Santa Barbara

Look who's got a new haaaiiir cut, look who's got a new haaaiiir cut. So the day has finally come where I got so sick of the little tufty thing on my forehead that I just shaved the whole thing. I knew it was coming, after all, there really is no other graceful way to go bald; you just have to own it. I was pretty nervous because I have never had a buzzcut before and didn't know what I would look like, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Showing up at Anderson's Barber Shop at 10:00 am to do the deed ended up being an experience in itself. Ramon, the San Luis Obispo barber who did the honors, was very helpful. I said "I think I just want to go for the basic buzz cut. You know, a #1 razor all over."

"A #1!?" replied Ramon, with shocked overtones and a throaty spanish accent.

"Or a #2?" I quickly riposted.

"Oh yes," Ramon confirmed, "this will look much better." The conversation thus concluded (and in a pleasingly manly manner; god knows how much verbage it would have taken chicks to settle this issue), we got right down to the buzzing. The result is clean, unabashed, and quite welcoming to hats (no hat hair).

I must say that I was delighted to return to the masculine realm of the true Barber Shop. Not only is the price right ($10), the atmosphere is naturally soothing to the male ego. There are, of course, no women present. The decor is straight 1972; pleasingly wood-paneled and plain. Your chair faces across the room to the waiting area so that you can chat with the customers waiting their turn. Sure, there is a mirror on the opposite wall, above the row of waiting chairs, that you could watch the progress of your haircut in if you'd like, but we men are generally unconcerned with such things. We'd rather all stare across the street together at the hot blonde in the cowboy boots and mini-skirt who works at the boutique over there. It is of much more interest to us to determine if she is the one with all the tatoos who has worked there for months, or if she might be new. If a woman came in, she would surely want the chair swiveled around so that she could stare at herself in the mirror the whole time . . . as if something important were occuring, but we men have more important things on our mind.

Like the story of the young girl who came in the shop just last week. She told one of the customers (an older man who knew her from somewhere) that she had gotten a new tatoo and would he like to see it? He said, "Sure." so she lifted up her shirt, unbuttoned her jeans, and tugged everything down in the front to show him. Well, I guess his eyes just about bugged right out of his head, along with the other customers in the chairs and the Barbers behind them, "cause she was standing right there by the register!" If we weren't facing each other, we couldn't make knowing eye-contact and leering smiles that, without a word being spoken, say clearly to each other, "Sluts! Let's do 'em."

Yes, it was good to go back to the Barber Shop. It had been too long.

You might also have noticed from that first picture that I am sailing! This was the total capper to my great day today! I want to thank Tess for suggesting I get The Lonely Planet travel book for California. Thanks to it, when I pulled over a few miles out from Santa Barbara to figure out what I wanted to do, I saw immediately that there was a sailboat rental shop right on the beach. I instantly threw down the book and made my way straight there. Sailing is one of my great passions that I rarely get to indulge and I was so hoping I would find a way to work it into my trip!

For those of you who don't know, sailing is a fairly complicated sport and renting out sailboats to strangers is something of a dicey proposition. The boats are expensive to maintain and take a lot of wear and tear from use, particularly if some idiot comes along who doesn't know what they are doing. Not many people rent out sailboats deserving of the name.

Well, the Santa Barbara Sailing Center was my faintest hope come true. They had sweet little 21' daysailers for a reasonable price (not cheap, $30/hr., but reasonable) and they were willing to let me take one out with only a short written test of my sailing knowledge (I scored 99%). You can see from the picture that the boat has it's share of wear and tear on it, but it worked just fine.

Sailing is something I look forward to, but not without my share of nerves. It is a complicated sport requiring some real skill, and to take an unfamiliar boat out in unfamiliar waters by yourself is a little risky. Capsizing is always a possibility (preventable with skill, but mistakes get made) with a result ranging from embarrassment to death. But it is that same skill and risk that gives such a great reward. It was beautiful to be out on the Pacific, with Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez mountains behind me, the Channel Islands in front of me and the sun setting over the ocean to my right. The boat handled beautifully and the wind was just perfect. I had to show some skill (beating into the wind to re-enter the narrow harbor channel), but I pulled it all off gracefully and got back to the dock exactly as planned, five minutes before closing. Beautiful!