We left on Friday, Feb 24th, in pretty cold weather followed with some good rain but missed the snow flurries and hail... arriving in Santa Maria, we were freezing cold and found out how badly our rain gear had fared... decided to hang out in the hotel for an extra day and it was a good decision for a number of reasons! Sunday was amazing with green hills, blue skies, puffy clouds, and mostly comfortable temps... traffic through LA kinda sucked but we arrived in La Mesa to meet up with the rest of the group and have our first dinner together
Parking lot at the Radisson in Santa Maria was flooded but they let us park our motorcycles up on the sidewalk and out of the rain... plus they had a most excellent restaurant on site!
Hotel was right next to a small airport... this was our sunset view from the restaurant
Saturday night there was a silent auction/fundraising event in the lobby and they had hired a local high school jazz band to play... we were quite pleased at how good they were!
Weather finally broke on Sunday and we hightailed it to La Mesa to meet up with the rest of the group
Sunset views bode well on Sunday evening in La Mesa
Great dinner here
Cool mosaic tile artwork
Beautiful lighting in the gardens outside
And cool ceiling lighting at our hotel... very Chihuly-esque but I imagine on a much smaller budget
Tomorrow would be crossing the border... we were looking forward to whatever was in store for us in the coming couple of weeks!!
Where’s my…oh, there it is. 
