You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The college tour.
Stanford is called the farm.
It is in plush and affluent Palo Alto.
It is green, aristocratic, pompous and drips of intelligence.
Why they use a Christmas tree with Tourette syndrome for a mascot is a curious guess.
Stanford is so smart, even the blind squirrels on campus figure out how to collect nuts and maximize his 401k with the proceeds at the peanut butter shops.
So why all this noise about Stanford?
Well, we are on a vacation with an appellation.
I’ve billed it as the boy’s trip, but it’s really much more
My 16-year-old son and I are visiting colleges and seeing family and friends and driving down the coast.
Does the boy want to go to Stanford?
Who knows? He’s 16. Does he even know what he wants for breakfast?
No.
I’m not about to pepper him with questions about his future at this moment. I am not going to make him take a sample SAT to prove he’s worthy.
It’s suppose to be fun.
So we pose for pictures at the football field and then steer our rental car down hwy 17.
It’s 2:30 on a Saturday, but that doesn’t stop gridlock from rearing its ugly head.
This is California. This state invented traffic.
We slowly trudge forward through the mountains. It’s so slow it is annoying, as we roll over the windy mountain and drop into the seaside town of Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz is just plain weird.
U.C. Santa Cruz’s mascot is Sammy Slug.
Need I say more?
We meet my sister and her kids and grab burgers and beers.
The kids do ice cream sundaes and we sit outside marveling at the bevy of odd that walks by.
There are homeless people playing guitars and hippies selling bongs and tourists in the finest fashions and all manner of humanity in between.
After lunch, we go to the cliffs and watch as surfers drop into the pipe.
We are above them so we can see the swell and the break and their reaction to catch the ride.
It’s a fascinating view.
I just left 98 degree Nashville Tennessee so I’m not embarrassed to say I’m a little chilly as the wind blows in off the Pacific.
The water is a deep blue. It is timeless and deep and resonates in my soul.
We tour UCSC and the boy is yawning.
I don’t care.
We travel to Carmel By the Sea.
This is home.
What more is there to say.
There is no slum. There is no other side of the tracks. There is only affluent and really affluent.
This is, after all, where Clint Eastwood was mayor.
Carmel by the Sea is a story book cottage town on the mighty Pacific ocean.
We enjoy the leisurely pace of timelessness here.
We listen to enchanting wind chimes fueled by a gentle zephyr that pushes in through the Carmel Valley.
Monday we are off and running again.
The boy’s pseudo college road trip continues…
The rental car is juiced and filled with the esoteric tunes of Pandora.
We slide down the 101 through Spreckles and Gonzales and Paso Robles.
We end up in the magnificent seaside mecca of Santa Barbara.
Beach girls and salt air and the cool cool Pacific.
Wow.
We tour UCSB.
The guide is horrible and I can sense I am losing my son’s attention, yet again.
So we drift back, allowing the standardized tour to move forward, and disappear around the corner.
Suddenly our unofficial tour begins to take shape.
A father and son take in the Gaucho nation.
It is surfer girls and beach cruisers and pristine campus architecture.
From Santa Barbara, it’s off to to see another sister in Camarillo.
Dinner and dogs and laughter.
The boy’s trip powers forward Tuesday heading inland for the 1st time.
We end up at America’s Teaching Zoo in Moorepark.
We had no reservation, no schedule, no appointment.
So when we walk into the closed facility, the student zoo keepers could have said “get lost! Scram!”
Instead they said, “Mallory will give you a guided tour for 60 minutes behind the scenes showing you what zoo keepers do.”
Malloy showed us bald eagles and leopards and a lion.
She talked about cleaning the monkey cages and taking care of the tiniest cock roach.
“It’s a 24/7 job,” she will say.
My son is loving it. He is the happiest I have seen him.
“This is the best tour yet,” he will say.
From the zoo we head to Westwood, home of UCLA and the sissy Bruins. I expect to spit on the turf, instead, I am impressed how damned beautiful the campus is.
It is hills and pastoral and collegiate buildings that look like they contain vast amounts of academia.
We take a lap around the college and then fight tooth and nail on the 405 Freeway down to San Diego.
Stop and go.
Diamond lane.
it doesn’t matter what we try. The drive through the South Bay and Orange County is laborious.
Too many cars. Too few lanes.
Finally San Diego.
We stay with a high school buddy and check out UCSD and USD and then we take a 6 hour boat ride in the Pacific Ocean.
That’s spectacular. We motor around Sea World and into the open ocean. We cruise past submarine bases while Navy helicopters fly over our heads. We dock at Joe’s Crab Shack and down a couple of Coronas. It’s 82 degrees without a cloud in the sky.
What a day.
Oh California, how I miss you.
On the return trip, we all get texts telling us that we will need a different calling plan in Mexico.
“I think we crossed into Mexican waters,” my friend says with a smile.
“Huh?”
He points to the brown hills just south of the SD harbor.
“That’s Mexico right there,” he says.
Wow. What a boy’s trip. From Palo Alto in the shadow of Silicone Valley to the international waters of Mexico.
They boy thought it was going to be an educational adventure.
What it turned out to be was a coming of ages story for a father and son.
Life’s Crazy™