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| San Diego's Ocean Beach |
One of the mistakes many novice touring cyclists make is to push too hard at the beginning of their tours, before their bodies have had the opportunity to get accustomed to the rigors of pedaling a heavily-laden bicycle all day.
Ignorance is not always bliss. In this case, it can be a recipe for injury and tour-ending disaster.
I speak from experience. In June 2016, in my first effort to cross the US by bicycle (TransAm route, York VA to Astoria OR), I had to beg my spouse to drive down from our home in northern Virginia to bail me out. Four miserable days after the start, I was stranded in a deserted picnic area on the Blue Ridge Parkway, with a huge black bear circling me menacingly. I was bleeding from two silver-dollar-sized saddle sores. The sores hurt so much I couldn’t sit at the picnic table. There was no way I could continue riding.
Yes, I had been pushing too hard, particularly considering how hot and humid it was in southern Virginia that June. But that wasn’t my only rookie mistake. I also was carrying too much unnecessary baggage on my bike, and the weight of the load was improperly balanced, forcing me to fight to keep the bike upright as I pedaled. In addition, my saddle was uncomfortable, my cheap REI shorts were chafing my backside, and I wasn’t using chamois cream to reduce the friction.
(If I had done a short fully-loaded test ride near my home before heading out on the tour, I could have figured all of this out in advance and addressed the issues, saving myself a lot of trouble.)
With this previous disaster in mind, I scheduled a relatively modest goal for day one of this tour: 37.7 miles from San Diego to Alpine CA.
After my brother dropped me at San Diego’s Ocean Beach this morning and we got the obligatory tour start photos on the beach, I pedaled a couple hundred yards to my first stop for the day: an OB coffee shop to visit with John and Greg, two of my favorite University of California at San Diego roommates.
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| John (l) and Greg |
Greg, who now owns a house in Spain, says he might want to join me on the Camino de Santiago in fall. It would be fantastic if John and some of our other UCSD roommates could join the party as well.
Some time around this point, I noticed that I had left two of my one-liter water bottles in my brother’s truck this morning. This is no big deal, because one-liter SmartWater bottles fit perfectly into my bike’s bottle cages, and I am carrying two liters of water in my hydration pack. I just have to remember to buy the backup bottles before I reach the desert in couple of days.
The bicycle path out of OB along the San Diego river was very nice, as was the path through Mission Trails Regional Park.
It was cool in the morning but got hotter as I climbed the hills east of San Diego. I was surprised at how steep some of the hills were and how sustained the climbing was.
Along the way, I met several very nice local cyclists, who provided useful and helpful information about the route. Felt great to be getting started on such a very positive vibe!
One fellow pulled over to the shoulder in his pickup truck to chat. He told me he used to belong to Warm Showers, an organization of cyclists whose members host other cyclists who are touring near their homes.
But he said he quit because hardcore local homeless people had been abusing the system in the San Diego area by posing as cyclists to get free places to crash.
Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished, alas.
The clerk at the charming Alpine Ayres Hotel, where I am staying tonight, told me that two large groups of cyclists are several days ahead of me.
I think one of them is a tour group organized by the Adventure Cycling Association, which I am planning to follow by reading a blog about its progress that’s being posted on www.crazyguyonabike.com, a great resource for tour intel.
ACA (www.adventurecycling.org) is another indispensable resource for touring cyclists in the US. I am relying on ACA’s paper maps and its app to navigate this tour.
Per usual, I have a detailed itinerary listing all of the campgrounds and motels I’m planning to stay at during this tour.
But looks like I’ll already be improvising since the place I was planning to stay at tomorrow, the Jacumba Hot Springs Spa & Resort, is closed.
Ah, well. Gives me something to think about tonight. Eat, sleep, ride.
Daily Mileage: 37.7; Total Mileage: 37.7; 2,683 ft climbing; 4 hrs, 41 minutes total riding
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| OB bike path |
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| Mission Trails bike path |
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| Blimp on the horizon |
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| More hills tomorrow |
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| Ayres Alpine |
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| Second of tour's many good Mexican meals |
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