Santa Cruz Retreat and Surfers

I attended a weekend retreat in Santa Cruz, held in a remodeled former convent still operated by nuns. I stayed there once before in the 90s, when it was still an operating convent. Then I had a tiny room with a single bed, a cross on the wall and a bathroom down the hall. This time I had my own bath and a nice big bed and the nuns were wearing Bermuda shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops.

The retreat center is located on a bluff above the ocean, with stairs leading down to the beach. The weather was sunny but windy. The ocean is cold in Northern California so surfers always wear wetsuits. They’re not easy to put on so the guys in the sketch helped each other get into them. When I went through scuba certification many years ago, the hardest part of the whole program was getting into the darn wetsuits.