So, in general, the thing to remember about Santa Barbara is that it is a very thin strip of land between the ocean to the
south and the mountains to the north. It's only about 2 miles "thick" and about 20 miles long from Goleta on the west end to Montecito on the east end. The 101 freeway bisects the area horizontally, making a northern area between the freeway and the foothills and a southern area between the freeway and the beach. Nothing is particularly flat, theres always some kind of hill or rollers going on, but there is a fairly flatish area near the freeway corridor. There is a raised plateau at the southern end of town called the "Mesa", a hilly area to it's west (actually in Goleta) called "Hope Ranch" where the 10mil+ estates are, and another hilly area to the north east called the "Riviera".
There are two main east-west roads that run through the area parallel to the freeway, one to the north through the foothills (aptly named "Foothill" in Santa Barbara, but changes to "Cathedral Oaks" in Goleta), and another to the south. The southern road is the main street through the downtown area, named "State Street". It starts from from the beach, running northwest, crosses under the freeway (for a time it is actually north of the freeway). Once it gets uptown, it kinks and switches to due-west, crosses back under the freeway, and changes to "Hollister Avenue" in Goleta.
Ok, so with a little basic geography out of the way, if you just want to do flat, long rides, you have to run east-west near the freeway corridor. If you stray from that you start running into lots of hills. You can ride west past Goleta on the freeway, or you can ride east out of Santa Barbara, through Montecito, Summerland, and Carpinteria. After Carpinteria, you can get on the freeway for a few miles until it gets off onto PCH, which you can take to Ventura. Most of the group rides in town start from downtown and head east to various destinations.
If you like to climb, there are a lot of good routes through Hope Ranch, the Riviera, and the back roads behind the Riviera. Foothill road (also called "192") is
very rolling if you take it all the way to Montecito. Actually, eventually Foothill ends but the "192" route continues laterally all the way to Carpinteria on different roads. There is a really nice road the forks off of the 192 behind the Riviera called Mountain Drive". This is a really nice lightly rolling road but fairly winding, and it snakes over town and provides lots of great views. This is a must-do ride even if you don't like climbing. Around the same area as the start of Mountain Drive is Gibraltar, which snakes up the mountins to LaCumbre peak, nearly 4000 feet. The road starts at about 800 ft. elevation, so the climb is about 3000 feet, but if you started from the ocean you get the full effect. Gibraltar can be taken up and down, or you can go up and across the ridge and drop down into Goleta.
Oh, I should add that despite the "Santa Barbara" in the name, UCSB is actually pretty far to the west of Santa Barbara, near the westernmost edge of Goleta.
