Dad Posts About CA Tambien

(June 25th, 2022) Guest Blogger - Tyler Cazier

I think Robyn did a blog post on FSY, so it's likely you already know the awesome experience Robyn had there. I was in Santa Barbara ( the Murder Capital of the world ), and I got to see the sights. 

Somehow, I had it in my mind that this would be a big daddy-daughter date with Robyn. I suppose I thought it was more like Front Sight, where we'd spend all day together and get food in the evenings and such. That, of course, didn't happen, because FSY has dorms and Robyn stayed on campus. I don't know what I was thinking!

Anyway, that left me to go see the sights in Santa Barbara. The Airbnb was actually in Goleta, which is like American Fork to Orem...it' just the lesser-known suburb. Here are a few of the beautiful things I saw while I was there. I'll keep the captions to a minimum.

This is Windows to the Sea beach in Isla Vista, at the southern edge of Santa Barbara. There's a coastal wall, which you can see in the pic here. What is a little surprising about this wall is there are properties up on the wall, you can see them poking out in the very top of the image. You might think these are multi-million dollar properties inhabited by the rich and well-heeled. You'd be half right. These are $2-3 million properties which are, in fact, student housing. Yup. I checked it out. For just $18,500 per month, you too can be a student living in this 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom bungalow, overlooking the Santa Barbara coast. Yes, that's not a typo on the rent, it was $18,500 per month. 

This is a picture back up from the beach. This is Isla Vista neighborhood - total college town street. 

This is another beach in the "Windows to the Sea" beach complex. There are several beaches that have walkways down to the beach. About every 300 or 400 yards, there is a new beach with a new "window" to the sea. They all look a little different, and I loved just walked down to each of the beaching and checking things out.

The Airbnb was located on Brandon street in Goleta. Every morning, I'd go for a little walk to see what I could see. This truck stood out as an awesome find, so I took a picture with it. I'm kind of a sucker for old trucks. No idea why. 

This is an AWESOME tree that I found as I was hiking for a lake in Santa Barbara. It was a little hot outside, so I started searching for some shade, and I found this amazing tree, all gnarled up and fantastic. So, I took a picture. The lake is called Lake Los Carneros. It was maybe a 3 mile hike all the way out to the lake, around it, and back — so not too challenging, but pretty panoramic. 

Check Out this Cool Pineapple Plant

This was a planter box at the Airbnb. Robyn had never seen a pineapple plant before, and she loved that there was a "baby pineapple" on the plant. Couldn't NOT have a photo!

Gas Prices Have Been Spicy

We drove to Santa Barbara, so we were always watching the gas prices in every city that we visited. In some we had to fill up the tank. Ouch. I won't talk about the economy here. Biden's been doing some painful things to the economy, and it looks as though the U.S. is heading for a recession, probably next year. This is just one of the signs I saw as I was driving. The highest one I saw was $7.09 per gallon. It turned my stomach to see that price!

Robyn is REALLY Sunburned After Surfing

Robyn wanted to hit the waves after FSY. She had chosen Santa Barbara for the beaches, after all. The thing about FSY, though, is that you're bound to the campus. Even though it was a short 5-min walk from campus to the beach, FSY attendees never went to the beach. So, when I picked her up, Robyn insisted that we spend some time at the beach. And she was getting no argument from me. 

We decided to pick up a couple of boards and do some surfing. This sounds easy and fun. And it was pretty easy to get the boards. It was really fun at the beach as well. But GETTING to the beach was not as easy as I had thought! It turns out that Toyota Corollas were just never built to hold surfboards. This oversight made it a little rough to get to the beach, but we persevered and made it. 

A little piece of information I know now: When the tailgate is open and you're doing the crazy speeds of anything higher than 1 mph, the Corolla is going to beep at you non stop until you stop. I'm sure it's trying to keep me safe and what not, but after a few minutes of wild fancy on the South 101 freeway, I was ready to rip the beeper speaker out of the dashboard with my bare hands. 

 

Robyn was actually pretty tired after FSY — sounds like they had a few late nights. So, the beach felt warm and inviting to sleep. I should have put a towel over her or something...

But she assured me she put on sunscreen. I had seen her do it. We found out later that sunscreen is water-resistant (not "waterproof") for up to 80 minutes after application. Being that we jumped right into to surfing when we hit the beach, I'm pretty confident we washed off most of the sunscreen in the first few minutes.

Unfortunately, we never reapplied, and we were out for about 4.5 hours. Robyn was very upset with me for not reminding her to put on more sunscreen.

Ouchie. 

My sunburn was gone in about 48 hours. It was pretty mild. It's now over a week later and Robyn is just barely starting to be able to sit on the back of her thighs. She's less than thrilled with the sunburn.