Today was Mike's last day of riding and it was to have a pretty fun ending. He met a lady up in Santa Cruz whom he talked with for 5 minutes and she invited him to stay at her place in Santa Barbara. So we planned to stay at her house that night and coincidentally, Santa Barbara was having their famous solstice festival that day. So we tried to leave pretty early so we could enjoy the festivities.
It was a pretty cool ride today. The day started out with some uphills, peaking over 1,000 ft. The elevation charts are always deceptive, so we weren't quite sure if the uphills would be difficult or not. They ended up being very very low grade climbs for several miles. We honestly had a bit of trouble telling when we were on a climb and when we were on flat ground. We had a very gradual hill at one point and thought that it was the big long descent at the end of the hill, but it wasn't.
Finally our confusion was relieved when we saw a steep grade sign indicating that we had finally made it to the top of the easiest 1,000 foot climb ever. On the downhill we both reached 42mph, which was pretty awesome. The views were beautiful as we passed through canyons and tall, steep mountains. The downhill was awesome, but I did have the self-control to stop for a couple pictures. We got out to the coast and enjoyed a nice tailwind for a long time. The mountains right when we got to the coast reminded me of Boulder.
In Santa Barbara, we passed through UCSB on a bike trail and eventually made it to Camille's house, where we'd be staying that night. The ride went by really fast even though it was about 55 miles. We averaged almost 13mph, which is awesomely fast for us.
Camille left a key for us under a flower pot, so we let ourselves in and helped ourselves to showers and laundry. After just relaxing on her couch for a while, we went down to town to check out the festival. It was pretty crazy. People were everywhere. Many of them were dressed up, hippy style, and tons of people had face paint. There was live music, a dance party, a collection of stands, food, etc. Mike and I were itching for a burrito, so we asked a local for directions to where we could get a burrito since there were none at the park. Just 4 blocks away, awesome. We walked the 4 blocks and didn't see the Chipotle. Kept walking a few more blocks and still didn't see it. Nobody we asked knew where it was really. They just said it's down there a few blocks on this side of the street. So we probably walked about 3/4 of a mile to get there, but we finally did. After walking back to the park, we ate our burritos next to the drum circle (about 30 people banging on drums). Camille called Mike and invited us to come to her friend's party a few blocks away. We went there, met Camille and her friends, and chatted with a few random drunk people. The party was pretty annoying, so we left with Camille and her friends and hung out with them for a little while downtown. They were all really cool. Several years older than me, but very nice. After hanging out with them for a while Mike and I went back to the house and slept soundly on Camille's couches.
I get the feeling we aren't supposed to be going up this ramp.
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