Day 10 - A View to a Hill

Today began with a staggered start from the J's, as Joe decided to dismiss his 8.35 alarm clock for another quality hour in bed, before John kindly awoke him. Another great breakfast was waiting, however, including a mouth-watering addition - our first pancakes of the the trip, so thanks to Alicia for that. We did a quick bit of packing, and got set up for our train journey down to Santa Cruz, a couple of hours south down the coast from the SF area. We'll be back up to stay longer in SF later on in the trip, so we're really looking forward to that now.

We soon drove out to the station in Berkeley to catch our 11.40 train, and, after some confusion about where the main 'station' actually was (we had to find a sneakily-placed self-service machine to pick up our tickets), we waited for the train to arrive. Unfortunately, it was delayed by about 25mins, but our enthusiasm was undeterred, and to pass the time we did what all self-respecting freestylers do, and pulled out a disc for an impromptu jam on the platform. Despite some seriously choppy wind, we held up quite well, and managed to give Alicia a fairly decent demonstration. 

When the train eventually arrived, we boarded, and took our seats. It was a reasonably comfortable journey, and the train thankfully made up a bit of speed on the way to our destination station at San Jose. There we were met by our latest host - the freestyle guru known to all as Skippy. He was kind enough to drive us from San Jose 'over the hill' into Santa Cruz, and the views on this particular 'hill' were quite spectacular, with endless thick, high woodland, and the beautiful weather just added to the effect. 

From there, Skippy took us up to his office in the 'University of California at Santa Cruz'. Today really was a day for spectacular sights, and this was continued with the view from the University's sports complex up in the hills. Not only did Skippy's office overlook the swimming pool and sports fields, but some incredible panoramas of Monteray Bay were also visible past the pier and beaches of the town. We could simply see for miles, and as mentioned were lucky enough to have a nice day, so the clear skies enhanced our viewpoint. 




When we finally dragged ourselves away from the marvels of the University views, Skippy drove us downtown to the front, where he gave us a quick tour of the town centre, before a casual meander around the coastal cliff-tops. We a saw a few particularly interesting sights, including the Santa Cruz Surf Museum and then, slightly outside the centre, the local municipal disc golf course! Surprisingly for us UK guys, this seemed really popular, which was encouraging from a disc sports perspective. The surroundings of the course, less surprisingly, were beautiful once again, and the hilly woodland terrain would probably make for a challenging round.






Carving our way through more thick forest, we then made our way to Skippy's fantastic house, which itself is surrounded by tall Redwoods. We met his great family, and started to settle in, spending some time with a beer out on the timber deck, and had guided tours around the expansive garden area (courtesy of his two young boys). We were made a delicious meal (yeah, another one...) of filled Burritos, and have now enjoyed a relaxing time catching up on Usain's Olympic antics, and of course, updating this blog.




Signing off for now...

J2