San Luis Obispo – Santa Barbara: Intense Heat and Swirling Fog: 2nd November - 6th November

November 14, 2007 by Naomi.

Exciting a place that SLO was, we did not have time to stay there, and after a few chores, left the blistering heat of the town to head towards the coast, where a well-defined, thick, cold fog awaited us once again. Our destination was not decided on our departure, but the fog at Pismo Beach finalised the decision that we would be staying in Santa Maria, a town that supposedly had little going for it and wasn’t in the guidebook, but, being inland, would hopefully have a few more rays of sunshine to offer us. That it did, but not before an unexpected excruciatingly steep hill (only a couple of hundred metres but we still had to stop twice to catch our breath) and thereafter miles and miles of flat agricultural land. The place was a massive sprawl of strip malls and as we had little clue of what lay ahead in terms of food (and we were, as always, very hungry) we made do with a Chinese buffet restaurant which turned out to be excellent value – all you can eat (and the food was very good!) for 10 bucks. The demographics of the population in Santa Maria were a far cry from all the white faces we had seen in SLO and Big Sur; most of the people were Asian or from Central America, and we did not hear very much English spoken at all.

Lots more agricultural land, a very hot sun, various wineries and the return of affluent white Californians accompanied our ride into the Santa Ynes valley the next day. The route we took (http://www.sbbike.org/region/rides/Sideways-2.pdf ) passed a number of locations featured in the film Sideways, a film about two of the aforementioned Californians in their mid-life crises and their wine tasting eccentricities. The scenery was lovely but the heat made riding very sweaty and, and as our day was quite demanding, wine tasting was unfortunately out of the question. Paul’s pannier popped off his bike towards the end of the day (not for the first time either), breaking two bottles of lovely cold beer he had just bought at the shop in Santa Ynes, soaking the contents, and leaving sticky shards of glass all over his dry sack. Clumsy was the order of the day – after setting up camp, hunger made Naomi stuff far too much pasta into the saucepan, it all expanded and half of it stuck to the bottom, burning half of it and giving it a very unpleasant charcoaly taste. Or maybe she has simply forgotten how to cook! We enjoyed an excellent view of the stars from our campsite, and were even more impressed with views of Lake Cachuma the following morning. We thought we had done the biggest hill on the California coast at Leggett, but, no, there’s always a bigger one! Which waited for us that morning on our way to Santa Barbara. Thankfully we got to the top of the San Marcos Pass in an hour after covering the demanding 4 miles in the early morning sun, and, of course, our return to the coast also marked the return of the fog. We descended into Santa Barbara a lot earlier than expected as the hours had gone back the night before. Day light savings did not do us any favours as lie-ins would now become more and more of a luxury with the sun rising at the ridiculous hour of 6am and darkness falling at 5pm.

When we arrived in Santa Barbara, we cycled around town looking for some wi-fi to consider our accommodation options. Naomi had never stepped into Starbucks before (something that had made itself so ubiquitous was probably best ignored), and hadn’t been planning to ever, but on this morning, hunger and impatience helped us decide that it couldn’t be that bad, so hey why not give it a chance. On investing in a much deserved cup of tea/coffee and some lunch, we opened up the laptop to get onto the internet when we discovered that Starbucks and T-mobile had got together to offer us an all-day internet pass for the ridiculous price of $10. Who pays for wi-fi these days unless you’re in the middle of nowhere? All we wanted to do was check e-mail and find a bed for the night. We were also very unimpressed that they insist you drink your tea out of paper cups (an unfortunate habit developing everywhere in the States) and apparently are unable to recycle them, usually a must do anywhere in California. So in Starbucks we were not going to stay to do our business (indeed N is never going back), and there started a search for all the other possible wi-fi places on our list, all of which had either closed down or did not offer wi-fi. A stop at the visitor’s centre was very helpful indeed: they gave us an excellent bikemap, recommended a very good motel and directed us towards the local library. So, after having had a good long cycle around town we finally got our free wi-fi and the information we needed. Despite the trials and tribulations of settling in, we were very impressed with Santa Barbara as it offers discounts to those who don’t arrive in town with motorised transport, a discount which we, of course, exploited. For a list of participating hotels see http://www.santabarbaracarfree.org/ After settling in at the excellent Presidio Motel, we walked down the street and, naturally, saw a multitude of cafes offering free wi-fi that were simply invisible the first time we passed on our bikes.

Santa Barbara certainly warranted an extra day, and the following morning Naomi visited the SB Mission on one of the cruiser bikes that the motel offered (with only one gear and purely designed for posing on the beach, not for cycling up the hill to a mission) while Paul caught up on some well-deserved sleep. A leisurely day took us down for a walk on the wharf, some beer tasting at the local brewery, a spot of shopping and a trip to the cinema to see Dan in Real Life.

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