The Bay Area freelance writer began his classes Sunday at the top of Kilauea volcano, which Milano visited with Ken Rubin, a volcanology professor with the University of Hawaii. And Tuesday the 29-year old was at Cowell Beach, where he learned about the physics of longboarding from UC Santa Cruz Surfing Professor Ed Guzman.

"What stands up must fall down," Milano concluded.

Milano is the student/correspondent of Excape 101, a web-surfing contest and unabashed media event sponsored by Excite, and Internet search engine.

Those interested in playing can sign up at http://excape.excite.com and then try to deduce, in the spirit of "Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego," which university Milano is currently attending in his cross-country pursuit of an education. In fact, the creator of the SanDiego PC game and CD-ROM helped to design Excape.

"This is my dream come true," said Milano, wearing black-and-blue O'Neil wetsuit and standing on the cool morning beach. His dark-brown hair was wet, matted and full of sand. In the background, about 20 surfers straddled their longboards int the gray ocean. Mike Cerre, editorial director of Excape, joined Milano on the beach. Cerre is a former correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America, and his company, GLOBE TV, is producing the game for the web. Statistics show the Internet is a good place to reach the collegiate set, he said.

"Ninety-four percent of students are using the web," he said, noting that web surfing is more popular than partying on American campuses - 74 percent surf the web while just 72 percent party, according to a survey by Student Monitor.

He held a small video camera, which will be used to upload images of Milano's surfing studies onto the web site, which also includes travel notes and not-so-sneaky clues - for example, a UC Santa Cruz banana-slug logo, names like Surf City and Steamer Lane, as well as other coy toponymy.

Producers of Excape say the event aims to help people improve their skills at navigating the Web for research.

Most pages at this site are linked to advertising.

Milano is headed next to Las Vegas for a math course. He said he will eventually satisfy his performance arts "requirements" under a circus tent and his history requirement in an all-say session on the blues.

Hints for connecting these to the appropriate university will eventually be posted on the web site.

On the beach, however, everything appeared far from cyberspace. John Male, 21, is a UCSC student who now works for Guzman. He took the surfing class last year and is now a surfing devotee.