Study Aversion Attempt, #1.

I finished my first clinical day this semester less than 24 hours ago and I am already trying to think of other things to do besides study.  And what better way to do that than to talk about my last week of summer vacation and how much fun I had???

This is more than my truck.  This is the "Fun Mobile".  Note my surfboard and bicycle loaded in the back.  That just oozes fun.  This is what I looked like driving to Santa Barbara for a quick overnight trip to hang out with Crack and kick off my last week of summer vacation properly.  Shortly after getting into town, we drove almost all the way back to Ventura to surf the "Doheny of Ventura".  I only know it as Mondo's and yes, it's not a fab wave, but there are always waves there and we thought it'd be fun.

I suppose from this picture you can't tell how ridiculously crowded it was, nor how astonishingly fun the waves were.  I still don't know how I voluntarily paddled out at the most crowded spot I've ever been to in the US (because everywhere I surfed in Australia was ridiculously crowded), but once out there it really didn't seem so bad.  And people were NICE!  If that place had been in the OC, people would've been nasty, cursing and yelling at each other, and being lame.  I know because this happens at the real Doheny every time I think paddling out there is a good idea.  Anyway, we surfed this spot until our arms were tired and I had once again succeeded in oversunning the three-inch space of skin between just above my buttcrack and the height on my trunk to which my wetsuit jacket seems to like to settle.  I might have the tannest "almost buttcrack" in south OC.  Moving on...

We got back to SB and we were going to eat overpriced food from Cantwell's Market across the street when Crack realized she'd lost her wallet.  After going through my truck, her car, the house and almost driving back to Mondo's, she decided to call the last place the bank said it had been used.  In 'n Out in some podunk town off the 101 in central California.  It was there.  After a shocking long time that involved the best customer service EVER from In 'n Out, the WORST customer service ever from FedEx and their non-native-English-speaking customer service person (do NOT get me going on this), her wallet had a return trip home scheduled for Monday.  Let's go celebrate!!

We proceeded to ride bikes downtown, visit surf shops, and make it back for some Olympics.  It's the Saturday evening after the first whole week of the Games and what does NBC decide the masses want to watch?  Women's Marathon!!!!  All 26.whatever miles of it, from start to finish of the bronze medal finisher.  While I'm sure about 0.17% of the population was ecstatic about it, I've got another word for it: excruciating.  Isn't there some weightlifting or discus throwing going on?  Cricket perhaps?  Who wants to watch a bunch of wiry freaks RUN, that's all... just RUN, for 2+ hours?  Apparently us, because we didn't change the channel and we even waited until the end to watch some crazed 38yr. old woman from eastern-Europe-somewhere blow away the competition before we went out for these:

These are Irish Car Bombs.  They may be the Irish equivalent of Sake Bombs, where drunken fools slam sake shots into glasses of beer and drink them while their buddies pound the table and chant things like "Sake Bomb!!!!", but I prefer to think them as slightly more refined.  There is no chanting, you just put the nice shot of Bailey's into a glass of Guinness and drink it down fast. No moronic yelling, no vandalizing of furniture.   Good times.

After a couple of these, watching Michael Phelps win his 8th gold medal (even though we already knew he'd won it AND the telecast was tape delayed) and some Magner's cider- we called it a night.  The next morning, I gave some more money to Cantwell's Market and picked up two of the best breakfast burritos EVER to take home for the Tall One and I.  And before you get grossed out, Crack does have a freezer so relax.  We did some more lazing around SB before I decided that 5:15pm on a Sunday was an excellent time to leave downtown Santa Barbara.  Well, it was a bad time.  It took me 50min to reach the world-famous Rincon from where I got on the freeway- a drive that should've been about 20min max.  But from then on, it was OK.  I just settled in, listened to the new Coldplay album straight through for the 93rd time, and tried not to think about school starting a week later.

Santa Barbara seems so long ago.