May 21, 2023
We didn’t hit the road until 8 or 9 am. I don’t know which because my watch and the clock on the bike are on Billings time, which is Mountain Daylight Savings Time and my phone is on Arizona time which is Mountain Time but they don’t do Daylight Savings. Anyway, we got loaded up and were dreading the heat we’d encounter since it was already 89 degrees. After a stop for gas, we got on the freeway, something we’d ride for 90% of the day. I didn’t use the dashcam today on this part of the ride because I figured there wasn’t much to see: flat road, flat desert.
We made a few gas stops and in El Central we also grabbed some lunch at a Subway.
While we were eating, a big guy came in, looking disoriented, had a homeless appearance about him, and he went to the clerk and ask him to make a call. The clerk did and the guy sat in the booth next to us. A bit later a fire truck and an EMT ambulance arrived. The guy mumbled to the EMT there was something wrong with his testicles so they took him outside and, before long, loaded him up and off they went.
That was our lunchtime floor show.
Until we got to San Diego, it was a pretty uneventful ride. I did figure out how to voice dictate notes to remind myself of little things that happened along the way so here are some:
I saw another Yamaha FJR just outside Mesa, AZ. It passed me on the freeway. It’s only the 3rd FJR I’ve ever seen other than mine.
We saw a Harley rider with a passenger pass us, fast, and change into the #1 lane just as a pickup did the same in front of them and the biker almost rear ended the truck.
I hit a rock or a chunk of concrete and rocketed it across the other lane and got a quick wobble in the front end. I might have uttered an epithet.
We rode past some huge sand dunes when we entered California.
It was 104 degrees in the California desert around El Centro. I had my cooling vest on and it helped.
There were a couple of huge solar farms and some wind farms. One of the solar farms had the usual panels and the other had rows upon rows of parabolic mirrors. I’m not sure how those work.
We went through 2 check points in California. One for fruit and one for immigrants.
Those are some dictated thoughts from across the desert. When we got into San Diego, the traffics got heavy and fast. I spent many years as a freeway warrior on the slabs of Los Angeles and the old skills kicked right in. For one thing, traffic usually works in packs and there will be gaps in-between them. The goal is to try and stay in the gaps. The other thing is that the posted speed limit means nothing. It’s 65 MPH and the flow of traffic is at least 75. Then there are the 20% who are driving at 85+ weaving between all the other cars in their futile effort to win the race. It’s crazy and, to the uninitiated, it might seem like lunacy but the skill level of the drivers is actually quite high, evidenced by the lack of accidents amid all the crazy maneuvers.
I had set the Google Maps navigator to Friendship Park, the southwest corner of the country, and, through the speakers in my helmet, I got good instructions for finding our way there. The last bit, after getting off the freeway, took us through miles of horse stables, past bridle paths, and eventually to a parking lot by the park, which was the end of the road. There was a sign indicating that the park was closed so we just parked near it with the Border Park sign behind ithe bikes. The parking lot was full, as were the last few hundred yards of the road leading in, which seemed odd since the park was closed.
We got off our bikes and met a man, Francisco, who was evidently part of what was going on. Yes, the park was closed but there was an organized protest. He told us that earlier there’d been a rally there with food, music, speeches and such, protesting the government's policy that closed the park. In the past, just like at the International Park I visited on the Canadian border last summer, it is a space where people from each side of the border can meet up without actually crossing the border. I think it’s a great idea but they have now built a wall that closes the park off that prevents people, who were mainly family members, from meeting up is a neutral space. The protesters, about 50 of them, had already gone past the Park Closed sign and walked out to the beach as part of their show of resistance. I guess law enforcement was involved and there may have been a few arrests.
Here we are at the end of the road.
Before long, the protestors came straggling in. They was mostly older folks, sort of ex-hippie types, joined by some clergy and several people in Aztec dancing attire. I don’t know if they had any impact but they’d made their point.
I took some photos while we were there, particularly of the beautiful mosaics attached to a nearby fence.
We’re were getting ready to leave, when a guy came up who wanted to chat about motorcycles and touring. He’s recently returned to riding, sort of like I have, and we talked about getting back to being comfortable with riding after a absence. He has a BMW is was intrigued by our adventure and seemed interested in doing some touring. I gave him my card, the Old Time Radio one, and wrote this blog address and my email on it for him.
We got back on the road and left San Diego, riding the same route we'd come in on, following the navigator to get us back on I-80, headed for the area of Julian where we’d find camping. Bill said we should get gas when we got out of the metro area and I thought there might be something when we got off I-80 at Hwy 79. When we got there, there was nothing so we headed out on 79 anyway.
Hwy 79 is one beautiful ride and one I’d taken several times in the past, about 40 years ago, on my Honda CB750. The road goes through beautiful countryside and has lots of twists and curves. I was really enjoying myself, keeping the FJR in Sport Mode and lower gears, but, as I found out later, Bill was having a less enjoyable time as he was concerned about running out of gas. We pulled over at one point and said he’d been seeing the “Low Fuel” indicator for a while. I looked on the map and noted that the campgrounds I’d planned to check out were only a few miles up the road but the town of Julian was just 9 more miles. He said he could make that so he took the lead, at my suggestion, so that if he ran out I wouldn’t have to go back looking for him. We got to Julian's little store and gas station which was a was a welcome sight.
I was down to two bars on gas but the bike only took 3.9 gallons so I had at least a hundred mile left but Bill was almost bone dry, taking 4.2 into his 4.5 gallon tank. When he started the bike up it sounded rough and sputtered, a sign that he’d pulled some air into the system. He figures he’d have run out in a couple more blocks. At least we now know the range of his bike: 198.4 miles.
The ride back to the campgrounds was as enjoyable as it was going through there a few minutes before. Here are some videos. (I have to break them into smaller pieces to the limitations of this blogging software.)
The campground we’d seen, Chambers Park, was on the north side of the lake. We figured out where the tents sites were, picked one, and I diddled around on my phone until I figured out how to register and pay for the site. We got unpacked just as it was getting dark, enjoyed some beer we’d picked up at the gas station, cooked up our meals, chatted some, and called it a day. It had been a long and eventful one.
471 miles.
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