Impending Transitions

Today I did it. I made a concrete decision about where I'm moving to and when I'm moving there. In actuality, it was a less of a conscious decision than me curling my arms in to me, closing my eyes tight, and jumping into the water. But either way, I paid rent for 2 months on a place back in Santa Cruz and I move in on Saturday. Its going to be a helluva drive everyday from Santa Cruz to Sunnyvale and back again - literally over the mountains and through the woods - but I'm looking forward to living back by the beach.

Santa Cruz is an interesting town. There really is no perfect descriptor for it other than interesting. Its isolated from the rest of the bay area by the Santa Cruz mountains that run along the eastern edge of the town. There is a single road (the infamous Hwy 1) the runs North and South out of town, but that road provides 1. a lack of a real place to go if you go South (Monterey for the day, maybe?) and 2. the inconsistant, slow, North-bound access to San Francisco. It will take you 2 hours to get there using this road, provided the 101 isn't shut down for flooding, mudslides, etc.

Because of this isolation, it seems to have evaded the 10,000% growth the rest of the bay area has seen over the last 10 years. You can still see places where the 1989 earthquake left its mark. People are normal there - they're not crazy Californians! Not that Silicon Valley or San Franciscans aren't normal, but ... no, they aren't. They're a team of IT rats tripping over themselves they're still running so fast to make back the tons of investment dollars they lost in the dot-com crash.

Santa Cruz is an idle beach and college town in the winter with a portion of the population coming "over the hill" to work in Silicon Valley. In the summer it turns into a traveller's destination that doesn't rid itself of the charm that keeps the year-round folks from leaving every September. Downtown is a strip of 1 and 2 story buildings, the majority of which haven't been renovated in quite some time. It doesn't pretend to be an upscale place. It doesn't try to lure the wealthy to high-priced, vanity shops. It boasts and treasures the locally owned bookstores, unique gift shops, and even a thrift store. The Gap, O'Neil Surf Shop, and Borders Books are avoided by many hoping to keep the locals in business.

I've decided to move here for the summer, primarily to keep some salty wind in my lungs, make sure I get out of the house more, and to see the fabulous Boardwalk Concert Series - Eddie Money is playing! Come on, who'd want to miss that?! :)

I don't think I'll miss the preppiness of Los Gatos, nor the smug doctors driving around my town in their Ferraris. I do think I'll miss the short drive to work