Over the Mountains

I left San Marcos yesterday and ran down the coast to San Diego. I stopped off at a high-end Triathlon store to pick up an extra tube, and ended up running into some locals with whom I rode into La Jolla. This was especially nice because it allowed me to take a "locals" shortcut that didn't show up on the map, and I was in Mission Bay in no time at all!

From looking at my elevation profile (which tells you how much elevation change takes place between points) I saw that by far the most major climbing would be out of San Diego for the first 100 or so miles, a gain of about 7,000 feet altogether before dropping below sea level.

I stayed last night at the Viejas Indian Reservation. As usual I got in late at night and didn't realize until this morning that the campground had a hot tub, showers, and a store. After a poor night's sleep, these things got me off to a good start this morning.

Most of my day was spent climbing. At one point, right before Jacumba, the road is only a stone's throw from the Mexico border, and there are border patrol agents EVERYWHERE in the area. The terrain was beautiful and completely desolate; the bike route goes along the nearly deserted Old Highway 80, through a dry mountainous country.

The descent I had been looking forward to all day turned out to be the most terrifying part of the trip, as the wind coming through the canyon was so strong I couldn't ride any faster than 15 miles per hour without risking being thrown into traffic or off into a canyon.

When I finished the descent, the haunting wind turned out to be an ally. It hit me directly in the back on the straight run East, and I was going 25 miles per hour without even pedaling. It felt like I was riding a quiet motorcycle!

The only bad part about this stretch was the roads, which were in poor condition. I pulled alongside a cyclist from New York who had just finished changing a flat tire (his third on the day, poor guy) and was heading in the same direction. We rode together and talked until he flatted again, so I gave him a tube and we were back on the road until his disk brake started rubbing. I don't know anything about disk brakes, but still managed to center it so that the rubbing stopped and we could get to El Centro where there is a bicycle shop. We rode the tailwind into El Centro, split a motel room, and grabbed some excellent Mexican food not more than 20 miles from the border.

All in all I did about 80 miles today, and will be staying below sea level tonight in the desert of Central Southern California.


The Mexican-US Border