Summary – day 23 – Solana Beach to San Diego and … into Mexico! (Saturday 17 September)

Summary – day 23 – Solana Beach to San Diego and into Mexico (Saturday 17 September)

Estimate: 56 miles, actual: 54.17 miles

Avg. speed: 13.3 mph

Final distance: 1,664.44 miles

Our final day’s riding – it began with lots of mixed emotions: we definitely felt a real sense of achievement at having almost completed our journey, but this was rather overwhelmed by a sense of sadness that this particular adventure is almost over.

As we exited the front of our hotel, quite a sight greeted us and immediately lifted our spirits. Dozens of cyclists were out for their Saturday morning rides. There were hardly any people riding alone – lots of twos and threes – and more – and heading in both directions. It was like the San Diego cycling welcoming committee knew we were arriving and had turned out in force to help us celebrate the end of our journey!

We set off towards San Diego and quickly caught up with a group of eight cyclists. They were a section of the San Diego Bicycle Club, out on an introductory ride for new cyclists. Cycling is huge in San Diego apparently and we continued to be quite amazed at how many cyclists were out riding this morning. The group were really lovely, but making fairly slow progress, so We left the San Diego Bicycle Club group behind as we rode uphill and through the Torrey Pines State Park.

At a junction before Rose Canyon, we weren’t sure about which direction to take – ahead on the cycle path alongside the main road, or right on a longer, more picturesque route past the university, through the canyon and down to the bay. While we were stood at the intersection pondering our options, three men in Lycra wheeled up and waited at the lights – so we asked their advice, “Just follow us.” they said. They were friends out for a morning ride through the canyon and they reckoned this was the best way into the city. One was a psychologist, who worked in Solana Beach, another worked in IT and the third was a sales representative for a range of cycling clothing brands – mainly European clothing such as Nalini and Santini. They were all nicely kitted out at any rate. They also kept up quite a fast pace as we were riding. It was exciting to be pedalling hard and fast through wood-lined roads, past University of California San Diego buildings and along cycle-ways back through La Jolla to the sea. After a few miles, our ways parted – they were looping back north and they directed us to continue on south through Mission Bay Park.

There was no let up in the volume of cyclists as we rode around Mission Bay, on yet another nicely-marked route. The park curves around a broad expanse of water. The whole place was very well used – in addition to cyclists, there were in-line roller-skaters, water skiers and people riding on little jetskis. Groups of families and friends were setting up gazebos and readying themselves for picnics, children were running about and playing – it was all rather wondrous.

The route continued towards downtown and past an enormous Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command establishment and the airport. We’d already seen some aeroplanes taking off and coming in to land and Matthew had said: “Just think, we’ll be on one of those planes the day after tomorrow.” I don’t think that was calculated to cheer me up!

The road passed very close to the end of the runway and as we approached, we watched a plane make its descent and land – San Diego airport is notorious for having a short runway and for being so close to built-up parts of the city. Up close it was extraordinary how close to built-up areas and the road the aeroplanes are when they’re coming in. As the road drew closer to the end of the runway a plane passed low right above us on its way in to land. Huge! Loud!! Brilliant!!! I could have stood and watched several more, but watching planes wasn’t the purpose of the day and inexplicably, Matthew fails to be drawn to aeroplanes, (I do think that sometimes he’s not very adept at being a boy). I’ll get my chance to do some plane spotting when we’re at the airport on Monday I suppose.

We stopped at a junction just past the airport and I said “Hi, nice bike!” to a man riding a beautiful white Isaac carbon fibre bicycle (Isaac are based in the Netherlands), it had Campagnolo drivetrains and wheels. It turned out that he was called Isaac, too! He liked the idea that he and his bike shared a name. I liked that too. He’d just been to the gym and was finishing his exercises with a post-gym ride on a loop down towards the Mexican border.

Isaac turned out to be a real star! When we told him about our trip and that we were on our final leg, he very kindly offered to lead us to the border crossing point. He took us through downtown San Diego, via the bicycle lanes and cycle paths through San Diego bay past the Imperial Beach US naval helicopter facility and on to the border.

We chatted all the way and it was wonderful to get to know someone who knew so much about the area. Isaac was a single parent of a nine-year old boy, (Grandma was looking after him today). Isaac works as an ophthalmologist, but he’s hoping to retrain as an advice worker and counsellor. We were cycling past lots of big white salt-extracting ponds when Isaac pointed ahead: “That’s Mexico!”, he shouted. Over a barbed-wire fence we could see a massive Mexican flag on a pole rising high above the buildings, with mountains behind. We were almost there!

As we approached the border, Isaac’s rear wheel developed a slow puncture. His second in the short time we’d known him. He told us that he’d not had any punctured for ages, but now he’d had two in the last 45 minutes. We wondered if perhaps we’d jinxed him and we were a little guilty about leaving him to repair the puncture while we went on to the border crossing point and hopefully into Mexico.

There were hundreds of people milling about at the border crossing. Many of them were carrying big parcels and bags or wheeling cases. It was so exciting. We weren’t certain that we’d quite arrived, then Isaac said: “There is it, right there” and we went along a kind of open air covered corridor and towards a high metal railing with people streaming through wide metal turnstile barriers. We had to walk through the turnstiles and into Mexico by tipping our bicycles up onto their back wheels to manoeuvre them through the gates, but it was easy. And there we were … we were in Mexico. We’d done it … Canada to Mexico by bicycle.

On the other side of the turnstile there was a stone and bronze plaque marking the line of the border. We took some pictures, but we didn’t really have much time to savour our experience or reflect upon what we’d just done. The border crossing into Mexico was teeming with people laden with stuff and our bicycles were causing something of an obstruction so we moved on into Tijuana. We also knew that entering the US from Mexico would be slightly more difficult and time-consuming than entering Mexico from the US. We took some more pictures inside the Mexican border and on spotting what seemed to be the biggest queue in the world, (and being English), thought we’d better join it. No queue to get in to Mexico, but a huge queue to get out and back into the USA!

The border on the Mexican side was frankly unpleasant. Tawdry stalls and unpleasant-smelling food carts. Lots of beggars, (including some children), most with physical impairments. Buskers singing Spanish songs and playing guitars. We spent one hour and ten minutes in the queue. A young man queuing beside us, who said that he lived in Mexico and works in a restaurant by San Diego airport, told us that he crosses the border most days and that today was a fast day!

Once at the head of the queue we were processed pretty quickly – passports scanned and bags passed through an x-ray machine then back in the USA. At passport control, I had hoped to get another stamp in my passport, but I didn’t. I risked asking for one, but I was told they were only given on first entry to the US.

We set a route to Ann and Brad’s on Garmin – just under 14 miles away and set off – heading north for only the second time in our trip, (Vancouver airport to our first Warm Showers host was travelling north). Ann arrived home just as we got there. Brad was away visiting their daughter in San Francisco. We talked and ate dinner then gave our bicycles a quick clean, dismantled them and put them in the bags that were waiting for us in Ann and Brad’s garage. We’ll be exploring San Diego on foot tomorrow, which will seem a little strange, I’m sure.

Summary – day 22 – Seal Beach to Solana Beach (Friday 16 September)

Summary – day 22 – Seal Beach to Solana Beach (Friday 16 September)

Estimate: 79 miles, actual: 81.19 miles

Avg. speed: 14.00 mph

Cumulative distance: 1,610.27 miles

Our penultimate day’s riding. I feel rather sad, really. It’s seems like such a long time and so many miles ago that we were newly arrived and so excited about exploring Vancouver. At the same time, it feels like the last three weeks have gone by very quickly.

As if reading my mood, our departure from Ayres’ Hotel was rather dull and grey this morning. Matthew wanted a picture of the ’12-lane highway’ that we cycled over last night. While he was taking the picture, I counted the lanes – and actually there were 14 + 2 hard shoulders! That’s the San Diego Freeway for you. Looking at the cars whizzing by on it last night in the dark reminded me of a scene in the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi, (directed by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass). The film is a kind of mesmerising tone poem without any narrative, but full of arresting images of natural landscapes contrasted with cityscapes. I remember seeing it when it was released, I was living in Leeds and becoming more radical by the week at that time I think. Anyway, it’s a wonderful film – highly recommended.

We wound our way back to the coast and passed a huge Boeing space plant – exciting! It seems a little extraordinary to be beside a Boeing factory – I come from Newcastle in north-east England, we’re not supposed to be at the Boeing space plant just south of Los Angeles! On the coast itself, a wide bicycle track took us south, along with dozens of other cyclists – most on Lycra, in groups doing their Friday morning exercises. It always inspires confidence to see lots of other riders out on the road. It obviously makes us all much more visible to motorists, so everyone just feels safer. Two young men rode alongside us for a while and complimented us on our jerseys – they said that we “looked cool” (*glow*), and wanted to know where our cycling kit came from. We told them about Rapha and they seemed quite excited about it all being available in the USA through rapha.cc – I thought that perhaps we should be on commission – or even sponsored, really. Although these two fellows might be a little less enthusiastic when they see how much Rapha gear costs!

The path by the beach was fantastic, it ran parallel with Pacific Coast Highway and went on for miles. In Huntington Beach there were some odd cyclists’ warning signs telling us to limit our cycling speed to 10 mph. First, that’s ridiculously slow and second, how are the vast majority of cyclists without speed gauges ever going to be able to know what speed they’re travelling at? We ignored the speed limit and hoped we would’t be stopped – Garmin was showing that we were averaging over 14 mph … I was a little concerned that he might be taken and used in evidence against us.

On into Newport Beach and Laguna Beach – strange places really; beautifully manicured, (universally by Hispanic labourers by the looks of things), pretty and prosperous town centres, (where almost everyone was white) and every half a mile or so another gated community entrance, some with little sentry boxes guarding the entrances (staffed by you-know-who). It creeped me out a bit and we were glad to get past all that wealthy racist paranoia. Who are the people who live in these of places? What on earth are they afraid of or hiding from? I just don’t get it I’m afraid.

San Clemente seemed a little bit more down to earth and we were planning our lunch stop there as it was at about 40 miles in. Unfortunately, the way-marked, quiet cycling route completely bypassed the town centre where all the shops and cafés were. By the time we’d realised this, we were well through the town to the far side – we didn’t particularly want to double back and so we hoped for another opportunity to stop and refuel later on.

Old Highway 101 still exists in many places along this part of the coast, but almost all of the motorised traffic travels on the San Diego Freeway. This leaves cyclists and pedestrians with a very pleasant route. After a short while we came across another ghost bike (our third on this trip), in memorial to another fallen cyclist. In addition to the white bike, there were some cycling jerseys attached to the fence and scores of cyclists’ bidons (water bottles), suggesting this was a memorial to a racing cyclist. It was sad to see. The bidons hanging around the bike reminded us of the candles that people light in Catholic churches in front of statues of the saints.

Along the road we came to San Onofre State Beach Park, (a national park open to the public at the agreement of the US marines, as it occupies military land). The road followed a long narrow strip between the sea and the freeway. All the way along the park were picnic benches, fire pits, toilets and shower blocks. A lot of people were camped there, it looked like a popular surfers’ destination. The park eventually came to an end and the road stopped but became a paved cycle track where only cyclists could proceed through narrow pinch-points. Our route continued along a fantastic, (if slightly desolate) path that weaved alongside and under the freeway. After a few miles the cycle path ended abruptly … and near to a freeway entrance.

We were bracing ourselves for a hair-raising bit of riding along the freeway, when two local cyclists came past us. They told us that if we had ID with us we could take a safer, more pleasant route to Oceanside through Camp Pendleton, the base of the United States Marine Corps. What’s a (gay) cycling man to do in such circumstance? Ride on the heavily trafficked freeway or avail himself of the opportunity to ride through a marine corp base and gawp at soldiers? We took the very sensible advice of the couple of cyclists of course and headed for the camp … and the marines!

We had to show our passports at the Camp Pendleton guardhouse and the soldier on duty seemed a little hesitant about letting us through … He left us for a few minutes to get some advice, then returned and allowed us to proceed – with warnings about our not being allowed to cycle through the base after sunset. What a cheek! It was 4 o’clock and sundown is at about 7. Anyone would be more than capable of riding the six miles or so through the camp in three hours! Rather than make that point, we were very polite and English, thanked him and set off. That was a rather worrying moment though – the only other road was the Freeway and although it was possible to cycle on it at this point, it looked horrendous and we really didn’t fancy it. I would have liked to have taken some pictures of Camp Pendleton too, but I didn’t want to risk a gaol sentence this far into our journey!

On the other side of Camp Pendleton, we stopped in Oceanside (about 15 miles from Solana beach). We’d missed lunch, so were feeling very hungry by now. We had coffee and some cake (naturally) in a lovely old-fashioned 60s-era diner. Then the final fairly well-populated stretch along the coast, through Carlsbad (home to Legoland California – I wasn’t allowed to go), past lagoons, lovely beaches, people out running, (three men, wearing only short-shorts and running shoes were a highlight in Cardiff by the Sea!), and into Solana Beach and the Courtyard hotel.

The receptionist ‘upgraded’ us to a ‘club’ room, (this is how they deal with the fact that they’ve just given the room you’ve booked to someone else in America – they make a virtue about giving you something better for free, while omitting to mention that they don’t have what you want). Anyway, we’re not complaining – it’s huge – with a massive jacuzzi in the room. We worked out how to fill and turn on the jacuzzi, (more difficult than might be expected), dived in, splashed about, cleaned up and hot-footed it to California Pizza a couple of blocks away for a big feed – we were ravenous by now. We’d not really eaten properly all day because of missing lunch in San Clemente.

Dinner was very good. California Pizza is a bit like Pizza Express – passable food, nice ambience, sweet and helpful staff, (ours was a sweet and beardy-surfer type), pleasant ambiance and not really expensive. So we lingered there for the evening before heading back to the Courtyard for another podcast episode of the Archers.