When we woke there were people walking around on the beach. It was a little weird, but it was good; it forced Paul to get up and moving. Lauren jotted down stuff from the book, and took digital pictures in case her notes were a little fuzzy. I also was happily surprised to see that my camera began working again. 
We left the campground of unfriendly folks and hit the road. Paul and I were only going to ride about 35 miles on the day to Santa Barbara, and Lauren was going to try to push all the way to L.A. We rode most of the way there to the town of Goleta. This is where UC Santa Barbara is. We got tons of food from a Natural Cafe, and as a gesture for the good times, we picked up Lauren's bill. She, without us knowing, went across the street and picked up a couple tubes for us, since she knew we had used up the last one with her the day before. Awww.
After we finished up, we rode with her into Santa Barbara 
, where we went our separate ways. Paul and I went to State St., the "hopping" (if you will) spot in town. It was pretty cool, and reminiscent of Steamboat Springs as even chain shops adopted the look and feel of the town. We cruised along State St. mostly people watching, and stopping for the occasional bite of food. As we made our way all the way down it, we came to the beach. The beach had a long nice bike path that we rode along. We stopped and watched a bunch of skaters do their best at a cool skate park right along the beach. Some seemed a little past their prime. 
When we got to the beaches, we were a bit disappointed to see that they were surprisingly empty. Summer was coming to a close sadly, and many people were back at school and the like. We lied down on the beach anyway and got comfortable. I fell asleep for a while tired from the early mornings and late nights lately. When I got up, we went in the water for a bit. It was nice to be able to swim in bearable water.
When it lost its fine we headed back to State st. Paul decided he would get his haircut. On our way, we stopped at a Trader Joe's grocery store. We got to talking to a guy selling newspaper subscriptions out front, and he ended up giving us a $15 gift certificate to Trader Joe's. They were incentive for new subscribers, but he was so inspired by our story that he gave it to us anyway. Sweet. We went in and got a bunch of Clif bars for future riding, and some chocolate milk, with money still remaining on the card.
After that Paul got his haircut while I went to Staples. I tried to find a reasonably priced replacement for my hands-free phone thing, but Staples wasn't interested in selling them. No offense to anyone who has one, but I refused to get the blue tooth, leave it on your ear like you're someone important even if you don't have a call set, so I was out of luck.
I waited for Paul to get out of his haircut thing outside of some cafe that had wireless internet access. After he arrived, we, both hungry began searching around for some grub. I spotted a Cold Stone Creamery, and once it was in my head, I couldn't help it. It would end up being my dinner. I ate it in a restaurant with Paul where he ordered some Mexican food.
After we ate, we cruised up and down State st. looking for a fun bar. We were told that it would be a big night for going out as it was first weekend back at school for the UC kids as well as Santa Barbara Community College. We found a spot where we could easily see our bikes, and Paul hung by the bar and put out the vibe. 
We got some happy hour specials, and again people watched for a while. Those California girls…
We started getting hungry again, so we headed across the street to this casual looking diner. By this time, thousands of scantily clad girls, and wobbling guys littered the streets. I was a bit worried about the bikes, but there were so many other cyclists that I think it helped distract attention, whereas they would normally stand out more. Anyway, when we got in this diner, we were pleased to hear that there would be some comedians coming in free of charge. Great news!
Some of the acts were funny, some were really awkward. It made for an interesting show. There were many occasions when I was the only one laughing. At times it was because I thought it was funny, and other times, I just felt bad for them. https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3097/2823626525_170dd0e818.jpg?v=0
We stayed for the whole show, and made our way to another bar when it was over. It was kind of loud, and the band was pretty bad. However, they did close with the song "Ball and Chain" by Social Distortion that I like a lot. All in all, we were a little disappointed with the musical selection of the bars we had gone to.
On our way home (the beach) we passed a bar that was playing the song "California Love", a song that we love, and a feeling which we both had. It was really quite late, and was likely closing, so we kept on our way.
We thought we might have to get out of town a bit for good cover, but the Santa Barbara beach is pretty long, and there were plenty of good places for cover, as well as other human beings who were sleeping on it. We set up the tent on the nice dry sand again. For the third night in a row, we didn't use our pads.
Another beautiful calm night on the beach under the stars in SoCal.
Life was good.