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December 15, 2007
Exploring and adventuring
My knee was swollen again this morning and was bothering me walking around last night, so I went to a nearby gym. It was really nice and one neat thing was that the stretching area was outside (in the building, but in an open-air part). I guess you can do that with the weather that Santa Barbara has. Plus, there was an outdoor lap pool, which seemed strange to me but is actually probably very normal for the West Coast! So anyway, I was stuck inside on the elliptical and the bike. Ellipticalling didn't feel so great because the swelling--which actually hasn't happened probably in months--makes everything get sort of caught and hurt when I don't expect it. It's kind of hard to explain, but it's not too pleasant. And as for our colds, Matt is a little less sniffly but I am right in the middle of that very stuffed-up, constantly-nose-blowing phase. Lovely, especially for my fellow gym rats!
After we ate breakfast, Matt and I took the scenic route (and it was very scenic) to Goleta Park, which is next to UC Santa Barbara. We followed a route that I had seen on sbrunning.com, the site for the local running community, which followed the coast and then went around the UCSB Lagoon, which I think is part of the XC course there. It was really beautiful, but my knee was bothering me so it wasn't as much fun as it normally would have been.
We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and blowing our noses. I tried to use the gym here in the hotel to lift, but they were missing most of their weights and they only had a recumbent bike and that bothered my leg. So...I opted to join Matt, who was reading in the hot tub, instead.
Tonight we went to a really neat place for dinner, up in the San Marco pass, called Cold Spring Tavern. It was an old stagecoach stop from the 1800s and hasn't really been modernized. There is a bar next door with live music so we hung out there first. There was a woman folksy singer who I liked at first but then she covered a Patty Griffin song quite badly (in my opinion) and I sort of changed my mind. But the dinner was cozy and fun and we made it back home down the mountain safely--I'm glad I wasn't driving!
Posted by becky at December 15, 2007 9:50 PM