flowers along west cliff drive

this morning we had breakfast at saturn with a friend we had made just as we were leaving santa cruz. that's one of the 'what a shame' things about when we left santa cruz. we never really got to know this person and hang out. anyway, after that we wanted to check out just a little more of santa cruz before we drove up to the bay area for the second part of our trip so we drove west cliff drive and came upon the 23rd annual invitation only longboard contest. santa cruz is the birthplace of surfing outside of hawaii afterall. in all the years that i lived here, i never really took nice pictures to remember the place by. i always saw nice landscapes and wished i had my camera on me but never really got to take a good photo. not even the basics like wharf, lighthouse, surfer. ok, maybe i did but that was on film camera and that's just archaic. so i took some pictures with my new digital camera. i don't have much zoom or a telephoto lens so we'll see how they turn out. then we went back to our friends' place to get the rest of our stuff.

santa cruz surfer statue

before we left though we had something we needed to do, a couple errands you might say. you see, we have these gift certificates we never used. twiddle thumbs used hers on the first day but i still have mine. hers was from 1999! mine is from 2004. so i went and used it. then we also went to a couple health food shops because we can't leave santa cruz without trying a slice of vegan cake from the black china bakery. then we took a slight detour to san mateo to get our pyrex from a friend who mistakenly took it back up after visiting us. it's a long story but twiddle thumbs loves her pyrex! i don't blame her, those things rock! we went into san francisco and crossed over the bay bridge in order to stay with our friends in the east bay. it's funny because i saw streets and city names that remind me of where i live and work now in LA. we settled in, caught up for a bit chatting, and went to have dinner at pyramid in berkeley which is like this brewery restaurant. it was kind of an odd feeling at first because we haven't been at their place in 2 years. i don't mean this place they live at now, just their place. in that time they have visited us but we have not had a chance to see them. to hang out with people you used to hang out with all the time but then have a couple years break is strange. natsukashii that is what it was like. initial weirdness left right away and we had a good time. though the pizza at pyramid did make me feel funny a little but not total heartburn.