Santa Barbara – New Year’s Eve
We’ve both decided that Santa Barbara is at the top of our list of favorite places we’ve seen on this trip. Indeed, that’s why we returned here; for another look. San Luis Obispo, Port Townsend and Vancouver, B.C. have been major favorites as well.
But, for beauty, weather and an optimal size, it would be very hard to beat Santa Barbara.
This morning, we drove downtown and parked the car and went looking for coffee and a bagel, hopefully, at a sidewalk cafe in the sun. We we’re disappointed. We found one right on State Street that was a beautiful white tablecloth affair. We enjoyed our coffee and bagels in a leisurely manner and took a few photos; one of which I posted on Facebook.
Then we walked down State Street all the way to the harbor where we hadn’t been before. It was quite beautiful. The morning’s fog had just receded offshore and half the pier was still enclosed in it’s shroud. We walked out and were there when the pier came free and the sunlight poured in. ‘Now’ the meditator reminds him or herself. ‘Now’ the beauty of the morning said so very unmistakably.
More walking to the west along the shore until we came to the old harbor, the boat moorings and a museum. A really nice fellow manning the 4th floor observation platform of the museum talked to us and told us about the local area and what we might want to see.
He suggested that we drive the ridge top road above Santa Barbara. Looking up at the crystal clear mountains in the morning’s sunlight, it seemed like a most excellent idea.
We took a tourist electric bus back to where our car was parked and Colette found the American’s seated around us on the bus most interesting. One couple bickered about shopping utterly unconscious of the rest of us. Then the woman of this couple set eye’s on a shirt another woman on the other side of me was wearing and she said that she liked it and these two groups. who didn’t know each other, started up an animated discussion about the shirt, about “Hello Kitty” and the Simpson’s TV show and various other things.
Later, after we were off the bus, Colette laughed and told me that all of these semi-loud and quite unconscious ‘being out there’ behaviors we’d witnessed is exactly the image most New Zealanders (and probably other countys as well) would have of how the archetypical American is in the world. I laughed as well. It is so interesting and fun to see yourself through other’s eyes.
We drove to Gelson’s Market (same chain as the one we visited our first day in Los Angeles) on State Street and got some coffee and boxed Sushi and snarfed it and then drove up to the ridge route road.
A beautiful drive and awesome drive. Perhaps 10 miles or so along the ridge top of the world looking down on one side to the immense sea (mostly covered with fog to the shoreline) and the Channel Islands rising up through it in the far distance. And, on the other side, the canyons behind the ridge. Canyons that stretched for miles and miles.
We got down just as dusk was beginning and are now here at our motel writing and preparing to got out for another look at Santa Barbara and a light meal.
This is a beautiful and fitting last day to the year 2011. It’s been a hard year for me in many ways. My marriage of 20 years ended, my apartment lost in the February quake and a problem with my heart in June to remind of my mortality and how short life might be and how much I still want to do.
Wake up, my friends. Every moment is precious and if you sleep it all away buried in jobs and mortgages chasing the illusive dream of an ultimately unobtainable security, you will have no one to blame but yourselves when they bury you with your dreams unfulfilled and give all the money you saved for your ‘security’ to those who will not appreciate what it took you to save it.
dennis