On Saturday morning I got up at 5:00 am. My friends Mike and Kerry wanted to go to Santa Cruz to buy snowboards at the Santa Cruz board factory sale. The sale started at 8, but Mike wanted to get there early so he didn’t miss the good stuff. That meant we were going to leave at 6. With about a 20 minutes of driving between Mike and I, that meant I was up at 5.
We got down to the location by about 7 am, and were pretty much the first people there. So Mike and I walked around the area. I snapped this photo of a local auto shop. 
It was a nice morning, but getting up that early really messes with you. I got a $2.50 muffin at a local shop to tie me over till the sale was done. I didn’t really need to buy anything. I’m quite happy with my equipment, and my board, while it is about 10 years old, has barely been used. However, me being the only one with a decent amount of snowboarding experience, I was asked to consult on a whole manor of things I didn’t know about. Quality and size of a board, amount of flex, width, etc. I did my best, and everyone walked out with a decent board. The only problem was that there were four of us in one car and we had to put down half of the back seats in order to fit anything in. So Kerry’s former roommate Steph and I had to cram into the back seats together. Being as we were the smallest in the car, this made sense, but was still not comfy.
After the board shop, it was decided that we would go to the Mystery Spot, but everyone was hungry so we ate first. Some little breakfast place in down town Santa Cruz. Steph sniped the bill, so I’m rather upset that I didn’t get her back yet. I hate owing people favors. 
This was followed by a trip to the Mystery Spot, and while I wasn’t happy about spending my last $5 on a ticket to something I thought was a hoax, I was able to snag my photo of the day there. This place, for those of you who have never been, is simply a bunch of theories about a magical hill in Santa Cruz. While the perception distortion was actually a little interesting, I felt like most of what they showed us could easily have been explained with basic physics. I think it would have been really fun to go to as a kid, but I thought I was just too old and too scientific to really enjoy the place. I might also have been too tired.
The day ended with a trip to Mel Cotton’s to look for boots and other various pieces of snowboarding attire. Again, I’m living on a budget so I didn’t buy anything, but it was still fun. Lunch was amazing sushi at a place called Sushi-O-Sushi. Found my new favorite roll ever, Tempurized Alaskan Role.