Day 9 - Santa Cruz, S.F

I want to have endless summer right now. I want to cruise the roads, hit the beaches, do a lot of climbing, hiking, diving, swimming, and learn scuba and surfing. I dreamed that I own a dry suit and say "screw winter" in Boston and learned kite surfing and just take off on any high wind day and go kite surfing.

But all good things have to come to an end. There is a hypnotic effect of driving on highway 1 without worries nor schedule. When I got to Santa Cruz the boardwalk was still closed except the arcades. Wow, the arcade, I miss arcades. Nostalgia ran thick as I touched the Mr. Do machine. I was beyond myself as I saw the "Star Trek, the Simulator" machine in its original seat cabinet. I was 10 again. The boardwalk building itself is like a false memory of something from my past:


I had some great mexican food - probably the best fish taco I ever had over there. Afterwards I meandered up highway 1 to Half Moon Bay, found it boring, and made a beeline straight to S.F. via winding, steep highway 17. I can imagine many accidents happened on that road.

When I got to San Francisco, the weather was gray and cool. I have scoped out a climbing gym beforehand (http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/mc.html) and thought it would be fun to climb for a few hours, meet some ppl and try and make it on a night on the town afterwards. Well, without a map (silly me) I meandered through SF for almost 1 1/2 hours before I found the gym. I was hopelessly lost so in desperation I started wardriving...found an open wireless access point and googled my location to see where I was and where the gym was. Yay for technology!