Tag / santa barbara

by Adron

Carpinteria and Santa Barbara

After my arrival in Carpinteria I spent the week working on recording material. I’ve however talked about that elsewhere, since it’s well outside the scope of my transit sleuthing! But here’s a few of the day to day adventures and what not.

That First Commute

For the first trip to the office, I scoped out the transit agency for the area and found that there was a bus that would bring me from across the street of the nearby Starbucks directly to the front door of the office. All I needed was fare, and found online after checking out the MTD site for Santa Barbara’s Transit Agency, I could pick up a ten ride ticket at the Albertsons next door.

The ten trip ticket I picket up at Albertsons.
Nice seats on the bus.
The front view cruising down the street.

After I picked up the ticket, the first trip on the bus was a short sweet ride that took just 5 minutes. In the evening that first day I actually opted to take a walk back to the hotel. I wandered up through the Carpinteria Bluffs Nature Reserve. It provides a beautiful place to walk out to and along the beach front. The subsequent day I rode the bus one more time, catching the 21x.

I used the MTD App to see when the bus was arriving this day, and gotta say it’s one of the more accurate I used. There were a few glitches in the app like needing to recenter on where the stop was after every few views of the arrivals. However, in spite of the glitches it still worked well in giving me arrivals so I’d know when to go board a bus.

Attaining a Bike

Carpinteria is very bike friendly. All the local roads are slow neighborhood style streets and one routinely sees the school kids to the beach bums to the retired folk biking around town. In the small little main street of Carpinteria there’s also some pretty top tier food options, again, easily able to swing between them via bike. With that in mind I set out to borrow a bike for the days I could from the office. On Wednesday I was able to pick up said bike, and I was super ecstatic that I though immediately, I’m going to go to town and get something tasty tonight!

So upon receiving the lock from security I was all set, and headed into town. That’s where I decided to get some grub at Sly’s. Let me tell you, this place was not messing around! The food was extremely good, and definitely doesn’t fall into the “small town” food category, but more into the big city batting 5 stars level food!

After that I rolled and picked up some things from the local grocery for my rocking steeds front basket. I just figured I ought to fully use the advantage of the bike to the max, so I sure did. Rolled back to the hotel watched a movie and passed out. A most excellent evening!

Bike Commute!

The next day I biked into the office through the park area again. Along through the trail I took a few photos and a short video. The congestion pictures however are of the inbound cars on 101 and on the side road. Every single day they were all backed up. The absolute worst way to commute.

That evening, on the way back to the hotel I took the long way home and snagged a few more photos of the bike trip around, along the coast, through the beach park and back up through Carpinteria and back to the hotel.

Oil rigs. I saw a number of them. If you drive, take a good look at the things you support out there seeping oil into the ocean every day. They’re some nasty shit and one can actually go down to the beach and see remnants of the rigs work coming to shore on a semi-regular basis. I found this kind of odd that they allowed this to occur this close to the shore. In Louisiana they have a lot of rigs offshore, but one can’t see them and rarely does one actually see the oil coming ashore. However, the other filth in the water of the Gulf of Mexico there in Louisiana may have just obfuscated the oil, I couldn’t verify. Either way, it was like a dystopian imagery seeing those offshore toiling away. They did make for an interesting view of lights off the coast too.

After that, I headed into town for dinner, but ate a bit lighter and spent some time working that evening. More on this trip in the next post, there is indeed more. Until then, cheers & happy travels!

by Adron

California Coastal Carpinteria Trip

Going back in time today, the story of my trip to Carpinteria, California for a week of work. I had some fun adventures and around about explorations while learning how to traverse the landscapes of Carpinteria on up to Santa Barbara. The trip, spoiler alert, was a most excellent and awesome trip! It all started on April 1st, but no fool’s day for me, with a bike ride.

Departure Bike

I left the house and walked a mere ~200 feet and there sat one of the new zippy e-bikes that LimeBike has in the city. I scanned it to unlock the bike, loaded up my luggage in the front rack and off I went to the bus stop. It wasn’t absolutely necessary to use the bike, but it would give me a few more minutes downtown if I wanted to grab a coffee or something. I often, since my trip is from Ballard to Seattle City core and then to the airport, stop and grab a coffee or eats downtown before leaving for the overpriced and routinely lackluster options at the airport.

Within just a few minutes I arrived at the bus stop and checked the arrival. The next King County Metro Route 40 bus arrived within just a few minutes. I boarded, plopped my luggage on the ground and sat back and enjoyed the ride into the city. We arrived downtown, I decided today to skip the downtown drink and grub and instead opted to board the LINK direct to the airport.

I boarded the LINK and in a short time I arrived at the airport. The regular security bullshit and TSA circus facade ensued and I already wished I had decided to take the Coast Starlight. Flying is the closest thing to the icky confines of a bus, one just gets to go 400+ mph and arrive faster, but the journey and the airports are such a mall bathroom style trash show. However, there was a silver lining, like so many of my flights these days, I was at least flying first class on Alaska Airlines.

As one does with the Alaska Airlines wing of SEATAC I rode the little underground subway bus train contraption.

First or Business Class

There’s so many blasted designations about first class or business class, this status or that status, upgraded, or bobbityboopity status. One just doesn’t know what entitles one to what when it comes to the airline flight experience. As anyone would, I long to just be rich and be ushered to my plane with my closest of friends, family, and comrades only! But I digress, this business or first class thing I had purchased wasn’t so shabby!

The flight was smooth, except for a little bumpy coming out of the low lying clouds in Santa Barbara. Walking off the plane I noticed two things about the airport that I immediately fell in love with. The first thing is that they have a patio you can sit on that is effectively on the tarmac where you can watch planes taking off and landing. The second thing is that it is a small, super chill, single food establishment type of airport. None of that crazy big airport cruft!

Upon arriving, I of course, now needed to get from Santa Barbara to Carpinteria. That’s where things were sort of tricky. I’d done exactly zero research on how to get from there from here. I checked Google Maps and it gave me a transit ride that would take about an hour, I checked Lyft, it would take about 35 minutes, and there was also a possibility, if I wanted to, that I could go to Goleta and take the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner into Carpinteria via the ~27 minutes trip along the coastline.

I did the dumb thing and took a Lyft, albeit he conversation was fun, friendly, and rather heart warming. My drive was a guy originally from Ethiopia, who had come to America about 15 years ago. He told me how he’d come here, worked construction for a number of years. He had a great boss that even during the downturn helped all his crew out by letting everybody stay at his house. He had then gotten married, and now his wife and him live with their two children there in between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria. He drives Lyft now and it gives him the freedom to work when he needs to, take her to work and immediately start getting pickups, and even pick up the kids and have all that flexibility one needs as a parent. He loves it!

We also talked cars and Lyft costs, and the related economic impact of that. He knew it was closer to the loss and profit line then a lot of drivers seem to realize. It was refreshing to talk with such an optimistic guy in light of today’s political nightmare we have.

That was the last car I’d get in for the trip however, and even though I had a great conversation with the driver, I was glad to be out of that traffic mess and on to other things. I arrived at the Motel 6, which seemed immediately I’d made a slight mistake, as a a much nicer hotel was next door. But it turns out, after check in, the room wasn’t half bad. Very 60’s era retro, clean, and very egalitarian. It appeared it would work out perfectly, as I only needed the room for the very functional purpose of sleeping. I’d otherwise be in the office or around exploring the whole time anyway.

That Oddball City Limits

One thing I noted, as I’d mentioned I could catch the train at Goleta, is that Santa Barbara’s Airport is effectively in Goleta, not in Santa Barbara. But zoning and city limits and all that fun stuff put things where they are. Here’s a map of the city limits of Santa Barbara outlined in red.

city-limits

…having arrived, I unpacked, and immediately went about getting some work done and then caught some sleep ready for the week of teaching & recording! But alas, I’ve got more about that coming, so stay tuned!