Day 4
Even shorter.

Having concluded the first quarter of the trip, I moved on to the next leg. Santa Barbara. I have to say that one of the biggest headaches of this trip was how I was bound by other people's schedules. For example, the original plan was going to be driving up to Morgan Hill from LA, then Santa Barbara after the wedding. A flight to Amsterdam and my cousin's odd schedule, where he'd be driving California in the opposite direction, put that plan to waste. So there I found myself, making the best of it.

It's only a two hour drive from LA to Santa Barbara, but I took it very leisurely. It was unfortunately cloudy for most of the trip, and though I stopped for pictures on numerous occasions, there's little there to see from my pictures, but rocks and water 1, 2, 3. When the top interesting picture is discovering a defrocked What-A-Burger in Oxnard, you can tell I'm struggling.

Utrecht will not be undersold, that's important to know. (I told you it was an underrated treaty.)

I picked up BP at her apartment, and we visited the pier before stopping for dinner (I screwed up and forgot my camera in the car). After dinner we drove up to the mission, and she helped me get a nice picture of the mission, which seemed to remind me of the cover of Hotel California.

Day 5.
Amsterdam was driving me nuts, and that's all I'll say on the matter. I spent the morning at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. 1,2 It was good exercise for me, and I got a few ideas for things to grow in the garden (specifically something called hummingbird sage, which would kill two of my problems at once.) From there I took a walk back down the pier 1,2,3, snagged a fish taco (boosting my animals devoured in taco form count to 4 on the trip), then went over to the art museum. Santa Barbara's art museum is nice enough, but it's not going to earn me any points anytime soon. Once BP was done with work, we headed over to her favorite barbeque place, where she introduced me to buffalo ribs (not buffalo wing flavored ribs, but actual bison.) We then went out to a film, and I've got to say, there's something in being the perfect audience for Troy (to mock it anyway).

Day 6
Because of the oddities of the wedding, I needed to be in Morgan Hill at 11AM the next day, so I couldn't stay another night in Santa Barbara, but I didn't need to push anything on my way up. Lacking a better plan, a slow run up the 1 was in order. I started heading up around 11, and by noon I had passed San Simeon, and had pulled off for some pictures. I lucked out. It was seal season, and so I got some shots of the seals laying out in the sun. I didn't manage to capture the sound they make. The best approximation I can give you is to take a stuck drain, unclog it slightly, then repeatedly breathe in through your nose while your sinus is clogged. That's about the noise mix you're talking about with the seals. On the other side of the dunes, the big attractions were the squirrels. I have to say that that is one incredibly fat squirrel.

All things being equal, I probably shouldn't have done the 1. There's something inherently fraught about combining me driving alone, while at the same time trying to take pictures out the side window, on a nice twisting turning road with little to no margin for error. That I didn't wreck the car is a major tribute to something.

The one bad spot of this section was the tourist trap. Just as I passed a gas station and lodge, I heard the low gas bell. Knowing I had about 20 miles, and noticing I had no way to turn around, I carried on for 8 more miles, and pulled into the tourist trap. I caught them before they tried to fill me up at $3.49/gal. but I needed 5 bucks worth if I wanted out of the forest. The irony is of course, the gas prices outside of this weren't insane at any other point in the trip. Since I also hadn't eaten, I got nailed by a $1.50 Coke can, and $1.99 Doritos. Admittedly, the Ranchero Doritos were good, and not available in PA.

I ended up hitting Monterey around 3:30, too late for either of my two options there, the aquarium or the wharf(Cannery Row). Failing that I finally had lunch. I decided I needed to check out the local chains, and ended up at a Jack In The Box. All right, but nothing special. Free from the wild ride, I sat staring out at the parking lot and the trees bounding it. It got me thinking about the highway system, and how unexpected/wideranging/pervasive (choose your own connotation) its influence is. The trees were selected to go there because they'd fit parameters sufficient to survive and look correct by the highway. The food I was eating was standardized because people expect that standardization as they travel. The vacation I was on would not have been possible without the roads, and the people I was seeing wouldn't have been out there because they wouldn't have had the mobility. In short, everything I surveyed was a product of the road. Heady stuff, and I didn't even need a shake.

I holed up at a hotel, a nice enough one, finding myself tired and more than willing to crash hard. As a bonus, they were having a wine tasting of the local product. Not bad. I thought I'd have a shot at wireless, but no dice. After a late night run for takeout dinner, I crashed. Tomorrow, I had a rehearsal to make.