Our first day on the road

San Diego, CA to Jacumba, CA

87.5 Miles
7222 ft of climbing

We began our travels a bit later than planned. We originally planned to leave Capistrano Beach early enough to be in San Diego by 10:00AM.

By the day before I knew I would have a hard time being ready for an early departure. I couldn't upload maps to the GPS receiver I have for the car and at 5:00PM Friday Chris and I were still out collecting the last items on our list, including a new GPS.

We had a very nice dinner with Ashleigh, her boyfriend Justin and my good friends Craig and Nikki Hartley and they're fifteen month old son Caden. Caden is the last baby Deidre fell in love with and he will always be special to me.

We ended up rolling away from Ocean Beach (after dipping our feet in the water) and hit the road just after noon. We hadn't eaten and sopped a few miles after our start.

I had a good idea from the time that we we weren't going to make our first destination until after dark. I guess it was a good thing to have 'emergency lighting'.

What a day! A fairly crushing route that was shoter in distance than our intended average at a little over 85 miles but with over seven thousand feet of climbing. No small challenge on seventeen pound bikes and ours are nearing seventy pounds.

As our bottles were reaching empty near Buckman Springs we came upon a bunch of parked cars and an event of some kind. As we rode past a tent a woman came up and told us she was running an aid station for a 50 mile trail running race and she filled our bottles. That was a gift.

The weather was perfect though and evev with several stops to fill our bottles, which we plowed through, we made it to Jacumba a little before 9:00PM. I thik we went through somewhere around 6 litres of fluid each.

As we neared Jacumba I had resigned myself to camp food and water for dinner. Everthing we had passes in the last hour had been closed and we weren't counting on anything to eat at the motel.

When I booked the room in Jacumba the woman who took the reservation, Sonia, asked what was bringing us to Jacumba. When I told her it was our bicycles she asked where we were coming from. When I said San Diego she asked where we would be staying in between. When I told her we were riding it in 1 day she said 'you must be seasoned cylists'. I think she really meant seasoned like meat ready for the grill.

At 8:45PM as we rounded the last corner we were greated with an other worldly sight and sound. There in the darkness was a party going on and Sonia standing out front. As we rolled up she said 'you made it'! She had our room ready with the door open and kept the kitchen open until 9:30 so we could drop the bikes, get a quick shower and sit down to a cold beer, 2 entrees each and live music. Here was a totally unexpected slice of heaven in the desert. Funny how the good can blindside you like the bad does sometimes.

After just one day it feels a little more real when we answer peoples' questions about our destination by saying St. Augustine.

More to come.