Adventuring in Santa Cruz

Okay, so as Jayson pointed out, he came here to Santa Cruz in order to explore shit... and damn, we explored shit.

Today, we went to a army surplus store in Mountain View, to end up in Campbell, and we were very much amazed by the suburb. I was so amused, more by the fact we never heard of it, that I wiki(pedia)-ed on my iPhone, ending up to find out that Campbell was one of the most robust ecomonic spots of the southern Silicon Valley.

We later found out that the surplus store won't open for an hour, so we ended up looking around Campbell's famous (at least according to the wikipedia article) open-air shopping center. And for some reason, Barnes and Nobel cried out to us, so we went there. We entered realizing we didn't want books, only to end up buying Steampunk, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Afterwards, Jayson brought goggles at the surplus store, while I brought a navy wooly-pully (tactical sweater). There were two jokes to this whole situation:
1) we went through all of this (and this will explain the books as well) for Jayson's interest in Steampunk.
2) I finally got my wooly-pully, after searching since last November, in the middle of the summer!

Afterwards, we left, going to the CA-1, the spot of today's geohash. We ended up finding out the geohash is off limits, so Jayson and I just drove off. We ended up driving into Bonny Doon, what I told Jayson was mainly country with a few homes. Driving into the woods, and up into Bonny Doon, I warned Jayson that we have no cellphone signal, which was bad, since the iPhone actually saved our lives a few times--mainly since it had maps and I had a compass.

We were pretty much enchanted by the area; we enjoyed looking around the community, that I mentioned Jayson many times that we (Sean, him, and me) should get a house out here for when we all go to UCSC. We were pretty freaked out by the bus stops, and yes there were bus stops in the woods, buses to Santa Cruz.

We ended up parking (and the parking spots were basically dirt mounts off the road with parking signs) and walking into the woods, following a stream. It was pretty awesome, we have pictures that will be posted later.

After that adventure, we went downtown for pizza, only to end up finding an antique sale out in the street. There, we ended up finding a messenger bag for Jayson and I brought the book Song of the Sky. Then we met my friend Rafael, my limo driver to the airport at times, and he told Jayson about his work on ecofriendly limos, and his experience with old school sailboats and electric cars, which got both of them into a talk about steampunk when Rafael brought it up... I of course was a bit upset, since I was really into the machinery that Rafael brought up, and less about the fashion of it (though, I like it).

On a related note, Jayson and I earlier had an little debate on what steampunk needs today. He said it needed more punk and less Victorian Age. While I thought that it needed less punk, and a lot more TRUE historical accuracy-- namely less Victorian Age, and more Edwardian Age to WWI-- more electricity and practicality, and way less wearing gears and goth clothes.

Anyways, we later went to get pizza, and then walked to the lagoon and explored it. Yes, we have pictures. We later walked the railroad tracks nearby, only finding it lead us nowhere.

After all was said and done, I, as the navigator the whole time, briefed Jayson on how to get home and wished him good luck and hopefully he'll be back online to put the pics up.

[PS: I hated how Jayson made me be sober from liquor, smoking, and painkillers for this weekend for the adventure <<]