Tromp Blog

Don’t Know Anything: Seven Days of Ventana Zen

View from the bath house at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

A journey to the Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery, the Esselen 'Hand' shelters, and the heart of the dharma in the Ventana Wilderness

A Bouquet of Nature at Russian Ridge

Tidy tips are recognized by their white outer edges.

A "Bouquet of Flowers" hike at Russian Ridge includes spring wildflowers, birds, butterflies and all the best parts of nature.

Footdown Showdown

How slow can you go without putting your .... yeah, you get it. Hilltromper photo.

A hilarious tournament at the 2015 SC Mountain Bike Festival not of races or big air, but of the finer, subtler arts of mountain biking—the kind of pointless activity people just instinctively practice when they're on their bikes and killing time.

Wild Coast Whomp

Mad genius Gary Hogue with his George Greenough-inspired designs at the Wild Coast Whomp .

It is early in the morning of a cold spring day at Waddell Beach near the Santa Cruz-San Mateo County Line. The waves are marginal. The wind is already beginning to whip and snap the coast. And thanks to long overdue upwelling, the water is skull-cracking cold. Heinous conditions for a surf event, but this isn’t really a surf event. It’s the Wild Coast Whomp.

Pumped at the Pump Track

A bunch of smiling PVHS kids at the pump track. There is no pump track in South County. Not yet. Dave Robinson photo.

Tawn Kennedy of Greenways to School has organized a group of eleven students from Pajaro Valley High School to ride the City of Santa Cruz’s pump track on the Westside. The goal is obvious: We all want the kids in South County to have more riding opportunities.

The Outdoor Poet: David Allen Sullivan

The Santa Cruz resident and editor of the Porter Gulch Review meets a fellow creature on a morning run.

The Kindness of Other Creatures

Miller in his element: entertaining a crowd of young ladies. Photo courtesy Lindsay Overton.

Can a horse sense human pain? In the case of Miller, one of the equine citizens of Henry Cowell State Park, it seems the answer is yes.

My Ride to the EcoFarm Conference

Ken Foster by his beloved Monterey Bay.

Feb. 23, 2015—Just over one month ago, Jan. 20, 2015, marked a unique and unlikely achievement—my fifteenth annual bicycle ride from my hometown of Santa Cruz to the annual Eco Farm Conference, at the Asilomar conference grounds in Pacific Grove—about 60 miles round-trip. That constitutes more than 200 hours of ride time and a total of 1,800 miles.

No Left Turn Unstoned in La Honda

Ken Kesey's infamous house today.

The rolling grasslands of La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve are like a sublime hallucination this time of year; their contours, a sensuous geometry. A breeze sweeps through the clearing and the lush green shivers with life. The velvety slopes make me want to strip off my clothes and perform wild, flailing somersaults down the hill.

In Love With A Santa Cruz Bantam

Mm-mmm. The Bantam's 5" of travel make for "almost laughably easy" ride over Wilder ruts.

"The geometry and controls of the Santa Cruz Bantam are such that I was able to forget I was on a bike, and left me feeling like I was skipping along the road super-fast without any effort. I know that sounds cheesy."

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