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February 6, 1997
San Diego
6 Feb 1997:
Hello from sunny and warm San Diego! Yesterday, we arrived in our last American city. We'll spend a couple of days here working on bikes, doing paperwork and running errands before we cross the border to Tijuana, Mexico.
We rode about 60 miles yesterday, with some vicious hills at the end, but before that, our daily average was more like 40 miles per day. The sun and the ocean have been irresistable, and we usually spend a little time on the beach after lunch.
As we reach the end of week 2 and look toward week 3, I've noticed a few changes as far as bicycle travelling goes. Now, I've never done any bike touring before, so I didn't really know what to expect. At first the extra weight from all of my gear on the back of my bike made the bike impossible to park without the front wheel twisting and causing the bike to fall. My bike has fallen over more times in the last two weeks than it has in the last two years. And when it dropped, I almost asked motorists to stop and help pick it up. The bike didn't even come with a kick stand because the people at the bike store said that it was only "extra weight." Well, compared to the other 85 pounds of gear and bike, the 4 ounce kick stand is insignificant. So in San Luis Obispo, I decided to take my chances with the extra weight and bought a kick stand. Parking my bike was suddenly much easier, but I still have to pay attention to wheel placement, or the bike still falls over. My light blue panniers are already brown from mud splashing on them and from falling into the dirt.
Another great improvement is bicycling is getting easier, especially going up hill. On the first day of the trip, we had a hill that was so steep I had to hop off my bike and push it up. I wasn't used to hauling extra weight up hills and I didn't down-shift fast enough. I thought, "Well, I could just turn around right now and go home. At least it'll be downhill." I stuck with it, though, and now I don't dread hills (as much). Yesterday, we had a hill that was five kilometers (about 3 miles) long, and I made it all the way to the top without stopping every hundred yards for a breather.
We're learning where everything is packed, too. At first when I needed something, it was always at the bottom of the other pannier. I would unpack everything on the side of the road looking for a bottle of sunscreen. Gradually, the gear has sorted itself out into the different bags and it only takes a minute of reaching into a bag to find an item.
So we stand with one foot in the United States and one foot in Mexico and things are looking good for our first border crossing. We're working out the bugs in our bicycles, camping gear and touring in general. The trip has been quite an adventure so far and I'm looking forward to Mexico and Central America.
--jen--
Posted on February 6, 1997 5:44 AM