Santa Barbara Motorcycle Trip

A five day trip from San Francisco down to Santa Barbara and back went amazingly well as the weather cooperated a great deal. Derek and I left on Friday the 11th and drove down Highway 1 all the way to first night's stop of Morro Bay, then down to the Blake's house in Santa Barbara's Hope Ranch. Two nights there and then up to San Luis Obispo and the Madonna Inn for one night. All would have been ideal except for electrical problems with Derek's R100GS that eventually cut our ride short on the way home just north of Paso Robles. I'm now getting to be an expert on "diode boards" and "voltage regulators" (just kidding) as seen below...


This setback was not a total disaster since motos go inside of U-Hauls pretty easily and we got back to the Bay Area Tuesday night at 9:30p.

Click below to see the 40 photos from the trip.

Santa Barbara Moto Trip

One of the funnier anectodes is from Monday morning -- while wandering on State St. in Santa Barbara Derek and I went into Sur La Table. We were just about to transact at the counter when a man bustled into the store and made a beeline to the sales assistant -- a nice young lady who looked completely nonplussed by his request-- "excuse me, can I use your phone for an emergency?" she agreed and he then made a call and said

"yeah man, the rat got loose from my pocket in the car and he's missing... i gotta find him -- can you meet me at the corner?"

he then promptly hung up, thanked the young woman and ran out of the store. I made a mental note that this must happen all the time and what a curious phenomenon. Seconds later Derek remarked to me

"no way, there's a cat riding by the window on the back of a dog".

Somehow that didn't really register until I turned to see it for myself. Today I was told this guy is famous and to look at YOUTUBE to see more. So here's Gregory's story about his animal pyramid: