[berkeley]

My Amazing Saturday
began at 5:11am. I drove to Berkeley listening to my MD and got to Victor's house. We listened to Harry Potter while driving to San Jose, stopped by La Victoria for a breakfast burrito and headed to Gill's (former member of the US Marine Corps, and just got honorably discharged 11 days before his unit was sent to Kuwait).

Straight to Sta. Cruz to go spelunking. Believe it. I went crawling around under the earth, i fell on my ass, got muddy, and no one can take that away from me. Then hiking, washing hands in a beautiful stream. All this before 11:00am.

And then we chilled at a skate park. Talked to Damian, a 10-year-old sponsored by Counter Culture. He was off the hook. So was his Samoan friend who was a girl. She was amazing. She had the place handled.

We wanted to hang at the beach, but needed to avoid the roaring crowds. Capitola was our target. While there, we stopped by a book sale/yard sale and found amazing books. I filled a banana box with books :: The Little Prince, 1001 Arabian Nights (yes all 1001), The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), Hindsights (Guy Kawasaki), an audio book of Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris), and much much more :: and all for $5. Oh right, that also includes a Donna Summer Live and My Fair Lady LP.

Then to the beach, where we balanced rocks on their tips for a few hours. Balancing rocks? We were inspired by this guy. And we even drew a crowd. We should have put a hat out for money, but we were doing it for fun.

My photographer radar turned on. I sensed good things from a guy with a digital camera who was shooting our stuff. I asked him to email me a few pics, and he offered to send me a disk of our pics in the mail. Awesome.

Victor taught me a little eskrima. He showed me some of the moves that Filipinos used to turn Irish style boxing hands around. (Think the Fighting Irish leprechaun. That's how people used to box before Pinoys came and set them straight. We broke their hands.)