A few weekends ago Marco and I went to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and also the Gap, and Starbucks, and Peet’s Coffee. At the SCBB, we procured and ingested: funnel cake, vanilla soft-serve cone dipped in chocolate, green apple slices with side-vat of caramel dipping sauce, taffy samples, and one piece each of chocolate-dipped honeycombed crumble. Real food was also consumed, in the form of a mysterious molten chicken-and-cheddar goulash obtained at a restaurant on the pier which appeared, like that child-run planet in the original Star Trek, to be owned and operated only by teens, teens with artfully articulated hair. (Best overheard, from a young woman whose street-speak flash cards appeared to have not entirely taken hold: “When did your bike get stol-JACKED?”)
On the way out of town we stopped at the world’s best gas station, with flame-detail-painted pumps, free soda with fill-up, and face-hole photo-op surfer + bikini-clad beach girl + dog painting. It was so good, Marco’s truck didn’t at all want to leave, and it took maybe 200 clutch pumps, accompanied by my rousing “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” twanged in time with the stomping, before the truck gave in and got going.
Additionally: I have a magnificent sandal tan, and BOTH Whack-a-Mole and Ms. Pacman ate our quarters.
