Dibblee Hoyt reveled in motorcycles, cameras, and vexing others, all of which manifested in 1988 on his epic 4,000-mile ride across Russia astride a BMW touring bike. The saga of that trip fused his loves of adventure and effrontery by his wild riding along Russian highways and posing with his bike on the steps of the Kremlin amid skeptical authorities and onion domes.
Dibblee first learned to ride as a young teenager in the early 1960s from his mother’s cousin Frederica Dibblee Poett at Rancho San Julian, where their family has raised cattle since 1817. Frederica let Dibblee, his brother Clay, and sister Antonia, fetch mail from the box on rural Highway One near Jalama — and generally cavort — on her green Vespa scooter. The Hoyt youth took their riding skills home to Mission Canyon and their friends from the Frost, Bottoms, Graham, de L’Arbre, and Forsell families, expanding their play areas from Rocky Nook Park and Mission Creek to the streets of Santa Barbara on small Hondas they rented near East Beach for $5/day.
Thomas Wilson Dibblee Hoyt, “Dibblee” to his friends and “Lee” to his family, began life in Cottage Hospital in 1950 as the son of Virginia Dibblee Hoyt and Robert Ingle Hoyt. His father was a noted architect who designed many homes and buildings, including the Santa Barbara Historical Museum adjacent to the presidio where Don José de la Guerra y Noriega served as comandante in the 1800s. Both of Dibblee’s maternal grandparents were great-grandchildren of Don José.