the sun, inside and watched.

This looked especially hopeless on a telephone camera.

Someone finally put her out of her misery and snapped the picture for her. It should have been me then I would have asked her, a la riepe, to lift her shirt. Instead I ate my burger and drank my four dollar tea and watched.

Notice how bundled up everyone is for a July afternoon on the sunny California coast. Dress like that in Key West in summer and get heat stroke. These are the redwoods of Big Sur, driving the last thirty miles north to the cities of Carmel and Monterey.

There is a short stretch where the road runs inland through what were farms and is now Andrew Molera State Park with a trail down to the beach. We stopped to walk the long suffering dog.

Oops! This is California and dogs aren't allowed on park trails! Silly me, why would I want to walk my dog around here?

It was tending toward evening and the coastal clammy low cloud called fog, locally, was rolling back in. I walked Cheyenne round the parking lot (dogs okay on leash - big effing deal...) and off we went.

I had to stop here for a moment of nostalgia. This beach is (or was) known locally as Monastery Beach owing to a bunch of cloistered folk living in the foothills behind here. This was where I learned to scuba dive 25 years ago. This is also where Cheyenne met the Pacific Ocean and encountered waves for the first time (on a leash per regulations).

The black streak on her back was a souvenir from the greasy underside of a barbecue stand at Andrew Molera picnic area. She was not impressed by waves.Imagine coming down here to learn to dive. I was a brave idiot. Little wonder I got the PADI certificate and quit. I am a warm water dude and this was as cold and clammy as it looks.

Don't be surprised to find remains of open fires on California beaches. Walking them barefoot at dawn can produced burned feet if you happen across a properly smothered ring of embers. It gets so cold at night that without a fire it is unbearable. Then people complain about Florida's heat and humidity.The sand itself has a gritty quality, not like proper Florida talcum powder at all.

From Monastery beach we drove round the Monterey peninsula on Highway One and made a beeline for Santa Cruz, the so called "Sunny side of the Bay" which hadn't materialized by the time we got to Moss Landing and the yacht club flashed past the windows.

That used to be a downwind destination four hours by sail from Santa Cruz. Compared to my boating destinations in the Keys this clammy nasty stuff really does suck. But life isn't all boating and issues with weather. There's lots more as we shall see when we explore the sunny side of Monterey Bay.