The last few years Eric has flown out on the week­end of the San­ta Bar­bara Marathon for a vis­it and to run the marathon. This year it was the won­der­ful vis­it only as he has an acute heel prob­lem that pre­vented his run­ning. So we were free to play more and eat with­out restriction.

He arrived on Thurs­day after­noon. We dropped by for a vis­it with Phyl­lis before grab­bing some sup­plies at Whole Foods, some intend­ed as part of a nice long vis­it into the night at Ralph’s. Fri­day we had lunch with Tom at Stack­y’s and ran around look­ing at a few hous­ing options for me. Sat­ur­day Eric, Tom, and I went on a 30 mile bike ride that includ­ed many stops and starts that con­sumed two or three times as much time as either of them take to reach that dis­tance. Tom final­ly had to bid our tor­toise selves good­bye and speed off to get home, cleaned, and ready for a 12:30 show at the OUT­ra­geous film festival.

Eric and I slugged on to Cody’s for lunch then a great vis­it with the own­er of a beau­ti­ful 1964 Bianchi bicy­cle in fan­tas­tic con­di­tion that we spied out­side. Sat­ur­day evening we took in Den­zel’s new movie “Flight”. We both liked it but not­ed the inter­est­ing choice with Eric fly­ing home on Sun­day. Some of this is doc­u­ment­ed in the avail­able slideshow that starts with a sim­ple click above.

Eric, Phyl­lis, and I had a nice Skype video chat with Car­ol P in Eng­land on Sun­day and anoth­er Skype video chat on Sat­ur­day with Jill in Mysore, India dur­ing which Jill asked that we water her Mey­er lemons, took us on a vir­tu­al tour of her digs in India, and intro­duced us to a curi­ous new Russ­ian acquain­tance of hers, Vladimir. This is some­what doc­u­ment­ed in the video below (which we are pre­tend­ing to be a Skype chat with Jill) but what is most doc­u­ment­ed is the won­der­ful, fun time we have when we get togeth­er.