Heads Up, Santa Barbara! It’s Clinton : Visit: A little jog, a little volleyball, a big headache for the Secret Service as President-elect surprises crowds with a California common touch.

Declaring the area “gorgeous,” President-elect Bill Clinton relaxed Saturday with a game of beach volleyball and a jog through downtown Santa Barbara that drew a crowd of gawkers and seemed to horrify his security detail.

Clinton, spending a four-day family vacation in nearby Summerland, ran down Santa Barbara’s State Street to the ocean, then along a bike path to East Beach, where he joined in a volleyball game. As he ran along the ocean, bicyclists and whizzing skaters gathered around him.

Further behind was a motorcade carrying police and Secret Service agents, who were unable to shield him with the usual screen of human bodies. But if his protectors were anxious, surprised spectators waved with approval.

Clinton began his jog before his wife, Hillary, who ran the same route. He joined the beach volleyball game as he waited for her to catch up. Wearing a baseball cap and black T-shirt with the image of the two-headed Russian eagle, Clinton gamely swatted the ball with seven tanned men and women in their 20s.

As Clinton played, one woman spectator on the sidelines asked: “Which one is he?”

“The one with the white legs,” Clinton called back, hoarsely.

Twice, Clinton won cheers for batting back the ball over his head while he looked the other way.

Nearby, spectators called out: “Hi, Bill,” and “Welcome to Santa Barbara.”

“Thanks,” he replied at one point. “I’m glad to be here.”

Clinton’s jog came after he dropped off his 12-year-old daughter, Chelsea, at the home of a Clinton friend, Los Angeles developer Lewis P. Geyser, so she could go horseback riding. Joining Chelsea in the ride were her friends Elizabeth Flamming, 12, Katie Lindsey, 15, and Lindsey’s father, Bruce Lindsey, who is a senior Clinton aide.

Clinton appeared at the front gate of the Geyser home. The weather and the scenery were “beautiful,” Clinton said. “I’ve never been here.”

A group of neighbors were standing outside Geyser’s home, located in the exclusive Hope Ranch community, just went of Santa Barbara. Among the neighbors was Jack Miller, 78, who told Clinton that it was his horses that the riding party was using.

Clinton thanked Miller. “She’s having a wonderful time,” he said of his daughter.

He told the neighbors that Chelsea used to ride often and that his wife also had ridden a good deal. “I was 5 the first time I got on a horse,” Clinton said. “I like to ride.”

Miller offered Clinton riding lessons if he moved to California, saying it was a “great way to shake up your liver.”

Clinton’s run marked the second time in as many days that he had defied the conventions of presidential security. On Friday, the President-elect plunged into a crowd of thousands at the Glendale Galleria that had not been screened with metal detectors. As the crowd grew more and more tumultuous at the end of the two hour visit, Secret Service agents became visibly nervous.

But the jaunts seem to show that security will take second place to Clinton’s determination to mingle with the crowds whose adulation he loves.

The family spent the morning at the beachfront Summerland estate of Clinton’s friends Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason, who are television producers.

Their motorcade left the gated community a little after 1 p.m., slowing down but not stopping for the unlucky group who had chosen to set up a vigil for him there.

UC Santa Barbara student Kasey Dyerly had pulled on her sweats and running shoes and arrived at 5:30 a.m. at the barricade just short of the gate, hoping to join Clinton on his morning jog.

Judy Berlardo of nearby Carpinteria showed up in running gear a short time later but abandoned the idea of a jog an hour into the wait in favor of an early morning cigarette. AIDS patient Jim Nissley dragged a big cardboard sign to the barricade in search of a three-minute audience with the next President to discuss condoms.

But it never came. Not even close.

“I really thought I would be able to get him,” said Nissley, who gave up after six hours. “It’s frustrating, and I’m disappointed, but the man needed a vacation.”

All around Clinton’s luxurious seaside getaway, residents were on the lookout for the President-elect. Along shady Padaro Lane, bordered by towering pine and eucalyptus trees, children sold “Clinton Lemonade” and hung signs welcoming Chelsea.

At the Nugget tavern and restaurant, where the new motto is “good sax and burgers,” there was a standing reservation for the Clintons, party of three. A saxophone player belted out jazz while owners Doug and Sally Taylor proudly displayed the $195 tenor saxophone they purchased with the hope of luring Clinton inside.

On Saturday evening, the Clintons went to Pasadena for a birthday party at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for Harry Thomason. No public events were scheduled for today. Clinton has been expected to golf during his Southern California visit, which is expected to end Monday afternoon.