06.09.06
“Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place, such a lovely face. Plenty of room at the Hotel California, any time of year, you can find it here…” The Eagles
So here we were on the road again. This time we were in a vehicle and were actually looking for a place to settle down. Our friends wanted to find a house with us somewhere on the northern California coast, but where? We cruised around up and down the coast looking at different communities and ended up in Santa Cruz. This was the place for us. Our friends didn’t want to rush into anything, so we headed out to Big Sur. We camped for a couple of nights but, having been warned by the Rangers about wild boars and being soaked by the rain, decided to move on. We camped another night in the redwoods and were awakened in the middle of the night by grunting and snorting sounds. I was convinced it was the wild boars. I kept trying to get X to go out and see. He wisely refused. I didn’t sleep all night. In the morning, we asked the Park Ranger about it. He laughed and told us that it was probably raccoons. The boars weren’t in that area, but raccoons make horrible and scary sounds when they’re rooting around at night. I felt very foolish, but relieved and even more anxious to be settled. I’d had enough of transience for a while. That day, on the road, our friends’ car broke down. They decided that without a car, they didn’t really want to stay in California after all. Their families sent them airfare, and they took off. We went back to Santa Cruz, which was then the murder capital of the world though we didn’t know that at the time. We did notice that there was an awful lot of missing person posters up all over town. Pretty early on we found out that the nearby mountains had become a stronghold for various cults. Rumors ran rampant about child sacrifices, weird ceremonies involving young women, cannibalism, etc. I decided I just wouldn’t walk around alone at night and probably not go camping in those mountains any time soon. I had to admit, there were some pretty creepy people in town. There were also some of the coolest people I had ever met. Soon after we arrived, I found out that one of my older cousins was living there. I went looking for him, but missed him by a couple of days. Not long after that, X and I were walking in downtown Santa Cruz, which was a pedestrian mall, and heard a very unique raspy voice, then the sound of a harmonica. There was a man we had picked up hitchhiking in the late fall, just before we took off on the road. We had put him up for the night and given him gloves and a hat. He wasn’t really dressed for the weather and hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. It was the least we could do. Suddenly, there he was. He recognized us at once. We jammed on the street a little while, then we moved along. We never saw him again. Another day, I turned a corner, and there was Arlo Guthrie playing on the street. What a wonderful place. I was home.