From Santa Cruz

Greetings from Santa Cruz, where I am posting this from a coffee joint that is an alternative to Starbuck’s and has free wi-fi. I have been camping at state parks since spending two nights and a full day in San Diego. Not exactly camping there, I stayed in a nice, clean bed and breakfast called Balboa Park Inn. It is right on Park Blvd, and you can walk into and all around Balboa Park, one of the nation’s finest pieces of urban community based planning and one of the most beautiful urban parks in the continent. I can think of none better that I have visited with the exception of Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. I spent my Memorial Day hoofing it all around B.P., going to some of the museums and exhibits but mostly watching people and chatting some of them up. I walked by something called the World Beat Cultural Center and of course I will dive head first into any structure so named and decorated. It is an African-American heritage educational and arts center that features a lot of drumming, dance, Reggae and aftro-pop music shows and instruction. Flyers indicated that Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, the best known and possibly best rhythm section (drums and bass) in Jamaican roots reggae music, are actually going to perform in this little place, on this little stage….such is its significance to the San Diego world beat scene. Far out! I thought. But alas, I’ll be much further north on the Salmon River on that date. Fortunately they are also on the bill for the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, and if all goes as planned, I’ll get to see them there. I literally walked myself to oblivion on this gorgeous, sunny day of perfect temperature—when the clouds blew over you needed a sweater, but when the sun came out it was a perfect, bright, breezy seventy degrees. Such flowers, everything in bloom—Birds of Paradise, Hibiscus, all manner of flowers; man it’s the perfect climate with the best weather on most days of the year, of any place I have lived or visited (I was stationed here in the USMC in 1977).

Having pleasantly exhausted myself but still not seeing near enough of the stuff you can do in S.D., I returned to my room and started writing this post when I was interrupted by one after another after another Skype call. Video calls, cool! And they’re absolutely free, for as long as you want to talk and look. It is very nice to get to see Tommie while I’m talking to her. When I was a kid we used to watch Dick Tracey on Saturday morning cartoons. I remember Dick Tracy and all his fellow cops had two-way wrist radios, with screens that showed the other guy’s face, and they used to talk into those things. I really wanted one of those bad, and I was pissed that they hadn’t been invented yet. Well, now I’ve got the equivalent of my two way, video wrist walkie talkie, just like Dick Tracy. I only had to wait 40 years. As Gomer Pyle used to say, “Lord, what’ll they think of next?” So, those of you with web cams and Skype accounts, we can communicate face to face, wherever I can get to wi-fi. My Skype name is B. A. Pierson. Isn’t that cute?

The beach is beautiful, the weather is fine and is expected to be for the next few days. For dinner this evening I made a very fine pasta primavera for one, using all dried ingredients I am carrying with me that do not spoil. I had some elbow macaroni, some dried shitake mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, a small can of sliced black olives, olive oil (of course), dried sliced garlic, dried onion flakes, and a few squirts of squeeze tube tomato paste. Cooked on two propane burners on the tailgate of my pickup truck, while I sipped a nice cheap Chianti and watched the sun begin to set over the Santa Monica mountains. With dishes wiped clean and put away, food box stored under the truck to discourage camp robbers, I reclined under the camper shell and wrote most of this message to you. Then I plugged in my headphones and listened, for as long as I remained awake, to my the Dead’s two shows at Shoreline, San Francisco, May 10 and 14. I was there for the first one (did I mention that?) In the old days, I used to take a pen and paper into the concert grounds with me so I could write down each song, recording the set lists, as it were. Now, you can pre-pay and pick up your CD immediately after the show. Or, if you’re willing to wait a few days, download it as I did. The times, children, they are still a-changin’.

The last three nights have been spent at State Beaches along the beautiful coastline, which by the time I am finished, I will have covered all of it. Tonight I’ll be at another little state beach park called McKerricher, near the little berg of Fort Bragg. Tomorrow night I am due for the introductory dinner at Otter Bar Kayak School at Forks of Salmon.

And, as Father Guido Sarducci used to always say, “It’s been more than wonderful chatting with-a you. Arivaderci, America.”