The trip to Santa Cruz, would become, for me, most memorable, not for the sights along the way, which when one travels Cabrillo Hwy, or route 1, there are many sites to behold….
No, for me, the reason was much more sinister….
The wind!
I never had to pedal downhill before, I never had to pedal downhill in a rain so driving and so bitterly cold that I actually begin to yell, outloud at the elements and god. Thankfully at one point I just started laughing at myself, but goodness, I have it in my mind to save the world, and yet, throw a little cold water at me, and I come undone=)
I had the honro of being able to volunteer at the Santa Cruz bike church and at thier bike valet at the farmers market. It was so nice, they are one fo the three bike co-ops that was stoked to meet me, Bike Church Santa Cruz, Columbus, Kentucky – lexington. Most of the bike co-ops usually just brush me off or never answer my requests to work with them…. Interesting, no matter what the angle to bring people together (in this case, bicycle cooperatives), within that angle, there will be dissenting thought which drives the angle to further drive people apart instead of bringing them together as it is meant to…. USUALLY this is in direct proportion to the amount of systems/bureaucracy in place and how cool they try to percieve themselves. For instance, bike co-op at UC Moneterey Bay, the gentleman listened to me and what i needed to do and then said he would not allow me to use his cone wrench as it is a liability to the school. My freind, people like you are a liability to humanity, cut your hair, you are not a real hippy.
One last on the Bike Church Santa Cruz, they have the smoothest pictorial on their workers.
I was taken to a Wednesdays meditation – http://www.charityfocus.org/new/, fantastic. There were roughly 60 people gathered in a wonderful home, full of good energy. We meditated in silence for an hour and then spoke about the theme of the week, “Giving and recieving”. Very eye opening, very real, profoundly happy i was able to spend time in such light. Oh, of course, once we were at an end of our insights and sharing with others, everyone was served a WONDERFUL home cooked meal. We rounded out the night by stuffing envelopes with “pay it forward” smiley face business cards and sending them all over the world.
A few nights later I would find myself “Dumpster Diving”. The actual event and the name, over time have become disconnected. Once, you used to have to literally get into a dumpster to find things of questionable integrity. NOW, there is such a glut in food production and so many wierd rules and laws, that you need only walk around to the dumpster area and you may be met with such a plethora of food, you think you are at a delivery station for the supermarket. Pallets of food where you have a grape in a bag that has mold. One grape and the bag is cast aside. So much food, more than three people in their prime could carry. but you dont read this to know that we are the most wasteful civilization to date historically, no, you read this for the twist.
We were seen saving food from a demise. This brought out the angriest of the safeway (notice, you are not capitalized!) workers who initially tried to threaten and scare us. Thank you god for making me a peaceful man of late. i have never wanted to teach a hard lesson so badly to someone.
We left without incident to the taunts and threats of morons, oh my, I judge, my apologies.
One of the safeway minions decided they should follow us. At this point I was fuming, not really fuming so much as just pissed at this society. I got out of the truck with a friend and went to begin my teaching of proper ethics to whomever was in the car, i got 5 feet from it and had to let go of being right. To my right a police car arrived. of course, it even rolled up with all of it’s lights off, now, enter sketched out Chris…
The cops turned out to be super cool, waaaaay beyond cool. You know, Pittsburg, Evansville and now Santa Cruz, thank you John Q for being cool every time!
The moron from safeway, well, brother, think more, you didnt get what you wanted which was, what, getting some hippies busted for removing your trash, what the hell, you wierd sick puppy, and on top of it, you followed me with your own car, dude, I know where you work and what car you drive…. people, really, you expect us to make it another 100 years with people like this…. All modern science has done for the most part has been to make the most able bodied of us on the same breakneck course to species extinction as the morons. Sorry, I digress.
My last day in santa Cruz I was given the opportunity for 2 things. The first was to dine at the Karma Kitchen. The idea is you eat a meal of world class proportion, from the ingredients to the taste to the endless supply, eat until you are sated, mango lassi’s, chai tea, or sparkling natural lemonade, amazing desserts, vegetarian and vegan……. You eat a veritable cornucopia of food and are a presented a bill of………….0.00.
You see, someone from the week earlier paid for you. now, you will pay for someone to come in the week to come. Its been going for over three years now!
My next stop on this fine Sunday was the Karma clinic where I was allowed to practice my cranio-sacral on people. There were 4 practitioners from Psychic healing to Thai bodywork. So good to really get back into that kind of atmosphere, the focus, intention….
I was thinking about how my medicine was coming along and if I was following what i had set out to do, so, I took an inventory of what i was carrying to augment what i know. I am happy to say I am on track, here is what is in the kit: dang gui si ni teapills, jiogulan, maca, sea salt nut yeast, protein powder, green powder, amino profile, albizzia calm – mimosa, herb of happinessionic minerals from great salt lake, kava tincture, passionmoon potions healing ninja balm, lipbalm, moxa, and of course -needles=)
I am now in Seaside, staying with a friend, laughing on the inside about the dude at the Monterey Campus bike co-op, laughing at us as a species. I looked through a book on tigers this morning, section on humans hunting them through the ages was very interesting…. makes me wish I was a tiger=)
Aloha!
The Vegan Ninja 