despite the bad weather, friday night me, taka, eric and tina headed out for some good driving and better eating. we stayed in ventura (on the very cheap at a marriott hotel) and spent all of saturday in santa barbara on and around state street. other than the white knuckle driving on the way up in the rain, it was a very laid back weekend, with lots of window shopping and a lot of good eating. on saturday we watched coraline in 3d at the arlington theatre on state street which is a 2000 seat old-timey theatre that actually looked a lot like the theatre that coraline goes to when she’s in the other-neighbor’s downstairs apartment. it was a good film, but it was pretty creepy, i would think too much for a kid, but maybe i’m just a wuss.

but the focus of the trip was to eat lots of good food. i was seriously full the entire weekend, even eating a full breakfast before the gym and immediately after. we only ate at recommended restaurants or ones that were 4+ stars on yelp! (other than a breakfast we ate at the marriott buffet which wasn’t very good).

if anyone’s heading to santa barbara from redondo beach, here’s some places we ate that were great:

the counter (trendy burgers) in el segundo
casa de soria (mexican) in ventura
brophy brothers (seafood) in santa barbara
pete’s (cafe/coffee shop) in ventura
wood ranch (bbq) in camarillo

Man, I love it when two things i like come together. Like I was watching this youtube video of a high powered sniper rifle shooting down radio controlled helicopters, and then it recommended me a video of a radio controlled helicopter with a gun on it… so i’m pretty psyched about this xbox achievement-like program that 24 hour fitness has where you can earn medals for meeting goals, like hitting the gym 100 times in 6 months *achievement unlocked*!

After 6 months, you can exchange your medals for rewards and i got my eyes set on a pair of binoculars since we’ve always needed a set of those for the boat. i usually have enough motivation for the gym as it is, but nothing like a $30 pair of binoculars to push me over the top.

for as long as i’ve been building bikes, i’ve usually forgone thrift and comfort for lightweight and a “race-like” look. i’ve gotten older (lately it seems exponentially so) and wiser and i finally bought a bicycle seat that doesn’t hurt when i sit on it. i’ve always rode the selle italia flite saddle on all of my mountain bikes, but today i swapped it for a WTB Speed V Comp saddle. It’s 400 grams (almost twice the weight of the Flite) and $29 (a quarter the price of the Flite) but it’s comfortable as hell and short of me becoming a mountain bike racer, I doubt i’ll ever look back.

I was barely able to walk from my car to my office this morning my legs were so damn sore. I don’t know why they hurt so much worse than they have from previous snowboarding trips, but yeh, they’re pretty ruined. On Saturday we boarded from 8am until about 4pm, so we were out there for quite a while. Even though I hadn’t been up there in 2 years, most of the skills were still there and I was feeling pretty comfortable by mid-day.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend with friends that I don’t see often enough. We stayed at a huge cabin and did lots of drinking and eating at good and weird places. It was nice to be away from the city for a couple of days, even if I did have my laptop and the internet with me the whole time.

And Happy Birthday Sanam!