Home of the Banana Slugs

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On Thursday, our ministry staff took a road trip to Santa Cruz. We had an agenda for the day that included prayer, meditation, sharing of dreams & visiting a church. But my main goal was to spend some time together in a way that is outside the normal parameters of the church building, ministry & the like. There's nothing like a road trip to bring people together.

So Doug, Sandra & I head out early Thursday morning. It's a 3-hour drive, so we left about 6:00 am. After finally getting some coffee in Los Banos, I started to wake up -- good thing, since I was driving. When we got to Gilroy of garlic fame, we had two choices of how to proceed to Santa Cruz. (1) The Google directions I printed looped us around to the south toward Monterrey and back up. (2) The GPS in our car wanted us to go north toward San Jose and then back down. I'm unsure as to which path we should believe. At this point Doug spoke up that one way to Santa Cruz is incredibly curvy & we should avoid that. He consulted the map and suggested we actually try (3) a third route not suggested by Google or my GPS. So I agreed and we took the 152 straight ahead to Santa Cruz.

At this point my GPS began to protest and told us to turn around. Finally after 3-4 miles, it acquiesced and let us go straight along the 152. We should have taken the hint from this.

Turns out that the 152 IS THE CURVY route. Sandra nearly lost it on the way up and down the switchbacks, and she was strangely silent for quite some time thereafter. I don't think she'll soon let us forget that one.

Our first stop was on the campus of UC-Santa Cruz. I had no idea what an idyllic campus it is. They have a beautiful setting on the wooded hills above the coast. Picture Pepperdine with lush forests. That's UCSC. Anyone know the nickname of UC-Santa Cruz? They're the Banana Slugs. Their cheer is "Peace, Love ... Go Slugs!" That's the California everyone always warned me about! :-)

Comments

Generous Kitchen said…
I would comment here, but I'm still not speaking to either one of you! Talk about a bonding experience! I'm driving next time.
September 1, 2009 at 8:58 PM
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