LandfallVoyages

It would appear we’ve been somewhat remiss in updating–rest assured, we did not fall victim to West Coast pirates; we did not take an unscheduled tour of Davy Jones’ locker; and we have not been press ganged into a century-long stint before the mast on board the Flying Dutchman. It’s been just completely, utterly, hella hectic. Wonderful, scary, magnificent, and hard.

Once we got in there, Santa Cruz Harbor was a fantastic place to be. It’s really not much more than a scooped out creek bed. Well no, I take that back…in 1962, Granite Construction Co.  won the bid to turn a creek-fed seasonal lagoon with intermittent access to the ocean into the Santa Cruz Harbor we all know and love.  George Wagner was Branch Manager of Granite Construction Co. at the time and later  wrote up a really cool account of how they built it.

Steve says his favorite thing was just how friendly and active everybody was. What he means is that everywhere we went, we saw a preponderance of happy, hot, hippie chicks zooming around on beach cruisers. Eli thought that was pretty bonus, too.  And they were (guys included) some of the nicest, most  laid back, generous,  anything-goes kind of people.

For instance, one night we walked up to Trader Joe’s to replenish our provisions. Afterwards, we went next door to Woodstock’s Pizza for dinner. When we were done, we called a cab company to help us get both our weary selves, and the groceries, home to the boat.  We hustled five or six bags of groceries out the door and onto the sidewalk, then hunkered down to escape the cold as we waited in the dark for the cab to show up.

A few minutes later, a young couple walked out of the pizza place, hand-in-hand.  The fullness of their happy contentment palpably roiled about them, sending curious, questing tendrils off the sidewalk and down the street, looking for a place, a smell, a sound—something to hook into, to anchor this moment in their memories. They casually looked both ways before crossing the street. Slow double-take in our direction  . “Hey, umm…you know, we have two pieces left if you want them,” says the nice young man, giving his to-go box an enticing little shake. “That’s ok,” I say, shaking our pizza box so he can hear that there are, in fact, several pieces of leftover pizza sliding around in our pizza box.  “We’ve got our own…we had the Blue Chicken; what flavor did you guys get?”

Poor guy nearly died of embarrassment right there in the parking lot. When Steve came back from the bathroom I told him we might want to reprovision our wardrobes as well because apparently, after six months of working non-stop on the boat, we looked totally destitute and homeless.

Fortunately, the Salvation Army in downtown Santa Cruz celebrated Black Friday by marking everything in the store half off. Yeah, I can totally get down with a pair of North Face shorts for $1.50.

All right, that’s it for now, but I promise, I swear, I double-dog pinky swear…You’ll get more tomorrow.