Santa Barbara

Nothing like a short trip to Santa Barbara to feel that life is good in California. Mike, Wei, Maureen and I left the brisk breeze of the bay area on Saturday morning and headed down to SoCal and a textbook californian sun. The warm weather was a good thing since the plane had a little too much fuel in the tanks, and we had to pack rather lightly (5lbs per person max luggage). After meeting up with our local friends Damon, Nathalie and Olav, we decided to pretend to go surfing on the beach. For the majority of us, this mostly consisted of carrying a surfboard around the beach and staring at the ocean, although I did make a valid attempt to brave the rather frigid water (no wetsuit... 5lbs limit, remember?).
On Sunday, we did our traditional tourist walk down State street to the pier, followed by a visit of the Courthouse and the mission. We met up with the local crew at Franceschi park in the hills to have a picnic before taking off to (chilly) Palo Alto. A couple pictures of the trip can be found here, courtesy of picasa web. Mike & Wei's pics are here.

For aviation enthusiasts: here are some videos of our takeoff and landing in Palo Alto.