You know you wanna come visit us. :)

These pictures were taken at Hendry's Beach.

Stand up paddle-boarding:

Sunsets:

Summer lovin'

well, record temperatures have seemed to hit southern california. In Santa Barbara the high was 108, and today it is around 90. Regardless of the heat waves (or in the case of summer, lack thereof) you can't beat this type of scenery:

Crab Boil!

Last week there was a 'crab boil'- although I got eaten alive by mosquitos, it was still well worth it! It was done 'traditional' style, with no silverware or plates- just napkins. Gotta love culture :0)

So, there was 1 pot of food designated for each table. And by "1 pot of food", I mean this pot of food was enormous- we're talking a few gallons in size. This pot was filled with king crab legs, cubed red potatoes, corn, shrimp and sausage. Each pot was boiled and cooked with "secret" cajun seasoning (from texas). Each pot had enough food in it to feed 8-10 people- well, at our table there were 4 of us, and one of us (not to mention any names) doesn't eat shellfish...

For starters we had baguettes of bread. Here's how we started:

The way to eat this was to rip off a piece of bread and "swipe it" on the butter. Yes, no joke about this being a traditional crab boil.

The "cook" (i.e., the one wearing the flimsy lobster hat) decided which table got their food next based on his wildly walking around, and egging each table on to make the most noise. Here he is making his own noise, just to get people going:

Our friend Chris and I pumped up our vocal chords and got a little obnoxious so the cook would gravitate towards our tiny table of four (compared to 6 other tables of 8+ people) and we finally got our food!

Here's what we got:

OH MY GOODNESS-IT WAS MAGICAL!!!!!

Now, that food in it's entirety was intended for at least 6 people. Since "a certain someone" doesn't eat shellfish or most types of sausage, that food went to myself, Chris, and his petite girlfriend...

So anyway, here are the remnants of the evening- notice there is no seafood of any type next to a certain someone....

The cajun spices made it really flavorful, and the crab legs were very moist. The people running the show had given every table a pair of pliers for assistance in cracking the crab legs, so that was fun too. (well, it got old after a while). So anyway, that's the end of our magical crab boil.

'Til next time...

race committee weekend

This weekend DPT was asked to be on the race committee for this weekend's Junior Olypmic sailing regatta. Ages ranged from 12-17 (or so). So he asked if his darling wife could join, to which of course they replied "of course!". So whilst DPT was in charge of managing the scoring software and posting the results of each race online, I was in charge of tweeting every possible occurrence during the regatta. To do this, I was equipped with a walkie-talkie to listen in on race committe dialogue, and different people were texting me on my cell phone so I could be kept abreast on the different fleets (there were 3 total). Here is a random sample of 3 days worth of tweets:

"First radials about to round the leeward mark"

"Top 5 radials coming in: 7692, 6844, 616, 7246, 9288"

"Race 10 underway on the opti course. 8-10 knots. One lap around the dirt track"

"After a 40-minute postponement, the opti course has started race 9. Wind at start was 5 knots building to 10 by first mark"

"Breaking news: sea lions are also out, and barking at the race committee boats"

"The dolphins are out! Setting up the race course, 6-7 knots, clear skies, beautiful day!

It wasn't a lie about today being a beautiful day- see for yourself:

The best views of Santa Barbara are from the ocean, hands down. (BTW that is one of many race committee boats).

Here we are being goons:

Unfortunately we didn't get any (quality) pictures of the sea lions, the dolphin shows or the jelly fish floating by. One jellyfish in particular was bright white, with dark blue lines running down it- was absolutely gorgeous in the light blue water of the ocean. The aforementioned 'dolphin show' consisted of many baby dolphins jumping in and out of the water, even doing flips~! Was totally cool to be looking at. The haze prevented us from having a very clear picture of the channel islands, but nonetheless we did take a pictures of the things we could see clearly....

The boats all coming out... And here is 1 of the fleets lined up for race...

It was a lovely weekend.

Over and out.