Two migrants

To my surprise, it was only after I left the Baja peninsular that began to encounter many Mexicans who prefered to speak English with me rather than struggle to communicate through my terrible Spanish. Two of those people picked up their English while living in the U.S. as immigrants.

I met Sam while waiting for a bus to pick up my mom at the Guadalajara airport. White paint speckled his torn shorts and tanktop and besmeared his dark skin. He rambled on and on about the time he´d spent in the US as an illegal alien as he slopped the paint onto the metal fence. He said he did highway work in Santa Barbara for eight years, but was deported after getting in a fight with his girlfriend. I asked him how he got to the US, "Coyote, man," he explained, "I pay two grand and they take me over, no problem." He said he crossed near Tijuana and that it was fairly easy to do back in the mid 90´s. Since then, however, he claims it´s gotten much more difficult.

He seems to have preferred the life he led in California to that in Mexico. The work was hard, but the pay was much better. He did not care for the living expenses in Santa Barbara. However, he also said he regretted spending so much money on alcohol and drugs: "I was stupid, man, real stupid, why I no save no money," he moaned with a grin. Here in Mexico he claims he only makes several dollars a day, whereas he made a standard highway worker salary in the U.S. When I get on the bus Sam jumps on and asks me what kind of music I like. "The driver will play you some nice music," he says, after hamming it up with the driver in Spanish. The driver, while congenial, ignores him in the end.

I met Landi, a sixteen-year-old high school student, while taking a rare meal at a roadside cafe. She learned English while going to school in AZ for eight years while her parents worked there. I never figured out if she and her family were there legally, but she seemed to be happy to be back in Mexico. She said she found passing classes in her native country more difficult. She plans to go to college after graduating in another year. But is spending the summer vacation working at her aunt´s restaurant, where I was eating.

It was hot, I was pooped, and didn´t have the wherewithal to keep a conversation going, but Landi gingerly asked me a few questions about biking, volunteered information about her school life here and in the US, and translated the occassional menu-oriented question for her aunt. She said she doesn´t actually have to correct her English teacher here, althought the teacher often has to prevent her from helping her fellow students with English questions. She´s not sure what she wants to do when she grows up, but seems to be fairly ambitious. I ask if she wants to return to the US, but she says she wants to develop a career in Mexico and then go back to the US, but only as a tourist.

Mexican Road Commentary

After making a quick incursion into Mexico the previous day to buy a tourist card at the San Ysidor crossing, I opted to cross the border with the cars to avoid getting my bike stuck in the turnstyle, then swung onto the walking pathway to avoid the glass-covered freeway cloverleafs that are the only way to drive into Tijuana. Dirty, glass covered streets scored with potholes defined the first few kilometers of the ride. I stopped a couple of times and found my non-existant Spanish surprisingly useful in ensuring I was on the right road.

Though the roads were terrible, cars and buses all gave me a large margin when passing. I didn´t see any other bikers, but once I got out of Tijuana a nice guy in a car sporting a bike rack stopped and gave me a low-down on the roads to Ensanada. He encouraged me to take the toll road, but as noted before I found that, while the shoulder was wide, it also sported many glass hazards, was incredibly rough, and was separated from the regular surface by a brutal rumble strip. I eventually got off on the regular road and found it not that bad. In areas with heavy traffic it sported more than two lanes and otherwise didn´t have much traffic.

That changed after Ensanada. I rode out early, at six. Yet already the road was choked with rush-hour traffic levels and the road shrank to two lanes with no shoulder: a form it would maintain for nearly the entirety of the peninsula. Still, cars were giving me a fair amount of room. It did not make for pleasant biking, but was not as terrifying a ride as some sections of highway 49 in CA, where drivers seemed intent on passing me regardless of the lack of shoulder and oncoming traffic levels, often at speeds that seemed to exceed the 60mph speed limit considerably.

The surface of the carretera peninsulara (the road that goes all the way down the Baja) is mostly good. It has recently been redone and most sections are quite smooth surface-wise. There are two exceptions: inside towns and maybe 30km of road scattered throughout the peninsular that didn´t make the repave cut, for some reason or other.

Traffic levels are for the most-part reasonable. The road will not premit two trucks passing next to a bike. With only a handful of exceptions, truckers inevitably slowed down rather than pass me in the face of oncoming traffic. Sometimes they did so even though they practically had to come to a grinding halt and even though I occassionally moved off the road and signalled them to pass. I don´t know where they got their ettiquette, but it was an impressive display of courtesy. Not all busses and cars, however, follow the same rules. Overall nothing in Baja approached the level of danger I felt on 49, but there were certainly some exciting moments.

Going off of the main road can prove treacherous. In some towns the roads are only sand and my tires would sink in deep and I´d wind up walking. However, I could always anticipate when the ground would about to become a brake. In other areas the shoulder of the road appeared solid, but when I strayed onto it, it proved dangerously soft, almost causing me to wipe out a couple of times. Overall, me and the bike survived, though my gears certainly must have worn more than normal in the face of the sandy conditions.

I did not see a single other cycle traveler during my time on the Baja. However, I heard so many stories from Gringos and locals about all the cyclists coming through that I could hardly feel special.

Almost to Guadalajara

Just a quick update to let everyone (my mother) know that I´m almost to Guadalajara. My apologies for the paucity of updates recently. I just haven´t had the time when internet has been available. I did throw a few pictures up on the flickr page and there will be more to come shortly. Traffic has been busier than on the Baja. It continues to be mostly civil. The people are much warmer than on the Baja, or perhaps it´s just because I´m seeing more of them. More stories to come later.

In Mexico

After a relaxing week in San Diego and in the face of protests from most of my family I was dropped off at the San Ysidor crossing early in the morning by my uncle. Tijuana was a somewhat rough city to bike through with pot holed streets and questionable water running through the street. I eventually found my way out and made it onto the Carretera Peninsular (the road that goes from TJ to Cabo San Lucas). From there a friendly dude stopped and told me I could bike on the freeway. I tried that as I headed to Ensanada, but found the shoulder full of glass and a brutally deep rumble strip. I went back to the regular road and found the traffic levels tolerable. People were amazingly considerate when it came to passing me when there was oncoming traffic. Trucks especially were not willing to pass me when there was oncoming traffic. Often there was enough space for them to squeeze by, but they refused to do so. I was grateful.

I made it down to Ensanada, all the way under the protection of the marine layer, the clouds that move inland in the spring on the West coast. I had a great home stay with Tomas and Carmen in Ensanada through warmshowers.

The road moved away from the coast and soon had me weaving through cactus forests. I found people quite friendly. Many waved at me from there cars. However, the food was more expensive than I had anticipated. You couldn't really find any taco or soup or burrito or tamale for less than a dollar. I tried to eat at least a couple every day, but also bought tortillas with a can of refried beans to calorie load.

In Rosarito I stayed with Duffy, an expat. He cooked me some great food while we listened to Fox satellite radio and entertained me with stories from serving on submarines and in Saigon.

Five days into Mexico the marine layer took off, leaving me with all sun all day long. The cool air from the Pacific was replaced with warm air from the Gulf of Cortes. The enervating heat made biking a bit more difficult. It felt very hot, even though it was only in the low 90's.

I am now near Loreto with another wonderful Warmshower host, actually taking a rest day.

Over the Sierras

Throughout Idaho and Nevada it seemed like I had to fight considerable amounts of wind. Unlike a hill, a biker can't conquer a hill and get on with the day. The wind keeps blowing and blowing and blowing... When Henry in Winnemucca told me the wind might well continue all the way down the Eastern side of the Sierras I determined it might behoove me to cross them and make a B line for the coast, where I heard the wind always blows South.

Consequently I headed West soon after leaving Reno.

To my surprise I was rained, snowed and sleeted on as I made my way up Carson pass on highway 88. I found a couple inches of new-fallen snow at the top piled on top of huge drifts. Luckily the snow prevented the campgrounds from being open so I had a free place to stay, all to myself that night.

The following morning I found another inch of new snow on my tent.

'This will never stick on the roads,' I thought, observing my unfrozen water bottles.
Well, I was wrong.


They don't really make chains for bikes, or at least I didn't have any, so I just soldiered on and tried to get out of the way of the plows. Usually it didn't snow hard enough to obscure my vision, but the snow kept coming down as I biked off the pass. Unlike many passes, Carson doesn't descend quickly as you come off the east side. I expected at any moment to be able to bike my way to a lower elevation and warmer weather, but the road kept flattening and sometimes even climbed. The weather, it seemed, could last indefinitely.

Finally, however, I managed to drop below 6000 feet. The snow stopped, the roadside greened and the trees turned from hardy high-altitude pine to California redwoods. Signs of civilization appeared. I stopped to fill up my water bottles.

The road descended quickly into Jamestown where I picked up 49, started across the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas and finally shed some layers.

San Diego!

I successfully completed the U.S. portion of the journey. I was excited to take a picture of myself next to a 'Welcome to San Diego' sign, but there was none. There wasn't even an 'Entering San Diego' sign. I guess they save those for the interstate, and I was thankful not to have to bike on that. My relatives here don't seem to mind if I hang around and eat all their food. It's a good thing I have such a charming personality.

More wheel trouble

The problem with my front wheel was that the brake pad had worn much of the way through the rim. I had the same thing happening with my rear wheel, and soon after getting back on the road after Elko I began kicking myself for not getting a rear wheel as well. This was especially going to be an issue because my route included an 80 mile section of dirt roads.

Sure enough, halfway through the dirt road I noticed a crack developing in my rear rim. This time I was sure I was screwed as not only most of my weight rests on the rear wheel but the road conditions were especially bouncy and certain to stress the wheel past the breaking point. Lacking other options, I continued biking, figuring that I would either have to catch another ride or walk out once the wheel failed.



I continued down the road. I didn't even want to look at the wheel, so I kept going, fighting the wind as usual and steering clear of the large amounts of mining traffic that kept bouncing along the road. The kept holding and kept pedaling until I actually made it to the pavement at the end. The wheel continued to hold until I got all the way to Winnemucca, a town where I had contacted a Henry through the warm showers website. Not only did Henry agree to host me for the night, but he had a basement full of bikes and bike parts.



Henry on our ride out of town.

He was confident the local bike shop would have a suitable wheel for me, but it seemed he would certainly have one if that option failed. To top it all off, Henry turned out to be the most bike-intensive person I have ever met. His knowledge of bike mechanics was encyclopedic, but he had himself done numerous trips including many endurance bike races. For instance, he biked across Australia in a matter of two or three weeks. He did a bike race in Alaska that follows the Iditarod. It's a 250 mile course and he finished in third place with a time of about 24 hours. Suddenly, my 100 mile days didn't seem so impressive.



Best of all for me, however, was the fact that Henry appreciated how biking all day makes one hungry. He fed me plate after plate of food. For dinner we had a three course meal, then later bought ice cream. Breakfast was huge, as was lunch. I left his home at around 1:30pm but didn't have to eat again until 6:00pm, which is incredible as I usually have to stop at least every two hours for food.

When the bike shop did not have a suitable wheel Henry lent me a 26" to haul with me if my breaking wheel finally fell apart. My wheel made it all the way, however, and quite incredibly. I now have a new wheel and am set for the next leg of the journey.