In high school, I went to a math competition in Boston, put on by Harvard and MIT. One of my teammates was Frank Fan, who is a current student at Stanford. He came with me today.
First, we went up into the hills on a fairly windy road (Page Mill), took route 9 South to Big Basin Redwood National Forest, and took a short detour through there. That was fun. Imagine a road with no straight sections for more than 40 feet, that makes turns that travel up to 150 degrees at a time, and is just barely wide enough for two cars to pass without touching mirrors (in most parts). Now stick the biggest trees you've ever seen on all sides. It's okay if you can't imagine it, because I (will soon) have (a few) (badly taken) pictures. Praise to Frank for having a camera. Now remember I'm in a massive Chevy Silverado, that I'm not quite (but quickly getting, out of necessity) used to.
Once we got out of that, we kept driving south on Highway 1 (the not-so-pretty part; don't worry, we'll get there eventually) from Santa Cruz, around Monterey Bay, to Monterey and Carmel. The only thing to note in this section of the road was something we found, called "Pot Stop." Aside from its palindromic nature, it wasn't nearly as cool as the average college student would expect. We got pictures anyway (soon to come).
Monterey was pretty boring. What we saw of it (maybe we missed the cool part?) was yet another boring, touristy fishing village where every damn restaurant has the best clam chowder in a bread bowl that you can find anywhere in this arm of the Milky Way. After being stopped by a hobo that, contrary to what previous experience would indicate, wanted me to play him some music on his guitar, we left quickly.
Continuing further South on Highway 1 (it sounds so epic!), I made an erroneous assumption that, if there is one lane going straight and two going left, and more cars are going left, then there must be more interesting things to the left. We went left. For a long time. Saw some nice scenery, but realized eventually that we were going to Carmel Village, not the fabled Carmel itself, and that Carmel Village was full of great wines (that neither of us could purchase yet). We did get some dry ice at a gas station, before heading back to Highway 1, and again turning South, this time, to Carmel.
We walked around for a good bit there. There are tons of shops in Carmel (but frighteningly few good-looking restaurants). We found a Sharper Image, and had to take a look (to see if it was cooler in California), but it was mostly the same, except for one thing --- I feel the need to emphasize this a bit: Sharper Image sells something called "Trump Steaks." Well, it's more like TRUMP STEAKS the way they package it, but the fact remains that it had an entire poster, table, and TV looping a video of Trump directly selling you his Trump Steaks, for prices up to $999 (it was for a large number of steaks at once, don't worry). For a long time, we couldn't figure out how The Donald thought he was going to make any money; after all, there's a fairly small amount of meat on the guy, and I don't think it was even enough for the $999 package. Eventually, we decided he must have the secret to cloning. Anyway, back to the show --- we only visited one other store of importance, which was a cigar shop. Stupidly, we left without asking what time he closed, thinking we'd come back eventually, but when we did, guess what --- he was closed. We left Carmel.
Driving back up the Monterey Bay coastline (sort of --- the road isn't that close for most of it), it took a long time, but eventually we got to Santa Cruz. We found a decent restaurant (guided by a hunt for steaks, as those Trump Steaks had us pretty hungry) and ate. The best part about Santa Cruz is that we saw a bumper sticker claiming that we should "Keep Santa Cruz Weird," which apparently was the guiding philosophy of the whole town. Man, was it weird. Lots of hippies playing music in the streets. Cool, but sort of uncomfortable to walk by that many people asking for money. We found another cigar shop, but it was closed also, which made us sad.
We left Santa Cruz, and it was starting to get a bit late, so we quickly designed an algorithm to get back to Stanford, and followed it North on Highway 1 past where we had originally met it. This part of the road is very pretty, but it was getting pretty dark by that point. I took a few pictures, but they didn't come out very good. I also got to touch the Pacific Ocean for the first time, which was cool, and I still think I have a few grains of sand stuck to my feet as I type this now. It made me feel a powerful, fundamental need for a guitar and firewood and a tent. Maybe later.
We found the road we needed (Route 84), and followed it back over the mountains. This road wasn't quite as windy as our route South, but it was pretty close for about 7 miles, and it was pitch black at this point. For some reason, I actually ended up having a lot of fun driving along it this time, and in retrospect, I probably went a bit faster than Frank would have preferred. Oh well. We got back to Stanford eventually, played with the dry ice a bit, and I came back here.
I have to get up tomorrow to pay some people and switch cars, and then be at Google by 10. Wish me luck.
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