Leaving Santa Cruz wasn't easy but slipping over the Santa Cruz mountains put us squarely in Silicon Valley, a whole separate world and suddenly we were no longer in the familiar, small coastal town of our youth.
My wife graduated from Palo Alto High School, but she didn't get in to Stanford University where her parents worked; she went over the hill to hippie town and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Those were the days when the Santa Clara Valley was becoming the home to the high tech that would lead the world in silicon innovation. The place has grown up since then. 
We rode Highway 101 through Silicon Valley, we chased the iPhone's directions to a hole-in-the-wall dim sum restaurant in Burlingame, and by early afternoon we were zipping past San Francisco International and the city of South San Francisco, home to the industrial suburbs of The City (locals never call it 'Frisco, a nickname considered excessively familiar). I used to drive tractor trailers around here and it was another nostalgic moment. As a kid I had always wanted to be a trucker... The fog rolling in as usual over San Bruno mountain.
When I first moved to California I thought I wanted to live in The City. San Francisco has that effect on people, similar in all respects to Old Town Key West. In the end I found I preferred small town California and I never did live in The City, but I worked there for years. I had low seniority at the trucking company where I worked so I got the most feared route- delivering doubles up and down the hills of San Francisco.
Driving through San Francisco in a car is apiece of cake compared to driving doubles but still we got trapped by lines of cars on the elevated freeway to the Bay Bridge.
There was no time to step off the freeway and indeed traffic persisted onto I-80 into the East Bay. We needed to pee so we pulled off at University in Berkeley, and we discovered a delightful spot within sight of the freeway. 
I needed an espresso and Cheyenne needed a dog cookie and we had found the right place. 
We had stumbled across a not-for-profit youth program teaching bike repair, boat building and coffee shop management. It was a delightful spot. 
The views across the lagoon were phenomenal, as was the delicious cool breeze blowing in from the San Francisco Bay on the other side of the freeway. The red bicycle was being adapted as a water machine, two canoe hulls on a wooden frame. I'd love to see it in operation. Very, very cool. 
These kids were engrossed in building their dory. A dory is a New England design with a flat bottom and slab sides which is used to fish some very rough waters. 
The coffee shop sells beef bites for dogs so Cheyenne was taken care of.
The espressos were perfect and Cheyenne was ready to explore as usual.
Our server with the bright smile took our cups, and a couple tossed in the trash (!), people are weird of course.
Really, what a great place to take a break.
My wife graduated from Palo Alto High School, but she didn't get in to Stanford University where her parents worked; she went over the hill to hippie town and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Those were the days when the Santa Clara Valley was becoming the home to the high tech that would lead the world in silicon innovation. The place has grown up since then. 
We rode Highway 101 through Silicon Valley, we chased the iPhone's directions to a hole-in-the-wall dim sum restaurant in Burlingame, and by early afternoon we were zipping past San Francisco International and the city of South San Francisco, home to the industrial suburbs of The City (locals never call it 'Frisco, a nickname considered excessively familiar). I used to drive tractor trailers around here and it was another nostalgic moment. As a kid I had always wanted to be a trucker... The fog rolling in as usual over San Bruno mountain.When I first moved to California I thought I wanted to live in The City. San Francisco has that effect on people, similar in all respects to Old Town Key West. In the end I found I preferred small town California and I never did live in The City, but I worked there for years. I had low seniority at the trucking company where I worked so I got the most feared route- delivering doubles up and down the hills of San Francisco.Driving through San Francisco in a car is apiece of cake compared to driving doubles but still we got trapped by lines of cars on the elevated freeway to the Bay Bridge.
There was no time to step off the freeway and indeed traffic persisted onto I-80 into the East Bay. We needed to pee so we pulled off at University in Berkeley, and we discovered a delightful spot within sight of the freeway. 
I needed an espresso and Cheyenne needed a dog cookie and we had found the right place. 
We had stumbled across a not-for-profit youth program teaching bike repair, boat building and coffee shop management. It was a delightful spot. 
The views across the lagoon were phenomenal, as was the delicious cool breeze blowing in from the San Francisco Bay on the other side of the freeway. The red bicycle was being adapted as a water machine, two canoe hulls on a wooden frame. I'd love to see it in operation. Very, very cool. 
These kids were engrossed in building their dory. A dory is a New England design with a flat bottom and slab sides which is used to fish some very rough waters. 
The coffee shop sells beef bites for dogs so Cheyenne was taken care of.
The espressos were perfect and Cheyenne was ready to explore as usual.Our server with the bright smile took our cups, and a couple tossed in the trash (!), people are weird of course.Really, what a great place to take a break.
Every detail in this astonishing place is a product of youthful enthusiasm. 
There are more projects in the pipe line.
I didn't have to twist the wife's arm too terribly hard to take a break and go for a wander. We saw swans (I think).
Something that looked suspiciously like a Key West bird:
And a dude taking a break from riding a crotch rocket. 
A father being...fatherly: 
A kayaker pretending he was on the Suwanee River:
And that thought made me wish I was home, humid warm and surrounded by greenery. We weren't, we were here, shortly to be surrounded by yet more traffic clogging I-505 near Sacramento, the state capital known to some as Sacred Tomato.
Next stop: Oregon and Irondad. Zoom zoom.
There are more projects in the pipe line.I didn't have to twist the wife's arm too terribly hard to take a break and go for a wander. We saw swans (I think).Something that looked suspiciously like a Key West bird:
And a dude taking a break from riding a crotch rocket. 
A father being...fatherly: 
A kayaker pretending he was on the Suwanee River:And that thought made me wish I was home, humid warm and surrounded by greenery. We weren't, we were here, shortly to be surrounded by yet more traffic clogging I-505 near Sacramento, the state capital known to some as Sacred Tomato.Next stop: Oregon and Irondad. Zoom zoom.
Now we see 35 mph winds lashing the Bahamas and a track that goes right over the Keys. About the time we plan to arrive at home! It is sort of ironic, a warning slap from Mother Nature but we will be home for the rest of the season, which peaks usually in September, so doubtless there will be many more to come. This one, so far, promises wind and rain with God knows what sort of a mess to come in the oil drenched Gulf. That's where we should be looking and wondering if this modest depression is a harbinger of all sorts of Gulf of Mexico messes to come this hurricane season.
I got to ride in Santa Cruz county for the first time in maybe fifteen years which was especial fun as I had just dug up an old photo of me and my Goldwing while pawing through old boxes of stuff, the last of our stuff still in Santa Cruz from our old life there. I took the scooter up Old San Jose road frightening cages who didn't expect a moped to be able to keep up with them.
I am a most of the gear much of the time kind of rider so I did not let the lack of clothing deter me. It was nice to be on a bendy road once again. 
It was at Nora's 40th birthday party my wife and I first met though we had moved in similar circles in Santa Cruz for years.Nora lives next door to her mother and keeps an eye on her, when not working as a union organizer.
Nora's late father was our best man so our families have been intertwined for years. Actually Bernice was my wife's community adviser when she was writing her thesis at the University of California Santa Cruz some 30 years ago. "I learned a lot from Layne," Bernice likes to joke about her own lack of academic qualifications. Bernice has always been a loud voice in local politics, and her endorsement is always sought by the candidates on the left.
We spent a lot of time reminiscing with Bernice and wheeling her out to meals, such that Nora expressed surprise at her mother's sudden renewed level of activity. I took to calling my wife St Layne as everyone wanted a piece of her. Her oldest friend Christie touched the hem of my wife's shirt and was imbued with fresh energy. Eight years after a nasty cancer diagnosis she is still alive and active and coping with all sorts of chemical side effects. She was told only 20 percent of people with her assorted cancers live five years so she is doing well, and though she tires easily she too took the time and made the effort to get out and about with St Layne.
Christie is one of life's survivors, a graduate of the school of hard knocks from a young age she moved to Northern California put herself through law school, has a successful marriage, a capable daughter well married with two children. However long she has to live Christie has done all that most people set out to do. And she still likes hanging out with my wife after all these years. Barbara and Marty have raised their own child in Santa Cruz and are still smiling. Barbara is well known and much respected attorney now in retirement, sort of, and another of those long time friends who still like to see St Layne from time to time.
Barbara has been our main connection with our old home, giving us her mailing address when we were homeless traveling sailors, guarding our mail and keeping us grounded. She has come to see us in Key West and mysteriously still prefers living in her home with her garden in cold foggy Santa Cruz.
It's not all lawyers that we left behind though. Our plumber still holes up in his mountain cabin, though now that he is engaged to be married his snug home is looking much more...homey. A woman's touch it seems. 
Eccentricity is the stock in trade of Santa Cruz. Cheyenne was glad to be able to rest outside air conditioning for a change. 
He lives on his boat in the Santa Cruz harbor,and wouldn't have it any other way.
It was good to catch up with him in his native element. Johnny Simmons is probably the most capable, knowledgeable and informed radio person I have ever known. His knowledge of music is encyclopedic but put him behind a microphone he can do anything competently and with personality. Ignore the picture; he is a man with a wild sense of humor and a very dry sense of the irony of life. I have extremely fond memories of him as my radio mentor and first program director in the mid 1980's.
He is my last connection to the first radio station where I worked as a newly divorced 24 year old. I had a lot of growing up to do and it can't have been easy for him. I didn't want to leave him there but we had places to go and people to see. We found Ric at his usual place fiddling with boat parts at the head of the Santa Cruz harbor. A man who likes dogs is all right by me.
Ric grew up in Southern California and did the rock and roller garage band thing but gave up performing for a sensible life sailing the California coast. He operates his own business fixing boats and he it was who helped us get our boat ready for our two year Central American sail to Key West. It was 12 years ago exactly and he hasn't changed a bit. 
J Dock in the Santa Cruz Small Craft harbor was looking particularly good on that sunny morning. I lived here for years on my own boat before Layne and I got married. (She expected me to move into her 1500 square foot house above the beach at Pleasure Point. I did). 
I am starting to realize we left a lot of good friends behind when we moved to the Keys. Monterey Bay as seen from the upper deck of Joe's place. Notice the marine fog rolling back over our old home at Pleasure Point on the horizon. 
Joe is a metals trader and has known us for about 15 years since he moved to Santa Cruz from Dallas. He loves being by the ocean in a cool dry climate.
Dinner at Kim and Joe's was another gathering with Gayle (above) who is living with a brain tumor that is expected to end her life in the not too distant future. Indeed since we left Santa Cruz word reached us that Gayle is slipping away. I am glad we got to see her in time to be able to remember her as she always was. Her husband Gary has been dealing with a near fatal infection but he is recovering. These are great people we met walking our dogs years ago and one has to wonder what is going on in a world where all of us seem likely to get some serious cancer sooner or later.
A dose of Marianne's ice cream is enough to fend off feelings of mortality. I got yelled at for trying to get a picture of one of Santa Cruz's iconic tourist locations. I have never seen so much negativity in Key West, a town that periodically gets panned for being mean to visitors. 
Lunch with Bob is always fascinating, he has his finger on the pulse of local politics and he brought us up to date on the goings on. "Santa Cruz has changed out of all recognition in the last ten years," he lamented. Crime is frighteningly high with Mexican gangs in town and the police on the defensive (we saw two cops on city streets in ten days, and none on foot patrol downtown where stabbings occur from time to time!). Many middle class computer geeks have moved to the beach town from Silicon Valley and telecommute. They have displaced the hippie values of our youth with the more mercantile values of modern tech companies and Bob sounded rather lost in his own home town. This is a terrible picture of a very good friend.
The night before an old friend had introduced us to a new friend at dinner and here she was at Limelight café for lunch. Time for a quick picture and cheerful hug from the smiling Jenn.
And finally the other reason fro our nostalgia trip home was money or the sudden shortage of it. Kirk our long suffering accountant who we had never met, shown below. I strolled into his office and asked "Is this the office of legal aid?" which startled him half to death. Actually he does have a very broad sense of humor ( you need to if you are going to have me for a client). He pretended not to even notice my footwear.
Ami loaned us the use of her very excellent granny unit and brought us up to date on our investments. Ami is taking over her father's investment house and has done a great job of protecting us from the worst of the economic slump. Her life has got much harder since 2008 but she lives life with a smile. 
Her father , inspired by our travels my wife maintains, spends much of the year in semi retirement on his catamaran in the Caribbean. His office is a reminder of the dream. 
It was tough leaving all these people behind but leave we did on Friday the 16th of July, bound for San Francisco through Silicon Valley and points north.
I have lots of essays and photos from Santa Cruz with which I will pepper my KEY WEST blog in the weeks ahead. Next stop Oregon and people I have only ever met on line.