Shooby doo da we’re really off and running now, folks! I think I want that to be my preferred pronoun. Folk. I am not a he. I am not a she. I am a folk. Thank you.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone be referred to as a folk, singular. You only ever hear people say “folks.” Is it even grammatically correct to refer to someone as a single folk? Ah, darn. It has to be plural unless it’s used as an adjective, as in a “folk hero.” Well, folk me sideways. I’m still going with it. Just gonna folk my way along here…
So, the drive over from Sacramento to Santa Cruz was incredibly pleasant. Incredibly pleasant. Hmm. That’s like if you said, “this water is ridiculously lukewarm.” Not my best choice of words. But you get the idea. Pleasant, as I went through Pleasanton. I love looking at the rolling green hills of Northern California. It’s like waves of grass. I shared a couple pictures on the last post of the drive. I wouldn’t go out of your way to look at them, but if you haven’t seen the waves of grass it might be worth a quick peek.
It took me almost three hours to get from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, not that that’s important or interesting or significant, but hey I thought I’d share anyway. Thanks for coming. Good to be here. Can I get you anything to drink? Water, tea, shot of vodka?
So I got to Santa Cruz and met up with my friend, Matt. He moved there a couple of months ago and has a really cool spot just around the corner from Henry Cowell park. Matt and I grew up playing golf together from a really young age. We were playing tournaments on the Sonoma County Junior Tour from I want to say about the age of seven. We got paired together a lot, which was always a relief because we didn’t suck. There’s nothing wrong with sucking at golf, I’ve done my fair share of it, but it’s tough to play with someone who’s really whacking it around the weeds for a few hours in a tournament setting.
It was an important lesson to learn at a young age: sometimes people just suck. I think that’s a message that’s really missing when it comes to our children, today. We like to send out this super positive message that every child is amazing and wonderful, but that’s simply not true, and like I said yesterday, we must do our best to be honest. Most of us suck at most things. If we learn that early on, we can move on to things we might be good at, instead of wasting other people’s time sucking in our own delusional force field.
I, for example, suck at climbing fences. Really, I’m just not good at it. Horrible, even. I had to climb a fence yesterday. I made it over, but cut my hand open in a few places because it was pretty tall and barbed on the top and like I said, I suck at climbing fences. That was at the end of the day.
When I got to Matt’s house, we grabbed his dog and went over to Henry Cowell park, a beautiful forest with awesome scenery and a lot of mushrooms. The beginning of the walk was on sand, which was neat and quite pleasant. Incredibly pleasant, one might say. I’ll be honest, I’m gonna miss my family and friends a lot, but ooeeee I may miss that cool, crisp, coastal California air more than anything. Really hits you in the solar plexus, you know? You can’t beat it. It’s like hitting oxy gin.
That was a terrible joke. I’ll just see myself out.
Nope, still here.
Picture time!
That big tree was one of the wildest things I’ve seen in awhile. Just absolutely massive and dripping with character. Dripping with character. What a weird thing to say.
But as you can see, it was quite a joyous hike. I think we spent about three or four hours up there walking around. We hit the rock quarry afterwards and holy smoked chicken what a view that was. Then we had to adventure a bit to get back home, and that’s when I demonstrated my inept fence-climbing skills. Good times.
Matt and I hung out for a few minutes at his place and talked about the old golf days and what happened to all the kids we played with. It seems to be a common theme that most people who play golf competitively lose their mind at some point and then can no longer play golf competitively. I think therapists should advertise on golf courses. Buy a few benches, get a bunch of clients. Everyone wins.
I left Matt’s around six and then drove around Santa Cruz for a little bit. It’s a beautiful town, and I wish I had more time to explore, but I had to get to Buttholeville, aka Salinas, and check into my hotel. I taped covers on all my windows so nobody would see my belongings in the all new Subaru Crosstrek, walked over to In n Out, grabbed a couple burgers and dug my face in.
The rest of the night was spent winding down, doing some yoga and reading the dictionary. I found a new word I liked but I forgot it. All that’s coming to my head is the word “coitus,” but I already knew that one.
Oh shit taffy, I found it! Cloister! Cloister: to shut away from the world. Gotta be honest, I’m a huge fan of cloistering. Nothing like getting a good cloister in. Each time I get closer to cloistering, I get further from coitus.
