"Hard to believe and harder to accept ... the CanMexPac ride is complete"

(Author’s note: we successfully finished the CanMexPac ride on October 28.  But I am going to finish the blog and I will be writing in present tense although the events in the post are past tense.  So, once again suspend your knowledge of the events successful conclusion and enjoy the blog).

Two more days of riding and our epic Canada Mexico Pacific border to border ride will be over.  My internalization of the rides completion is tempering my excitement, it is a bittersweet feeling.  But before we ride, we get to spend a day of “rest” with my favorite cousin, Margaret, and her family, well the family that is still home, anyways.  Margaret is hosting us at her house in what is called Newport Coast; a beautiful place with a lovely view of the Laguna Hills and the Pacific Ocean.  Most of this seems lost on Jim though, because he only seems to have eyes for Lola.  Lola is young, blonde, shapely … a Labrador retriever.  Jim is quite the dog lover and Lola is a 3 year old yellow lab that loves to be loved.  She, like labs seem born to do, would fetch, and fetch and fetch all day, if your arm or patience did not give out.  And arms and patience would always give out before Lola would give out. 

Also, as I have said in prior posts, Jim is a car enthusiast and Jim was in for a second pleasant surprise.  My cousin’s husband (does that make him a cousin-in-law?) was one of the founders of American Racing Wheels, and he used to be a sponsored off-road truck racer (Baja 500/1000 and Mint 400) and he still has all kinds of contacts in the industry and in NASCAR.  Jim might be able to realize one of his dreams and get a hot pass to a NASCAR infield during an event.  It was all Greek to me, but I found out what a coveted hot pass is.  Apparently a cold pass is permission to be in the infield before the teams start turning over the engines and a hot pass is permission to be in the NASCAR infield after the engines had started and are running.  It seems a cold pass would be much quieter, but I guess I am the wrong person to assess the value of a NASCAR hot pass. 

In that we were in my old stomping grounds, Dennie and I decided we needed to show Jim a little bit more of the Newport Beach area.  Dennie and I were meeting Dennie’s dad at Fashion Island for lunch, so we drug Jim along.  And then after lunch, we drove back up PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) a bit and drove around on the Balboa peninsula.  At the end of the peninsula, we did the tourist thing, and took the 3 car ferry over to Balboa island, some of the most expensive real estate around for some of the smallest lots you could find.  Then we called it a day, returned back to Margaret’s place, enjoyed a pleasant party that evening with some of their business friends (one charming Italian guy that was in the wheel manufacturing business in Italy, out here on a business trip), and then Jim and I prepared for our ride to Encinitas the following day.

In the morning, we bid our good byes and headed down the coast.  Jim was not able to buy a wagon for his bike, so he was not able to steal Lola and that means there was a good chance that Margaret and I would remain favorite cousins. Whew! We were soon on PCH and heading towards Laguna Beach.  We passed the Date Shack and it did not seem changed in the forty years since I had seen it last or the fifty years since I had seen it first.  The Date Shack was where we would always stop for a date shake after a day on the beach near Laguna Beach.  Pedaling through Laguna Beach reminded me that I was probably one of the few people that actually remembered the Laguna Greeter personally greeting everyone who drove through Laguna Beach in the 50’s and 60’s, before Interstate 5 was built.  South of Laguna Beach was Dana Point.  I used to have a friend that lived on his Erickson 35 sailboat and slipped it in the Dana Point marina.  Dennie and I sailed with him once for a little over a week and sailed the Channel Islands by Oxnard and then back down to Catalina and back to Dana Point.  I could really go off on a tangent and try to relate what it is like sailing into the wind, heeled over with a rail under; very, very exciting, but I will stick to cycling for the time being.  After Dana point, we rode through San Clemente.  At this point, the Pacific bike route leaves Highway 1 and goes through the local neighborhoods with many, many turns.  Fortunately for us, it seems a number of people take the commuter train north from San Diego and get off in San Clemente and then bike back to San Diego.  So we tagged on with a couple of riders and found our way through San Clemente quite easily. 

The next “community” on our southerly route was Camp Pendleton, and of course this brought back some very strong memories.  I think the last time I was on Camp Pendleton property, I was a government employee wearing my green pickle suit.  Yes, not everyone knows but I was a charter member of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, known to many as the USMC. And yes, I am also a Vietnam veteran.  It was very interesting cycling through Camp Pendleton and seeing the hills where I used to run attached to O company, also known as the Running O’s.  I saw where we did weapons training and I biked by the barracks where we were assigned when I was training at the rifle range as a recruit.  It was kind of strange now, more than 40 years later, to be cycling through Camp Pendleton, completely out of uniform in my spandex.  Next was Oceanside and then soon after that we rolled into Encinitas, our last stop before our final leg.  That evening we fueled up at a local brewpub, of course, ready for our last day of riding on our CanMexPac ride. 

The morning dawned bright and clear.  Well, I suppose it dawned bright and clear.  We had a moderate ride so we were not up at dawn, but by the time we were rolling, it was bright and clear.  We cycled the coast through the beach cities north of San Diego; Encinitas, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Solana Beach and Del Mar.  Surfers were out, runners were out; it was your normal sun worshiping crowd in southern California.  It wasn’t too long before we got to our only major climb of the day, Torrey Pines.  I decided to just pedal easy up, I did not feel like pushing myself, but Jim saw three riders in front of us, and we was compelled to attempt to pass them, and he did.  I don’t like to be passed on the flat and Jim does not care.  He has no problem watching someone disappear in front of us. But he does not like to be passed on a hill, whereas I can be content to concede the hill (“I’ll catch you in the flat”).  So Jim got to wait for me at the top of Torrey Pines and then we cycled through the beautiful community of La Jolla. 

La Jolla is a little boutique community just north of San Diego, nice little coves and a bunch of pricey little shops.  We used to go to soccer tournaments for my son Andrew in San Diego, and the tournament always negotiated nice hotel deals for the visiting teams from out of state, and three times we were able to stay in La Jolla, most nice.  After La Jolla, it was on to Mission Beach and then San Diego.  In San Diego, we rode along the bike trail next to harbor looking for the ferry to Coronado.  The tall Coronado Bridge that spans the San Diego harbor is an icon, but pedestrians and cyclists are not permitted on the bridge.  We have to take the ferry to Coronado, which leaves on the hour, every hour.  We got there ten minutes after the hour, so we had fifty minutes to burn.  After some deliberation, we decided how to burn our fifty minutes.  We found a cart selling hot dogs and drinks with tables and umbrellas, and we bought a couple of Gatorades and watched all the tourists walk by.  Then we got on the ferry and headed for Coronado. 

Preceding us on the ferry was a group of cyclists from Gilbert, Arizona who called themselves the Weezer’s.  They had started at Santa Barbara and were cycling to San Diego.  They were the classic Old Guys on Nice Bikes that you find at coffee shops everywhere.  They just could not believe we were coming down from the Canadian border.  Waiting on the Coronado dock for them were the Weezer wives who I promptly named the Weezerette’s.  After a few quick good byes, Jim and I head south down the Coronado strand on a very nice bike path.  Every quarter mile or half mile the bike path would cross a road that entered one of the local naval installations.  At one of these roads, we were stopped for a red light and some guy on his cycle blew right past us on the left almost clipping me while we were stopped.  It got me a bit pissed and we were on a flat, so I thought I would try to catch him.  We were going along at a pretty good clip and Jim said, “I don’t think we need to kill ourselves on the last ten miles of our ride, why don’t we dial it back?”  I saw the sense in this so, I dialed it back.  Jim was also looking for a convenience store to get something to eat but it did not look like we were going to find one.  So, I looked over my shoulder behind me, slowed down and as Jim passed me, I said, “I don’t think we are going to find your store out here.”  But as Jim passed me, and I was looking backwards, I drifted to the right, and drifted right off the bike path and into the sand.  I immediately and instinctively tried to recover and get back on the path, which is impossible when you have a two inch lip to get up over and your front wheel is deep in sand. So, wham! I slammed into the ground and slid along the trail instead.  Damn, I am thinking to myself.  More than 1700 miles on a bike with less than 10 miles to go to the finish and I crash, dang it all!  We did a quick inventory, and except for road rash from my forehead to my ankle (and mostly on my arm and my right hip), I was OK and the bike was OK.  So, we proceeded south, at a bit slower pace. 

Now we reached Imperial Beach and our ride's end was the southern city limits of Imperial Beach.  At the beginning of this post I said my emotions were tempered on our last day as we neared our goal.  I was much more excited when we rode over the Golden Gate Bridge with San Francisco across the bay and the Big Sur coast still to go.  Now it was coming to an end. It was, for us, truly epic, and we were about to put our bikes on top of the SAG vehicle and we were not going to ride the next day.  I was suffering Post Epic Ride Letdown Syndrome (PERLS?) and we were not even done with the ride yet. We rode along the border until we could see Dennie and the SAG vehicle  in front of us, and Jim and I clasped hands and we rode in together, the finish of the epic bucket list CanMexPac ride.  Before we put the bikes on top of the van, we took Bill’s bike down and we posed for a picture; three bikes, the two of us and our missing friend Bill.

                I have at least two more posts to this blog before I complete it.  I want to dedicate one of the posts to our SAG team (my wife, Dennie and her mother, Ellie) and to some of the people and other riders we met on the ride.  And I want to do another post on ‘Lesson’s Learned’, or what would we do different next time, if we were to do it again, and what mechanical issues did we have, what advice would we give in priority order, and the one question Jim and I continue to get asked, “What was your favorite beer?”  But you will have to wait for a future blog for that answer.

                I want to thank all of the people that enjoyed this blog.  I put some effort into it and I really, really enjoy your appreciative comments that make it so worthwhile.  One of my friends asked me, “Marvin, do you have a background in journalism?”  I think that was one of my favorite compliments because I am just an engineer, that also likes to write, but never was trained.  So, thanks and stand by for at least two more posts.