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Childhood: Let’s go back to two weeks ago, when I was at my mom’s house in Aptos to hang with extended family on the sands of Capitola and golf courses of Santa Cruz. We decided to make last year the final year of the Big D Memorial Tournament that we hosted in my dad’s memory since 2014. That grew to be a much larger event than we ever imagined, raising tens of thousands of dollars for First Tee Silicon Valley youth golfers who needed financial help for college. And it also became a lot of work.
But my family’s gathering in Capitola is a summer tradition that predates me, so we kept the spirit alive by throwing a more casual Big D Golf Week instead, playing Seascape and DeLaveaga with close family and friends. We also took out one of those orange boats off the wharf to fish one day, which we used to do as kids with my uncle.
The culinary highlight was Capitola’s El Toro Bravo, which was damaged in a gas line explosion that blew up the back of its building on Christmas morning of 2024. It finally reopened this past January, so this summer marked my triumphant return…