Upon reflection, my last post may have appeared a tad negative, almost as if I wasn't enjoying myself. It's true that when in pain, it's difficult to focus on the positive. Fortunately for both of us, immediately after posting the last update, we had a couple of incredible rides. By no means easy, we put in some big days, including a couple of 40+ mile ones, with some huge climbs, and some super-fun technical descents. Hand in hand with the…
You have a lot of time to think while on a bike tour. That can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon what you choose to focus on. At least a portion of my thinking the past two days has been looking at parallels between what we're doing now and our boat cruising days. I've found several. Along with that, my mind was also partially occupied by repeated flashes of, "What were you thinking?" I mean, seriously, who chooses…
Day two of Baja Divide riding brought us to the Mexican border town of Tecate. This is where, in my mind, it starts to feel real. After a quick breakfast and mug of coffee, we left Chicken Ranch just after 7:00 AM. Our initial destination was a restaurant called Barrett Junction, maybe 10 miles away from where we spent the night. It was there that we hoped we'd be able to have a more substantial breakfast with a second cup…
35. That was the magic number yesterday. 35 steps and then rest. 35 five steps and then rest. That was how we made it to the top of Otay Mountain. When we weren't counting steps, we were playing other mind games like push the bike to the next post, or to the second bush, or to the corner. I'm not embarrassed to say it: we pushed the bikes 90% of the way up the mountain. One day maybe I'll be…
Remember how I said we were going to leave San Diego on Sunday to head towards Mexico? Well, we didn't. Shortly after waking, I found myself overwhelmed with trying to work through a long list of last minute details, many of which were taking far too much time and mental energy to complete. An executive decision was quickly made to delay our departure for one more day, and not surprisingly, Chris and Alisa had no problem with us remaining another night…