SURFING IN SANTA CRUZ
This post is dedicated to Dusty Benedict, my Friday old man‘s group friend, who is is still surfing, for life, when not rowing to Hawaii on his rowing machine, with his son and his grandson, with whom he just built a surfboard.
Santa Cruz may or may not be the best surfing spot in the United States but the passion certainly runs high here and all of this only a few blocks from Nick and Ruth’s home where I have been staying.
While here we visited the bluffs along the ocean to look down on the surfers three times. But only on the last day were the swells so high that men and women in wet suits were able to ride the waves in.
We also visited the little surfing museum where Hawaian princes studying in Santa Cruz were said to have brought surfing on long surfboards to the mainland. On the cliffside there is also a memorial to surfers who have died later in life after years of surfing.
At the same time we visited the mile long pier jutting out from the Santa Cruz beach, not commercial like Fisherman‘s Wharf in San Francisco with local restaurants and seals barking underneath us and people fishing from the pier.
David, Ruth and Nick‘s son in his 50‘s and now in nurses training, is an avid surfer, pointing out the next day the best surfing points along the Monterey coast. This whole West Coast period for me has introduced me to the strenuous lifestyle of at least some West Coast inhabitants: surfing, skiing, sailing, camping, motor boating and constant hikes in the mountains. As an observer this is as close as I want to get to the real thing.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 