One of my earliest memories of the word “escape” is from the 1979 song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes. It was one of the songs on my parents’ Billboard Top Hits from the 60s, 70s, and 80s CD set. They listened to a couple CDs more frequently than the others (i.e. the CD with “Escape” on it), so the young sponge of my brain inevitably absorbed these lyrics over time.
I listened to this song again as I walked home from work last week, and lo and behold, I could still sing about 80% of the lyrics from memory. My younger self definitely had no idea what this song was actually about because she thought that the singer liked “being a colada,” though she did know what it meant to “have half a brain.”
It was only during this recent mental sing-along that adult me finally (re-)learned all the correct lyrics and realized the song’s happy ending: The woman the singer arranged to meet at a bar through his paper’s personal ads is actually his current partner, and the two continue their relationship together (“…come with me, then escape.”).
My weekend was, in a way, like this song.
I did not respond to a personal ad on Craigslist, but I did go to Santa Cruz with my current partner and rediscover many shared states of happiness—food, travel, nature, fun, and escape—largely without the noise of social media, apps, or emails keeping us tethered to our phones.
This week, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves because after several hours of trying to write out my happy, peaceful emotions from this weekend, I’m finding that the photos speak better than my words seem to.
Note: We stayed in Bonny Doon, a couple miles away from UC Santa Cruz, and our short, but tasty travel itinerary included
- Harley Goat Farm
- Swanton Berry Farm
- Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (“…in the warm California sun. Boardwalk!”).
Courtney Cheng 
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