Cruising in the Country

7/11/12

Today Brooke offered her car to me to take cruising in the country side. Unfortunately this meant that I had to drop her off at work at 6:45am. Small price to pay to be in the drivers seat again!

Last night we had worked out a bit of a route so I headed off north on the 101. I was a bit surprised that I relaxed into driving on the other side of the road so quickly. I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive but I don't really know why. Brookes car is even a manual and I think changing gear with my right hand was the weirdest part. A couple of times my left hand even hit the door when I needed to change gears (spaz) but other than that no worries at all. I turned off the 101 to go to a wee town called Los Olivos and from there I took Figueroa Mountain road which was a small one lane tarmac road up into the mountains. It was a fantastic day for it:

I was absolutely loving driving again. Near the top of the mountain I came across a ranger station thing so I decided to get out and have a look for some critters. I found a kitty!:

And I also found some kitty food:

And I found some ex kitty food:

It was so nice up in the mountains I didn't really want to come home but I don't think Brooke would have been to happy if I didn't come back with her car. I finished the rest of the mountain track which led me to the 154 which pretty much went all the way home. The 154 highway was a pretty nice drive as well but cracked me up that the speed limit was only 55mph (about 80) because I guess it wasn't a full "freeway", but it was still 4 lanes wide in most places! It did have some corners in there (45mph recommended) the could have seemed a bit tricky if I hadn't been brought up on the 25km/h on state highway 1 in NZ!

Before I went to bed I decided to book the train from Santa Barbara to San Francisco on Tuesday and I was guted that it seemed to want to charge me $63 for the trip now instead of the $50 from the night before. I then went back the the other browser I had originally looked up the ticket on and it was still on the checkout page with the $50 fare on it. I clicked continue to payment and it only charged me the $50. Gotta have some luck I guess. Now the only bit of my trip I need to figure out is how to get from Seattle to Vancouver.

Oh, and I forgot: Obama won.