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Sunday, May 7, 2007.

Santa Barbara was definitely worth the trip. As the story goes, a few years back the city council restricted crew members visiting on cruise ships from coming ashore here. Nobody is exactly sure shy, but the most popular theory is that they just didn't want crew members wandering around their fair city. That spells "snob" in my book. But regardless, crew members are allowed to hit land and take a gander now, which is exactly what I did. Santa Barbara is also a tender port, which means we had to wait until relatively late in the afternoon before we could hop a boat for shore. By the time we got off the tender, we still had three or so hours to see the sites, which we figured would be adequate.

It truly is a beautiful city--nice features and very, very clean. I didn't see a single piece of litter anywhere, including this river bed that ran across the main beach drive. Either the citizens take enormous pride in keeping the place pristine, or they've got a full-time cleaning division. We walked along the waterfront for a time until it started to enter the residential area and then turned around and made our way back via a nice little park on the opposite side of the street. Once through that, we found State Street and hence the main shopping district. Santa Barbara is a city you could spend several days just walking around in, and it doesn't feel like a city at all. One person summed it up nicely--it feels like you're in a theme park. It's hard to describe, but between the layout, the cleanliness, the trees, and warm weather I rather felt like I should be paying a ticket price to be walking the streets.

Not only is it possible to spend a lot of time here, it's also quite possible to spend a lot of money here too. There's lots of expensive stores but even the normal sundries cost more than usual. I had to pick up some sunscreen for example, and the smallest, cheapest stuff I could find was still $7. I suppose that's another reason it feels like a theme park. For an outdoor venue Santa Barbara can't compare with the rich history I enjoyed in Dublin, but it wins hands down for having the best outdoor mall I've ever visited in the States.

Once again our start time for actually working (I keep having to remind myself this is actually a JOB) was 4:00 for a Piano Man sound check. Both shows went very well, and I had a chance to visit with one of the singers in the crew bar later that night. That was really cool, since I got to hear about how they've gone from needing a drink before sound check to actually enjoying their jobs now and looking forward to the shows. And I'm only in my fourth week. I'm excited to see how things are three months from now once I'm really comfortable with the shows and their tracks. I'm already identifying feature elements of each song and getting more comfortable bringing those out without the fear of missing a mute cue.

Finally, my technique of miking the piano paid off and I did end up with a better sound that I had previously. It took a bit of working with the piano player, Patrice, to dial it in, but in the end he was happy, I was happy, and we finally had a piano that sounded like a piano. Now I'm off to find my next challenge...

San Francisco is tomorrow's destination, but I won't be visiting ashore. I've got IPM that day so pictures from the deck will have to suffice. But if I indeed extend my contract to include the Hawaii runs I'll be able to visit there again on the southbound repositioning cruise. We'll see.