The Sundowner

An entry for the Ecotone wiki topic on weather and place.

Art, Lynn, and their two kids passed through Davis today. We had a picnic lunch at the Village Homes green—Art wanted to tour and photograph the development—before they continued their trip north. Art is an ecological designer and on this trip was headed to a workshop on cob building techniques. It was fun seeing them today; it’s been several years.

During 1997-1998, while I was still in grad school at UC Santa Barbara, we rented their house out while they spent a year living in Mexico. Their house is a funky cabin located in a canyon at an elevation about 1200 feet above the city of Santa Barbara in a small community called the Trout Club. Their house has about 40 different types of fruit trees in their yard, solar hot water heating, and grey water irrigation. It was a magical place to live for a while.

We took advantage of the commute. It is 9 miles each way to the UCSB campus, and the way back involves a climb of about 1400 feet. Considering this a challenge, we rode our bikes to and from campus about three days each week. The ride up the hill (Old San Marcos Road) is long and steep in parts but it became a type of meditation.

Some days it would be a lot harder than others because of the strong sundowner winds that set up late in the afternoon occasionally in the region. These are fierce, hot, downslope winds that blow down the canyons of the Santa Ynez range, in part associated with a high-pressure cell over the Great Basin. The steepest bit of the ride, near the top, involves a set of hairpin turns. If there was a sundowner, we’d be in the lee of the hill until we left the final hairpin, at which point we’d almost be blown off our bikes!