One reason that the dedicated staff of edhat.com went to the beach yesterday to count surreys was that we wanted to write an article called, "Surrey Survey". The only difference between these two words is R and V, and we saw some of those (RV's) parked down at the beach as well. Surely you must surmise that we were sorry to have surveyed the surreys by the seashore without Suzie. But, that would be supercilious of you to say so.

Surreys you see are the tourist's weapons of choice on the passageway formerly known as the Bike Path (and now called the Beach Way). Surreys are those four-wheeled, pedal powered vehicles with a canopy. According the lore, they make the world fly in a flurry, chicks and ducks and geese scurry, and the stars get blurry (especially if they have fringe on top). In Santa Barbara, they make pedestrians run for cover, especially when the passengers are repeatedly ringing their bells.

Ed thinks that surreys get a bad rap. He can see the appeal of piling one's friends and family into a surrey, and slowly cruising across the waterfront with the wind in your hair. It's like Santa Barbara's version of Midnight Cowboy - and you can take the kids!

Yesterday, late morning, we saw 15 surreys purring by. On them we counted 41 passengers and one small white dog. Our In House Statistician (IHS) tells us that this equates to an Average Vehicle Occupancy (AVO) of 2.73 people per surrey (2.8 passengers counting the dog).

The contest yesterday was to guess the people AVO. Bitchin Bob, with a guess of 2.74, was the surrey-guessing champ. He wins a free lunch at State and A.

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