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Published: January 2nd 2008
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Soap Madness!
Our attempt at capitalism does eventually fail. Well, it's a new year, but what's new? I don't know, but what's old is obvious!
After 'fleeing' from my X-mas job I've spent the last days traveling with Natan in his familiar territory of Santa Cruz. With the obvious of effects of any town on such a holiday, we spent a very quiet Christmas in the Cruz. To our luck, the weather was unusually pleasant, meaning we could go to the empty beaches, play frisbee, and bicycle around town as much we liked. I was still a bit sick from being in the mall so long, my brain was about as sharp as the block of cheese, I let Natan take the reigns and decide the course of the days.
After the short trip to Santa Cruz, Natan was called back to his clinic in Sunnyvale. Once again, we had a pleasant place to stay, house-sitting in Mt. View. Basically the center of the Metro area here, but an enjoyable city on its own, with a variety of cuisines downtown, interesting bicycle trails in "nature" along cement based creeks and passing under 8-lane highways.
Once recuperating we headed back to Santa Cruz for another visit with the
end of 2007 approaching. The roads were a bit more filled, the stores open, and the weather a tid-bit chillier but to the day quite tolerable. We did a more hardy bicycle ride this time, heading up the mountain and entering a completely different world, though once again empty: The University of California Santa Cruz. A particularly well located college being in the middle of the woods, and hardly any inkling you are near town there. It is a number of smaller colleges all placed around the woods for different studies. The colleges down the hill, out of the woods, had solar panels on most of the dorms, while the colleges uphill in the woods had their own charming aspects of orchards, gardens, and hiking paths to be found. This was an incredible contrast knowing that if you attend this school you have a number of different settings to choose from. The humbleness of the buildings, none of them being overly beautiful or overdone on architecture, was a perfect and modest placement to fit the woods around them and give the place a friendly open feel. Sadly, as I said, it being Christmas break, we saw maybe 2 students if
Ironically
This is Mountain View! at all.
Natan was called back to San Jose to pick up a friend at the airport using that friend's car, left me alone(yay!) with Natan's car for the day of the 31st. Waking up early enough I headed out to the easiest thing in mind, THE MYSTERY SPOT...a touristy outpost outside of Santa Cruz where one can experience the very strange phenomenon of being in a cabin with some sort of gravitational disturbance. Basically, it allows you to walk up hill, BUT actually you are feeling as walking down hill, and must compensate strangely by leaning in weird directions. A fun 45-minute excursion and tour, and got me woken up for the real event of the day. A hike.
Grabbing a small road back towards San Jose, I headed back into the mountains to get to Big Basin Park. Natan had given me a map, so about all I knew was I was in a big park. Reaching there was a fun drive of some twisty roads, though too taxing, and arriving I parked, put on some layers, made use of the facilities by the ranger station. Now set and ready, with some dried fruit, I
moved on into the woods hoping to figure out a nice hiking loop. Not even a tenth of a mile in, I run into another hiker checking out some logs. My curiosity being hardly minute I glanced at the log, and then towards the other hiker who I wished happy new year. Funnily enough, the hiker had a beanie on, with 8 significant letters on them: Grinnell. I furrowed an eyebrow, and disbelievingly asked, "Is that Grinnell from Iowa?"
Well indeed it was, this fellow named Alex, was a peculiar fellow to meet in a forest. We ended up talking for a bit, and realizing we were both doing a similar hike, so we joined forces. As we hiked and enjoyed the unexpected company in the gigantic forest of giants I learned that Alex, or Alexi by his diminutive name, was a native born citizen of Tajikistan. For 10 years he's been in the USA, originally coming as foreign exchange student, and later returning to study, get married at one point, get divorced at another, and now living in Sunnyvale and enjoying life though he claims to enjoy it more when visiting the forest. He and I had quite
a hike on hand, possibly 10 miles of beautiful redwoods, misty waterfalls, and a pre-sunset towards the end while on Sunset Trail. Before splitting up from our rigorous walk (we went through a few hiking sticks that day), he invited me over to his rental cabin for New Years' Eve to make merry. I was able to contact Natan before leaving the park and decided to just drive in the following morning, for 2008. Spending the night in a forest cabin was a first for me, but as well as the cuisine prepared that evening by Alex, and his two friends visiting, Catherine and Oleg. We dined on a number of snacks, fresh salad we made, shrimp pot stickers, a number of champagnes and drinks I could hardly name, and Russian baked goods. Before midnight, my stomach was already inverted, and it was nice to finally go to bed next to the wood burning stove, though not so pleasant to wake up with it not burning anymore. I left early enough to see how the forest looked with an eastern sun, and drove back towards San Jose. The road along the way was what could be the most exciting road
to bicycle on, being no warning signs for turns, but hardly a moment where you'd want to drive faster than cruising speed around the narrow road. Arriving at the pass, I had a brief glimpse through the trees of the sprawl below me that a few million people inhabit, making quite a contrast to my previous day of peace and quiet.
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