Just North of La Conchita lays the small town of Carpinteria... This is where I live. When I say small town, I mean it is the smallest town I have ever lived in. About 14,508 people. There are only three street lights. In my day to day living I really only have to deal with one of them. The market is accessible via the bike path running next to Carpinteria Creek. The path goes under Highway 101, and on any summer Sunday afternoon, traffic will be at a dead stop, as I ride my bike down to the market. It is actually faster, healthier, greener, and more fun to ride my bike for groceries, than to hop in the combi and drive there. If you live near your market you should ride there too. The Spanish called it La Carpinteria... The carpenters shop. I am a carpenter but they did not name the town after me. It was named so, for the band of Chumash Indians living here who built wooden plank canoes called Tomals. Using local wood and the natural tar that still seeps up from the ground today, these were the best canoes in California, hands down. The Chumash used these great canoes to travel the up and down the coast and off to the Channel Islands ( more on them another time) As a tangential thinker I am finding hard to stay on one topic as it is. The local's of Carpinteria call it Carp. I really don't know remember what the Chumash called it, but it was just a name we (white man) gave it, based on what we think we called they called it. I might have called it the land of abundance or, Paradise. As the song goes.. You call someplace paradise... Kiss it goodbye.. Still, it is the greatest place I have ever lived.. I don't really feel the need to move ever again. The temperature is pretty much 72 degrees year round and it never rains. Unless you count the well over a 100 inches of rain that fell in the hills last winter subsequently causing the deadly landside to the south at La Conchita. The Chumash moved an hour or so north of here, to the town of Santa Ynez. They built a small casino and did well. So they built a huge casino and are now living the American dream.. Going just a little off topic… the Santa Ynez/Los Olivos area is where Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch is. Further to the north lays The Dutch Villages of Solvang and Buellton, Home of World Famous Anderson’s Pea Soup. This is where they filmed SIDEWAYS, one of my favorite movies.. If you do visit Buellton make sure to visit The Hitching Post, and get a glass of the Highliner, a pinot blend from the best vines in the Santa Rita hills... Back to Carp.. To the north, the towns of Summerland, Montecito (Oprah lives here)(so does Jack Johnson when not living in Hawaii, I have seen him out surfing a few times, he is a super nice guy and quite happy to share some waves with you) and finally America's Riviera, Santa Barbara. To the south it is mostly open coastline with some good surf spots and a few coastal enclaves, which include La Conchita, until you hit Ventura and the coastal plain of Oxnard. Oxnard… I once lived here at the beach in another life. Nowdays my two beautiful daughters still reside in Oxnard with Mom, when they are not with me, but unfortunately for them, not on the beach. To the west are the Channel Islands, beyond that, I think would be Japan. To the east there are miles and miles of open wilderness. More on that later. Now… before you try and correct me. Carp faces to the south, making north, actually west, and south, actually east. Confused... The 101 head to San Francisco which is definitely to the north, so I am sticking to the implied direction of the California coast which runs North/South..

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