La Jolla to Mexican Fence to San Diego

January 19, 2013

We said a fond goodbye to Maureen , the manager at the motel. In just a short time we had made a friend, and will look forward to seeing her again. She had described some of the nice aspects of the La Jolla "village", but we felt a need to press on towards that Mexican fence. So we descended through just a bit of the town, and set out along the beach. Down there was a little cove, described as the Children's Pool. Standing around were a number of poster boards describing a dispute over the maintenance and use of this little area. We could not really understand the situation, given how the boards were written, but we think the cove was donated for children, was not maintained, and then was taken over by harbor seals. The seals, anyway, were the main attraction for us. They were sleeping on the beach and playing in the shallow water. Beccause of the dispute, some signs explained how to swim in the cove and coexist with the seals. That sounded like fun (but it was still too cold to go in.)

Some of the seals at the children's pool

Proceeding down the coast, we appreciated seeing the spanish styling of the houses, the lush tropical foliage, sailboats moored, and the various styles of beachfront houses. Some were vacation rentals, starting the little wheels turning in our grampie brains.

The museum of modern art. Zoom in on that sculpture!

Outriggers and sailboats.The scene north of San Diego

A commercial street in the MissionBeach area

Typical foliage of this area. We love it.

Eventually we came to the San Diego itself, and this was a revelation. The high rise buildings are clean looking and nicely spaced, and they stand back from the waterfront. The waterfront has lots of activity, with various ships moored - a pirate type ship, a large-ish cruise ship, a navy aircraft carrier, and many tour boats. It was all at a friendly and livable scale, and just generally looked like fun.

Approaching from the North, suddenly the San diego skyline is there

I think this is the Midway = open as a museum.

Ouur bikes have a good view of the activity in the harbour area

The ferry to the Coronado peninsula (island?) that forms the bay at San Diego

From this point, the Spring and Kirkendahl book would have us cut inland while making for the border, while the ACA recommended staying on the coast. A peninsula, called Coronado " Island" stands in front of the waterfront, creating a bay. The peninsula runs south for about 10 km before connecting to the mainland. So we hopped onto the peninsula by taking a ferry, and then pedalled south. At the ferry lannding was another fun scene, with restaurants and bike rentals. We split a good slouvaki before heading down the bike path with lots of other merry makers. We quickly passed under a bridge that would would have also taken us onto the peninsula, but bikes are prohibited. Plus there is no way I would go on a high thing like that!

Disembarking the ferry at Coronado. There are lots of restaurants and shops on this part of the island.

The bridge to Coronado Island that we did not go on (mercifully, bikes were not permitted). The bikeways on Coronado were mostly dedicated or separate lane on the main road.

Coronado is called an island, but once we hopped over we followed it down to the border fence

Rare bike signage. It would have been nice if they had followed up on the directions indicated with more signs further along.

As has happened so many times in the last days, a cyclist pulled up behind us, introducing hiimself as a long distance touurer too. So we came to meet Matt Cazalas, who has travelled extensively and written on CGOAB. Though Matt is very fit and had no load, he cruised along with us at our 10 mph for a long time, chatting, of course, about bicycle tours. Matt is clearly an accomplished athlete and tourer, and we were glad to get to meet him.

Eventually Matt left us to make our lonely, final push to the border. Unlike even the approach to the Canadian border in Saskachewan, there was no fanfare, no giant warning signs. In fact, there was nothing. Nothing but a giant, inpenetrable fence. With a fence like that, you don't need words. Actually, our first hint that we were getting near was in fact a sign, for Border Field State Park. One other sign, we ignored at first: " Road Closed - Flooded". After a km or two, though, we found this impossible to ignore. for 300 feet the road was replaced by a lake.

The first thing to think about was getting out of there. Have you ever read mountaineering adventure books? Inevitably the adventurers see that they can make the summit, but they know it will then be too late to safely come down. About 3:00 p.m., still not at the fence, I mentioned this phenomenon to Dodie. I said, "do you know what they usually decide?" "Go for it!", she sung out. " Yes", I replied, " But then only about half the party make it back alive". " I'm going to make it", she said. " OK, and I will have something interesting to put in the blog, describing these thoughts" said I. " Wrong!", she sung out. " If I'm going to make it, then you will not be there to write the blog!"

This girl's grasp of statistics is frightening.

The first step in making it back before too much dark was to cross the lake again. At the far end stood two horses (and their riders). The horses were clearly spooked about going into the lake, and were just standing at the shore. We motorboated through. The horses did not look impressed.

Dodie is fearless, those horses are not.

Next we had to make it to the ferry. There is one each hour, but missinng the 5:30 would really put us in the city in the night. A headwind popped up to make a contest of it. We made it, though, with five minutes to spare, though it had required going a lot faster than the Grampie standard.

The Roadrunner. Can Wiile E Coyote be far behind?

In the light of the setting sun, the San Diego buildings looked even more fetching.

On the other side, we fired up the GPS and plunged into the city itself. We had booked two nights at a hotel that stands on the edge of Balboa Park, home of the famous zoo. We intend on spending a whole day there.

Though we were traversing main streets on a Saturday night, traffic was light. With all our flashing lights and headlights, we felt reasonably safe. And indeed we arrived safely, both of us. So here we are, poised for more fun. But guess what, WE MADE IT, CANADA TO MEXICO (with only a little help from our friends at U-Haul, and a ton of motels - oh well).

Night riders (again) on Broadway downtown.

P.s. Internet where we are is totally flaky. So though we are going live with this text, you may see many out of place and uncaptioned photos lying around. We're working on it!

Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 2,484 km (1,543 miles)

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