A glo­ri­ous warm morn­ing prompt­ed me to get on the Suzu­ki and start off on the Carp, Ojai, Cuya­ma, San­ta Maria, Los Olivos, San­ta Bar­bara loop. Near­ing Ojai I stopped to check the iPhone’s brows­er for “Ojai Val­ley Taxi­dermy” then plugged the result into the gps and rode on over. Own­er Chuck Tes­ta, upper left above, came out for a nice vis­it. If you don’t yet know about his viral YouTube stuff click here to see my favorite of many vari­a­tions (it’s had 730,000 viewings).

After my vis­it with Chuck it was an 80 degree spin up beau­ti­ful High­way 33 pass­ing the orchards of the San­ta Bar­bara Pis­ta­chio Com­pa­ny which are just bare­ly with­in San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty on the far north­east cor­ner. A few more miles on High­way 33 then a left turn west onto High­way 166 where I was ready for lunch. Alas my lunch goal was the “Ran­cho Nipo­mo” restau­rant rec­om­mend­ed by friend Car­ol Carter, cur­rent­ly 65 miles on down the road. So I motored on, final­ly arrived, and ordered the deli­cious house spe­cial­ty; a pulled pork sand­wich with the cole slaw right in there with the 18 ingre­di­ent sauced pork, YUM.

Sati­at­ed and hap­py I remount­ed the Suzu­ki, for­tu­nate­ly still there since I’d left the key in the igni­tion in my hur­ry to quell my hunger. The weath­er and traf­fic con­tin­ued ide­al as I head­ed south on 101 to Bet­ter­avia, Fox­en Canyon Road, and High­way 150, on over the pass and home. Arriv­ing home I care­ful­ly pulled the Suzu­ki up onto its cen­ter stand and lubed the chain while it idled in first gear. A com­plete day. Click on the four shot mon­tage above for some more images of the day pre­sent­ed in groups of four. Click on the left or right side of the four­somes to move to more shots.