Just Musing: Boston Marathon Bombing

Well, everybody must have heard by now that there were bombings in Boston yesterday, two at the marathon and one at the JFK Library. Kudos to the police and emergency personnel (and other helpful bystanders) on the ground for coping with such event as well as they did!

I feel a bit selfish, actually. I knew from the news coverage that 'everybody' wasn't okay, so I first hoped that my Bostonian friends and their friends and family were okay. It doesn't mean that I don't care if the people that I don't know are injured or killed, of course. But that's the way it goes; when things go awry one worries first about the people that one knows... then the strangers.

Lots of folks have commented online on the news of the bombing. Many are commendably thoughtful. As expected; however, there are also some callous morons already making jokes and/or making stupid speculations. It's weird how things like this goes. When you turn on the television and see a scene like what happened at the Boston Marathon you imagine yourself in the scene - safe and clear headed and knowing best what to do - a regular bullets/bombs repellent Superman. You don't imagine yourself laying dazed on the ground missing a limp or two while chaos breaks out in every direction.

I spent last Sunday volunteering at the Gran Fondo Campagnolo organized bike ride in Little Italy bit of Downtown San Diego, most of the time within a stone's throw from the finish line. So had bombs gone off there like they did at the Boston Marathon I'd probably be one of the bloody limp-less folks rather than a bomb-repellent super hero going around rescuing others... And that would really suck, no less because my beloved bike would have probably been totaled by the bomb, being parked in the valet lot right next to the finishing stretch. And I can hardly afford to buy a new bike at the moment.

But that's quite beside the point; whoever set off those bombs did their 'message' or 'cause' no favor at all with such action. They hurt and killed innocent people who were out doing good deeds (much of revenue generated by events like this go to charity, and then there were those out to lend their support to others). Even the emotionless ones amongst us aren't going to care what message you want to send with the bombing. No message can justify such delivery method. Retaliation is what you're going to end up getting instead of any receptive hearing of your complaint. Like democracy, peaceful protest is the worst way of getting oneself heard except for all the alternatives. It is frustrating, but it is the only way!

Oh, before I forget... to the unharmed survivors; I'm glad that you weren't killed or hurt by the bombing, but please stop talking about how 'god' took it upon itself to protect you from harm. Whatever 'god' is or isn't it sure didn't protect those who actually got hurt and harmed by the bombs, and I am quite sure that those victims weren't any less worthy of a godly protection than you are. Peace out!

By the way, if you are in Boston area (or were expected to be at the marathon) and weren't injured by the bombing, please go and register yourself on the Red Cross' Safe & Well list.

Also, here's how you can help with the aftermath. 

The cleaning up of doping in professional cycling finally commences (I hope)

USADA finally published its evidence in the Lance Armstrong doping conspiracy case yesterday. For many of us cycling fans, it was a long awaited major punch with a real potential to actually do away with the hideously moral-corrupting omerta that has ruled the sport for far too long. 

First off, my salutations and hats off to the likes of Paul Kimmage, Gilles Delion, Nicolas Aubier, Graeme Obree, Christophe Bassons, Scott Mercier, Andy Hampsten, Greg Lemond and other long suffering clean riders that I had never heard of because most of the fame and news coverage they might have earned were stolen from them by the dopers who, some more understandably than others, chose the ends over the means, results and personal gain over moral integrity. 

These guys did the right thing and had to suffer a lot for it for a long time. Most were shunned out of their beloved sport as 'traitors'. Even the successful ones like Greg Lemond; his business was quite destroyed when he voiced his suspicion about Armstrong's doping. I have been riding my bike 200 or more miles a week since the beginning of the year and have made it a point to never run any red light (well, I did run a red light during the Giro di San Diego last month, but only because I was caught in a fast moving peloton that seemed bent on running all the traffic lights along the way. It was a matter of either going with the flow thru that first red light before sneaking my way out of the group or hitting the brake and cause a hideous bunch crash right in the middle of the intersection. I chose the former). It infuriates me when I see other cyclist run a red light and when I hear people generalize all cyclists as 'red light runners'. I imagine it's the same thing (but on a more frustrating scale) for clean pro cyclists when they keep hearing people blithely say that 'oh, they are all dopers anyway, so the field was always level.'

And thanks to the ex-dopers who have reformed themselves and have came or are now coming forward to break the silence. I've read Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride and Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race and realize that choosing to not dope would have been very costly, perhaps seemingly too costly for them to be a viable option (after all, I've been young once and know how young people often have a hard time looking at things very far into the future). I also understand why a lot of angry cycling fans are now calling for no leniency for those who confess and now tell of theirs and others' doping. I wonder how they (the angry fans calling for life time ban and stripping of all results and prize money and endorsement) think that such a thing would encourage the emergence of any more eyewitness to this doping problem... Real life isn't black and white. A lot of crimes would go unsolved if plea bargaining isn't an option.

With due respect to Bradley Wiggins, Sir Chris Hoy, and other prominent cyclists who are wishing that we would now all just 'look forward rather than back' at this doping thingy because today's peloton is supposedly clean. I digress... Remember why Frank Schleck didn't finish the tour this year? Honestly. It hasn't even been a month since another pro cyclist, Steve Houanard, got busted with a positive test. I have no doubt that PED abuse is rampant in other sports as well, perhaps even worse than in cycling and that cycling is cleaner today than it was in the 1990's and 2000's, but my brain isn't yet quite addled enough to believe that cycling today is now free of doping problem! Frankly, I'm getting suspicious of people who are trying to get people to look away from this exposé just one day after it came out... Is that how people who really want the sport to get cleaned up would act?

On the other hand... no cheer at all to those who still choose to root for team Lance against the world, including all those triathlon event organizers who keep inviting Lance Armstrong, even after his USADA sanction, to compete in their event in order to reap financial gain from his publicity. I don't care if the money they get out of it is then used for worthy charity work. The message they are sending to young athletes and to their audience - we don't care if you cheat and lie and try to destroy anyone who call you out for it as long as you can make us a lot of money - is still ugly and the very antithesis of what a sport is supposed to instill in people. Winning or losing isn't what matter, but how one plays the game. The end doesn't justify the means.  

Related links:
http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/nicolas-roche-if-you-dope-dont-blame-anyone-else-its-your-choice-admit-it-3257272.htm
http://bicycling.com/blogs/boulderreport/2012/10/12/after-the-fire
http://bicycling.com/blogs/thisjustin/2012/10/15/bassons-people-now-see-i-wasn%E2%80%99t-lying/  

Friday ride up Lake Wohlford, Mt Palomar (S6) & Cole Grade: Part 1 of 2

Last Friday I got up at 4:30am to catch the 5:55AM bus up to Escondido to pre-ride the hardest section of the Giro di San Diego gran fondo route next Sunday (had to stop to see to a neighbor's dogs before leaving, hence the early wake up time). Long bus rides to remote cycling routes is the price one has to pay for not having a car, I'm afraid. I'm lucky that there's a bus connecting San Diego to Escondido, though. I wouldn't be able to get up there for less than $10 otherwise!

I had planned on taking off from Del Lago bus station in south Escondido by 7:10AM, though my bus driver was so safe she refused to go faster than 50 mph on the freeway even though the speed limit was 65 or 75... so I didn't get to there until 7:45AM. Thirty five minute didn't seem like much... until a few hours later when the sun started its attempt to melt me into a mushy goo climbing up the big mountain in the heat of noon. At 7:45AM it was still cool enough for me to keep my arms and legs warmers on, though, as I rode up Del Lago Blvd to Beethoven St and spotted the bike path entrance on the north side of the road.

Bike path between Kit Carson Park & Beethoven St in Escondido.

On the left side was Kit Carson Park. Looked much like an ideal start/finish place for rides up in this part of San Diego. There were a few joggers and dog-walkers using the path. Pavement was pretty good, though lots of brush debris that may hide tire-puncturing goat heads.

Bike path along east side of Bear Valley Pkwy

Turning north on Bear Valley Parkway past the San Pasqual turn off (you'd turn right there to go to the Zoo Safari Park) another bike path appeared on the right (east) side of the road. An extremely ill-maintained one this time, though I had to use it since the main road has no shoulder and the cars
were in the hurry to get to work. There was a bit of gentle climbing up the Bear Hills. A good warm up stretch before the turn off to Lake Wohlford Rd.

Bear Valley/Valley Pkwy at Lake Wohlford Rd

The real hills began going ENE on Lake Wohlford Rd, with the narrow road shoulder that were prone to pebbles of various sizes, slid down from the cliffs above. Aside from a couple of semi-trucks that whipped by me in a shower of dust and the dreaded bike-sucking slipstream (I'm never keen on being vacuum-pulled up a hill behind a truck when there are other trucks coming up behind me!), it was a nice 2 miles long ascent on a moderately scenic and pleasantly curvy road. The gradient was pretty consistent at 5-6% until the bridge near the top of the climb.

Lake Wohlford Rd

Lake Wohlford

Lake Wohlford turned up on the right (east) side of the road, looking all cool and majestic, and well visited by hawks and water birds. Alas, the place is now only open on weekends. Beyond the lake were a few restaurants and shops. I didn't stop since I still had plenty of water and the sun was getting hotter all the time.

Watch out for those cow crossings. They're grated irons across the pavement... almost as bad as railroad tracks.

After the lake, I descended into Valley Center and its dairy farm scent. The sun was getting high in the sky and the temperature was on the way up. Turning right onto Valley Center Rd toward Rincon I rolled down the most scary bit of riding for the entire day when the narrow and ill-paved road hugs the hill to the left and drops right down to the valley floor.

Cars and trucks trying to speed past on my left, a huge vertical drop to my right, and the road surface under my tires that looked and felt like it had caught a particularly virulent strand of small pox. The bike bounced around so much that it was all I could do to hang on for dear life. By the time Valley Center Rd finally leveled out my arms and legs felt like they had caught the spell Gilderoy Lockhart used in his attempt to mend Harry’s broken arm in ‘Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets,’ – quivery and quite practically boneless.

View of the mountains to the east of Valley Center Rd (S6)

Naturally I didn’t manage to get a photo of that stretch of the road… As it was, my favorite water bottle bounced its way off to Lalaland some way down the grade without me even noticing. I only found out about it when I reached down for a drink to find a whole lot of nothing being held by the down tube bottle holder. Annoyed, I was, though I wasn’t all that concerned since up ahead was the big building that was Harrah’s Casino at Rincon, a gas station and a 7/11 store where I popped in and downed a 6 chocolate donut package and a bottle of Gatorade before re-emerging with a fresh bottle of Sprite to serve as my second ‘water’ bottle (along with using the restroom and re-filling the other water bottle with tap water, of course).

Water stops at Rincon

I wasn’t familiar with the area, so I decided to fill up at the first opportunity I saw… The 7/11 store was well stocked and has a really nice and clean restroom, though food price was a bit steep. Next time I ride in the area I would try the Rincon Market down the road instead. Don’t know if it is better, but at least I’d be supporting local business.

Jilberto's Taco Shop on Hwy 76 just east of Valley Ctr Rd, the traditional start of Mt Paloma climb.

Turning right onto Hwy 76 I spotted Jilberto’s Taco Shop on the left side of the road that usually marks the start of Mt Palomar climb for local cyclists (from this point on the road goes up at 6% grade and doesn’t level out any until a little stretch just before the turn off to South Grade Rd).

It’s 17 miles to the top of the mountain from here. It was also 11AM and the sun was flexing its muscles a bit and I was starting to appreciate every little bit of shades the road side trees threw my way. A mile or so up the road was the turn off to Cupid’s Castle; the daft resort castle that you could actually spot from the road if you looked for it, which I did if only to mark it as the ‘a mile or so back to the Valley Center Rd junction’ landmark for the way down.

Hwy 76 climbs on and on east toward Mt Palomar.

Turns on the road didn’t bring any relief in its gradient. After what seemed like miles a green sign finally appeared on the side of the road marking 2000 ft elevation. At what elevation did I start riding from this morning? I had no idea! I knew that the top of Palomar Mtn was a bit over 5000 ft, though. That meant I had 3000 vertical feet yet to climb. An icky thought when my legs were already starting to feel a bit worn.

Spinning the next-to-easiest gear on up the road as my supposedly sweat-proof sunscreen started to melt into my eyes. The road seemed to be endless! It was supposed to be only 10 or so miles to the junction… but 10 miles on a 6% incline slope tend to dilate time a bit. But just as I started to seriously wondered if I had missed the turn off to South Grade Rd somewhere in my myopic ‘climbing a bit of the road at a time’ mode, the road leveled out (and even dropped a little bit, just enough for a little recovery coasting) and the turn sign turned up on the side of the road.

To be honest, as happy as I was to finally turn onto the S6 (South Grade Rd) up the mountain, I was even happier to see that the Oak Knoll Campground at the base of the road had a store that sold cold drinks! I was hoping for fountain drink (so I could put ice in the bottles), but they only had bottled drinks… But they were cold, and there was even a chest of ice cream bars, too (now you know why it took me so long to complete the loop. I kept stopping to eat!)!

Oak Knoll Campground general store.

Loaded with 2 ½ bottles of drinks (1 ½ bottles of Gatorade and 1 bottle of water) – I would have taken 3 full bottles, but my light backpack was already feeling like the big globe on Atlas’ shoulders – I turned back up South Grade Rd and immediately started suffering. It didn’t help that every few minutes I would hear a motor roar from above and one or a pair of motorcyclists in full body armor would come flying out of the blind curve up ahead.

Here comes another pair of speedy motorbikes roaring down South Grade Rd.

You know how some people can’t stand the sound of paper squeak or metal on metal rubbing? I can’t stand the sound of revving motorcycle engine… especially the unmuffled Japanese-made ones.

I don’t know why they put down a mileage marker every .2 mile instead of every mile, but it was tremendously helpful in getting me up that twisty road of endless aggravation! I kept promising myself that I’d quit and turn around at the next marker… I got to, say, mile 42.4. It’s at the left-turning switchback, so from the up-lane bike lane I got to take the shallowest incline around and the ride wasn’t feeling so bad. Let’s get to the next marker instead. Got to 42.6, feeling like dropping dead, but there was the 3000 ft elevation marker up ahead. Let’s get to that!

This road sign wasn't talking to me...

Now there... why not get to 42.8? 42.8 was at an icky right-turning switchback where the bike lane goes up the steepest line of the turn… but it would be so unseemly to quit just short of completing another mile! No, go to 43 even and then I can turn back! Got to 43… well the gradient must have dropped half a degree since my legs weren’t feeling so dead. Maybe I’ll make it further yet… Mile 43.2 marker; oh gosh, this is awful. I’m not gonna make it! But how unesthetic! Quitting at .2 beyond a mile? Let’s at least get nearly to 43 ½…. You know the story. I actually don't remember where on the road all the markers are, but that was how it went... Had to keep breaking promises to myself the further I went.

By the 3000 ft elevation sign, though, the most aggravating thing about the climb manifested itself… Dive-bombing kamikaze flies that will crash land on your face in their attempt at eating it! It was past noon now (my original 'turn around time') and I had been sweating up a deluge. The evaporated sweat left salt on my face that the flies found irresistible, so they swarmed around my head like a pack of bees after the Pooh bear. I only managed to get rid of most of them by splashing precious drinking water on my face to wash the salt off every so often.

Palomar Artesian Springs on South Grade Rd. All dried up in Sept 2012.

They used to charge 25 cents per gallon, I suppose. None of the faucets are working now. All the levers were removed.

Anyone of you that have heard of the Palomar Artesian Springs a mile or so before the top of the climb can stop counting on it as a source of water refill while climbing this route up the mountain. The levers were removed from all the water faucets. The place still constitute a nice resting spot with its shaded rock wells... I sat there for five minutes or so feeling quite utterly depressed. I didn't know how far I had still to climb and there was now only 2 gulps' worth of water left in my bottles.

(This is getting epic. Part 2 coming up in a bit)

Thinking about things while watching the London Olympic Game

Like many other sport fans I've been spending a lot of time indoor glued to the tv set since the London Olympics started last week. Not that I have any Olympic aspiration, mind you, but it is fun and mostly inspiring watching all sorts of summer sports being played at such amazingly high level.

US Olympic Training Ctr in Chula Vista, CA.

I suppose what drives many athletes and many fans watching these games is the competition and the competitive spirit. But obviously, competitiveness means different things to different people. Is it a cultural differences thing? Some people are driven to beat everyone else, while others are driven to be the best that they can be (even if they don't beat anyone). The two surely aren't the same...

Take the recent badminton scandal where players from the Chinese, South Korean, and Indonesian teams got disqualified for trying to throw their matches in order to avoid having to play a better team in their next round. I don't know if I would call that 'cheating', but it definitely is unsportsmanlike. They were trying to beat the other teams by gaining unearned advantage in the drawing rather than trying to play their best in every game. It is 'the ends justify the means' rather than 'it isn't about winning or losing but how you play the game', sort of thing.

No matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game that reflects who you really are.

I've read some rationalizations that blame this gaming of the system on the system itself, but this surely is problematic. Should we only do the right thing when it benefits us or when we know we can't get away with not doing so, rather than just because it is right? Gaming the system may win an athlete a coveted medal, but, aside from the financial and social advantages gained from 'winning', does it really feel right to win - knowing that the win was obtained in a questionable manner?

Having spent a bit of my developing years in different cultures, I'm afraid that question would produce different answers, too... Some cultures actually do think it a virtue to outfox others even if the outfoxing violates the spirit of fair play. 'The ends justifies the means (do whatever it takes to get the win, regardless of fairness)' or 'how you play the game matters more than what result you get'. For myself, I'd throw my lot in with the latter. Focusing on winning or losing makes one's happiness dependent on others' performance. Focusing on how one plays the game is a lot more self-contained. Natural ability is largely a matter of luck. Personal integrity, on the other hand, is an earned quality, and one that nobody else can ever take from you without your consent. Having both is ideal, but if I could only have one, I'd go for the latter every time.

PS: Since the Olympics vibes on the web seems dominated by the notion of Asian athletes' bending of the rule, I don't think those badminton players did any worse than what the Great Britain track cyclist did in intentionally crashing in order for his team to get to restart (and not have to suffer from being slow taking off the first time). Unethical is unethical regardless of nationality or skin color, and to have the temerity to go around talking about it as if he had done something clever... Ugh! Hindes and his likes could learn something about sportsmanship from Victoria Pendelton and Jess Varnish, GB's women's team sprinters who got relegated out of medal contention for a marginal and unintended rule violation. Everyone goofs every now and then, but it takes character to own up to it without excuses.

San Diego's Steep Streets on Bicycle: Cabrillo Tide Pool Hill

There was a time in my youth when I lived in Temecula Valley an hour or so drive north of here and found it 'fun' to pedal my mountain bike up the mountains surrounding it before turning around for a good hair-raising twisty descent (if you get really aero, you can zoom past cars on your way down the S-curving stretch of Rancho California from Santa Rosa Mtn, for example)... before turning around for second serving. I'm not a youth anymore, though, and, except for one particular hill that I am having a feud with (a blog post on that coming up in a bit), had been avoiding the many little (but abrupt) hills of San Diego since taking up cycling again a few months ago... That was until I decided to go for a morning group ride up to Cabrillo Monument (and down to the tide pool) a week ago.

Cabrillo National Monument with Coronado Island & Coronado Bridge in background. (Jun 2012)

It was great! Everyone was very friendly... and fit. They went up Canon St to Catalina Blvd at so crisp a clip that I was dropped like a lump of slow-moving slug halfway up the thing. They all waited for me at the top of the climb (which sort of made me feel worse. I'd rather not slow other people down with my lack of fitness), and one even rode with me all the way to Cabrillo Park. It was still early in the morning then, and so we didn't have to pay entry fee to get through the gate. Everybody took the 'optional' ride down the hill to the Tide Pool. I took a deep breathe and went with them (I had cycled up the Tide Pool Hill once before on a mountain bike, and it was not a pleasant ride!).

Cabrillo Tide Pool in the misty morning hours. (Jun 2012)

The morning marine layer was in, so the view was more mystical than spectacular. I stopped on the ledge of the tide pool and took out my camera to stalk the lone white egret fishing on the shore, figuring to hang around for a while while my super fit fellows did what super fit fellows do, repeatedly sprinting up and coasting back down that icky long 7% grader for fun, when one of the fellows good-naturedly asked me how many repeats I planned on doing. RepeatS! I looked up at the climb up to the top of the peninsula in horror and said; 'Me? Going up that thing more than once just for the fun of it? Are you quite mad???'

Yes, yes, I know I need to shed a few pounds to keep from getting smoked up the hills by folks who dance on their pedals when the road gets vertical!

And so I did... repeat. Hahaha... Well, it wasn't all that funny when I was still huffing and puffing up the spine of Pt. Loma. It also didn't help that I kept getting smoked every few minutes by cyclists who didn't seem to notice that the road was not as horizontal as decent roads ought to be! At the start from the bend near the new light house the climb is gentle enough, but about a quarter of the way up - just when you start to get a decent view of the coast to your left - it kicks up a percent grade or two... and there is no respite whatsoever to be had until the leveling out at the very top as the road merges onto the park's entrance road. I had to pause twice from sheer fatigue more from the length of it than the steepness.

Up the Tide Pool Hill during park hours.

I should like to blame my repeat climbs (featuring 4 rest stops a piece rather than two) on peer pressure... but I really don't know if that would be justified. I've been repeating up a few nasty hills riding on my own in town ever since. It's a sort of madness that I thought I had grown out of since my Temecula days going east across the San Jacinto Mtn, south through Rainbow into the hills north of Escondido and Fallbrooks, or west up the Santa Rosa Mtn or to twisty Ortega Hwy almost every weekend. I've been up to Cabrillo twice since last week, and repeating the Tide Pool hill a few times (the last two times without stopping, so I no longer have a feud with this slope). Hills rejuvinate you once you get on top of them on your own power!

Valentine Ride Around Town 3: Sunset Cliffs onto Cabrillo!

Part 1: Through Mission Hills to the River

Part 2: Ocean Beach via OB Bike Path

Part 3: Sunset Cliffs to Cabrillo

Ocean Beach is truly the hippiest part of San Diego, and I do mean that both figuratively and literally! Much of the place seems stuck in the free-loving flowery 60's. Bungalow houses with surf boards stored on their balconies, street cafes patronized by laid back sun bronzed locals, cheeky paraphernalia shops, and a healthy population of resident homeless hippies singing protest tunes on their guitars at street corners. You can say that the place is sort of stuck in the Woodstock Era. Riding around town you smell sea salt when facing west and smoky weed when facing east... well, sort of.

They aren't shy here in Ocean Beach!

I love Crosby, Stills and Nash, James Taylor, Carole King, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, etc, but the city streets and scenes don't attract me the way simple nature does. I went walking around the river mouth a bit, said a few hellos to the beach evening primroses (one of my favorite flowers. They're so friendly!) and made a few unsuccessfully attempts at ambushing a rock gopher. Pulled out a granola and started to refuel when a couple of sea gulls shoved by and landed on a lamp post a few feet away plotting for ways of finishing the sweetened bar of health for me. Luckily a toddler on a bench nearby dropped his hot dog bun on the ground trying to prevent his mom from spoiling it with pickles (moms... they're always trying to sneak the green stuff into your food!). The gulls went battling after it instead and I got to finish my snack off in peace before heading off for a mandatory look over the landmark fishing pier and making my way toward Sunset Cliffs Blvd, the region's main coast-side thoroughfare.

The inland section of Sunset Cliffs Blvd isn't all that bicycle-friendly, I'm afraid. The road is narrow, and there are always cars parallel-parked on the streets. Once I turned the corner south and gain the Pacific Ocean on my right flank, however, the traffic eased off and the ride became much more easy-going. It was tempting to go off road onto that dirt trail that people walk on between the road and the cliffs, but that would be pretty hazardous with a clumsy mountain bike to take care of. You never know where the cliffs drop off... It gets pretty unstable close to the edge. You can actually see cemented posts sticking out of crumbled sections of the cliffs that used to be where the paved boardwalk and other things were.

The corroded shoreline is a geologist's nirvana, I imagine. Looking at the cliff face you can actually see where the seafloor used to be about 120,000 years ago from the line, about 20 feet above the sea level, where the orange-ish soft sandstone 'Bay Point Formation' layer (it glows magnificently just before sunset) meets the dark old shale of the 'Pt. Loma Formation' bed rock. If you are lucky you might even run into a fossil or two (though this being a part of a nature reserve, collection of fossil - or anything else, for that matter - is NOT allowed! Leave it for others to enjoy, too!).

Crumbly Sunset Cliffs

Toward the southern end of the road are two 'landmarks', so to speak; the arch and the hole. I'm afraid you'll have to dismount and walk onto the cliffs a bit to see them. The latter is easy to find now that the city had put chain-linked fence around it. It sort of ruined the view, though I can't argue with the rationale. With such spectacular view around you it would be easy for people to step right into the huge sink hole and become part of the scene rather than just its admirer. I mean, it would be quite bad enough to fall into an open manhole while walking downtown. If you fall down this particular hole on the cliffs you might just get washed off all the way to China on an extra-strong rip current... or something like that.

At the end of Sunset Cliffs Blvd I had some not very nice options to make; retrace to Hill St and ride up that murderous slope to Catalina Blvd that runs along the crest of the Pt. Loma Peninsula, or drag my mountain bike up this short but pretty steep hill along the dirt path to the Nazarene University in the distance. Being averse to retracing (and uphill riding, when it comes to that) I went for the latter and scrambled my way up the hiking trail.

Sunset Cliffs Park and its many trails

A nearly regrettable decision, as it turned out. The hill was way steeper than it looked from below, and the bike was a most uncooperative partner in crime ever! And when we finally got to the parking lot at the end of it, there was still this quad-busting wiggly hilly pre-crested part of Lomaland Drive to pedal up. A college dude walking down the hill to collect his car gave me a smirk and urged me to ride faster. I would run him over, but didn't want to have to pedal back up the ground I had already lost my breath laboring over. So here I'll let a smiley do it for me by proxy...

The Cross and the Theosophy style building at Nazarene University and southbound on Catalina Blvd.

The Nazarene University is really a beautiful campus! It used to be the hotbed of the theosophy movement in the early 1900's. The Theosophical Society of America had its headquarters here before its leader, Madame Katherine Tingley, crashed out from a car accident and the society migrated north to base in Los Angeles instead. Alas, the unique Theosophist Hotel and the Temple of Peace were not preserved. Where the temple used to sit now stands the Church of the Nazarene... From Palestine to the Lomaland, people really like to build their churches/mosques/temples on top of the others'!

After spending a few minutes catching my breath by the ocean-overlooking cross, I cruised down the hill to pick up Catalina Blvd and headed south to the biggest attraction on my cycling hit list: Cabrillo National Monument. Most of the tip of Pt. Loma peninsula belongs to the navy. After passing SPAWAR and the barracks the road is flanked by the white-specked green lawns that make up Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery. It's been the final resting place of America's fallen soldiers since the battle of San Pasqual in our 1846 war to claim California from Mexico.

Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery

On a clear day here you could see almost forever in many dimensions. There is hardly a better spot in town to sit in the view and reflect... and when you get bored you can always walk around checking out the headstones and their markings. The Christian interns have got a cross on theirs, and the Jews the star of David. There are a few other markings for those who didn't belong to either, though. There was even one that had a flower carving on it... I wondered if that was a Pagan?

But I loitered and the afternoon wore on! Back on the road into Cabrillo National Monument. It costs $5 to go through in a car nowadays, and $3 for each cyclist and hiker. The ticket is good for multiple entrances for the next 7 days, though. A great deal for a whole lot of history and marvelous views!

I had already visited the Cabrillo Monument many times, so I went straight down the hill to the famous Cabrillo tide-pools instead (I used to come up here by bus, which made tide-pooling here very inconvenient. It's a long downhill walk to the shoreline and the hike back up to the top is hideous!). Winter is the best time to tide-pool around here since low-tide tends to occur in the early afternoon instead of at night like it does during the summer months. Want a sneak peak at the tide-pools? Check out the park's webcams!

Downtown San Diego from Shelter Island

I huffed and puffed my way back up to Cabrillo Monument at 4PM, an hour before the park closed. Huffed and puffed some more up the more manageable hill back north on Catalina Blvd. Luckily, once you've crested just a bit north of Ft. Rosecrans Cemetery it is all downhill from there... A really rewarding cruise down twisty Canon Rd down to Rosecrans Blvd, and a scenic little side trip onto Shelter (not-an-island) Island for a beautiful view of Downtown San Diego, then a leisurely ride along the Embarcadero bike/hike way into Downtown rid me of the remainder of those tummy-friendly chocolate bars (there are always tons of homeless lazing around the waterfront during the day). 

My sporty readers will forgive me for being such a wimp after 28 miles on the bike. I caught a bus the rest of the way home once I got back to Downtown proper... Gotta preserve some chubby pudginess to my physique else I'd have to adopt a sleeker moniker to live up to, you understand.

Part 1: Through Mission Hills to the River

Part 2: Ocean Beach via OB Bike Path

Part 3: Sunset Cliffs to Cabrillo

Valentine Ride Around The Town: 1 - Through Mission Hills to the San Diego River

Part 1: Through Mission Hills to the River

Part 2: Ocean Beach via OB Bike Path

Part 3: Sunset Cliffs to Cabrillo

I don't have a sweet tooth. My entire set of teeth is glucophilic! The candies aisle at the grocery store is the bane of my sugary existence. It should then come as no surprise that I woke up on Valentine morning practically surrounded by the varieties of chocolate bars acquired from my many raids to the local stores and sweet shops over the past month.

Don't blame me. My guardian angel is the tooth fairy!

What to do with such a guilt-betraying horde of mellifluous theobromic nibblers? I looked out the window at the delightfully rainless Southern Californian sky above and the dustily idle mountain bike below - the very machine that I had spent the dollars that should have facilitated my encore encounter with Lise Lindstrom's delicious Salome upon - and the answer came to me in a whiff of hyperactive imagination: Off on that bike goeth thou, ye Smorg, and return not until the last of those blasphemously tasty chocolate bars has been passed along to others more in need of their richly psyche-soothing extra sweet calories than fat-bottom-you do!

And so began my ambitious Valentine's Day epic sugar-freeing bike ride. Being a slow slugger that I am, I opted for the path of least resistance and headed northwest (down the hill, of course) toward the beautiful uptown community of Mission Hills, at the bottom of which lies the closest access point from my humble abode to the beautifully flat Ocean Beach Bike Path.

Pioneer Park gravestones

Having taken off at the hour where the more industrious residents of San Diego had all completed their morning rush to work, the traffic was accommodatingly light. I rolled through Mission Hills so smoothly that I decided to take a short detour from the route to pay a visit to Pioneer Park and its row of old gravestones. A lot of names interned there turn up at various Old Town museums. I don't know why, but the priests were all lumped up in one corner... Perhaps to confine posthumous ecclesiastical discussions there and allow the rest of the interns true peace?

Mission Hills is a really great neighborhood to stroll or ride around in. The stately old-moneyed craftsman mansions, bungalows, and various revival houses framed by green shrubs and manicured lawns. A car passes through every few minutes instead of in a constant torrent. I headed west on Ft. Stockton Rd, veering onto the laid back San Diego version of Sunset Blvd just as two red-shouldered hawks low-dove over the road into a yard nearby. One popped back out empty taloned, but the other escaped into a tall fir carrying someone's lunch in its beak. Naturally I don't have a photo of it... These hawks are so fast and quiet they're always apparating out of thin air just when I couldn't spare a hand to fish out the slow-acting camera! 

View as you turn the last curve on Sunset Blvd in Mission Hills

Mission Hills has many rustic side-streets worth exploring on bike, but the day had grown a bit older and the ocean beckoned, so I stayed on Sunset Blvd, making for the straightest path to my destination. Entering the last curve there is an awesome view to be had if you are on foot or bike (you lazy buggers going 'round in cars will just have to go park a bit away and walk back to the curve to catch this, I'm afraid. The road is narrow and marked fire-lane red all the way).

And then, of course, there is Juan Street... A decade or so ago I would have had enough of the dare-devil left in me to fly down this steep stretch of paved slope like an aerodynamic roadkill waiting to happen. Alas, I have survived enough close-calls to know that even a hardiest cat do run out of lives after so many encounter with what old Maverick famously characterized as 'the need for speed.' 

Looking down Juan St toward the San Diego River.

Besides, there's a stop sign before the bottom of the hill right where Heritage Park and the Mormon Battalion are... These are relatively busy tourists attractions, so any unsightly spill would likely be photo-documented by one or a few of the camera-toting folks and end up on Youtube where indiscretions go to spend the rest of eternity being replayed for the amusement of others long after crash wounds have faded into scars. I screeched to a complete halt right on the intersection line and hobbled in to the MoBatt to entrusted a few Valentine goodies to Sister Nächstenliebe to pass along among her fellow resident missionaries before escaping from another 'would you like to have another discussion' to my adamantly religion-free bicycle.

Juan Street forms the northern boundary of Old Town State Park, and just a couple of blocks' worth to the west lies Old Town Transit Center and its many bus terminals and trolley station... quite a temptation for soft-bodied Smorg to cut the trip short and hop a bus home in time for lunch! But you'd be proud of me; I prodded on and turned right (east) onto Taylor St to be rewarded with a largely empty road that made the transition onto Morena Blvd less nerve-racking as it could have been (cyclists have a way of ending up in the evening news when we try to make a left turn at a major intersection while surrounded by California drivers!). On the right side of the road just past the I-8 overpass was the entrance to Ocean Beach Bike Path. I've made it to the river!

Unfortunately it is now dinner time and I'm too exasperated by the computer's malfunctioning keyboard to continue typing. Will have to pick this up later! 

An Accidental Hike Up Mission Trail Regional Park

Writing about opera and classical music all the time gets to be pretty tiring after a while, so occasionally I lapse onto other odd topics. One of the recent projects was to be an article about the pedestrian bridges of San Diego... Was, because I hadn't realized just how numerous pedestrian bridges are in this city!

When you google 'pedestrian bridge' and 'San Diego' you usually just keep running into a few well written about bridges: the canyon-spanning pedestrian bridges at Quince St, Spruce St, and Vermont Ave in Uptown area. And then there are a couple of recent news articles about the still-not-finished-yet new fancy suspension bridge linking Petco Park to San Diego Convention Center across Harbor Drive in downtown. A very knowledgeable fire-fighter friend of mine pointed me to a few more bridges, and a couple of hours spent on Google Earth poring over freeways and canyons found several more. In fact, I've identified so many pedestrian bridges now that I'm no longer very keen on writing about all of them.... Perhaps just the more interesting ones.

Clockwise from top-left: 1. Vermont St Bridge from Washington Ave; 2. Hollywood Canyon Bridge; 3. Scripps Crossing at UCSD Institute of Geophysics; 4. Harbor Drive Bridge; 5. Omni Hotel Skywalk; 6. Mary Augustine Bridge at Sweetwater Reserve; 7. Quince St Bridge; 8. Spruce St suspension bridge.

But, anyhow, in the midst of my bridge-hunting spree I found one via Google Earth where I didn't quite expect - at the eastern terminus of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard in Tierrasanta area. I thought I knew that road quite well, having kept an apartment right at a corner of that road and I-805 for nearly two years back in the mid 90's, and never knew about it. So when I spotted a 'dry' day in the middle of uncharacteristically rainy October, I hopped on the buses and the trolley up to Tierrasanta to check it out (of course I always check this sort of thing out in person before writing about it! If I retained any lesson from my medical career days, it is that I have absolutely no luck at all when it comes to getting away with bullshitting about stuff I don't know enough about. There are plenty of smarter people who would love to shine light on all the things I should have known about but hadn't taken the trouble to learn... in front of a group of very intellectually intimidating audience).

Tierrasanta is not well served by bus. There is no bus service on weekend, and only hourly ones on weekday. I left my pad in the eastern part of Chula Vista at 4:40AM and made it all the way up to Kearny Mesa Complex by 6AM (I was astounded! Would have expected a 2 hrs transit since I had to catch 2 buses and one train to get there). The first bus into Tierrasanta (holyland in Spanish?) didn't take off until 7AM, though, so I raided the McDonald's nearby for breakfast. It is a very impressive McDonald's... It even has a library area with leather couches and shelves of books and magazines you can read while waiting for your bus! (Thinking further about it, maybe that doesn't reflect quite well on bus service here that the restaurant is practically counting on you having to wait such a long time for your bus that you'd have time to peruse its library. Most of the drivers are really nice and efficient, though. We just don't have enough buses!)

I was hoping for a few good shots of dawn over the wild mountain at the east end of Clairemont Mesa Blvd, but by seven o'clock the sun was already well past dawning... Bus 25 veers south at La Cuenta, so I got off there and walked 1/4 mile or so uphill to the end of the road and was rewarded by a few good morning sun shots like this one:

The bridge spans a canyon separating civilization from Mission Trails Regional Park. I headed across, looked around and just kept on walking... I hadn't been up on this side of Mission Gorge before, so why not explore a bit. 

The main trail was quite wide and well-maintained. I soon spotted a little cut-off trail that heads east toward S. Fortuna Mtn, though. It looked invitingly off-the-beaten-path, so I veered off onto it. Went down a gully, across a little wooden bridge, and up a steep little hill with rough steps marked by logs and sand bags. You know... I'm still just young enough to remember the painfree agile days when I would have had a blast storming up and down these. Nowadays they serve as good reminders of the reason why I need my third leg.

A few forks up the trail with the sun racing up the aging morning and I was up on top of a ledge checking my water supply and having a good look around (while stalling for breath). Something moved in the valley below... I had a look and thought it was one of those cute deers looking to nervously cross the trail in search of greener pasture. That was when the thing broke into a very canine-like jog. It wasn't a hoofer at all, but one of Mission Trails' resident cayotes. I wish he had ran my way to say hello, but cayotes aren't very well-liked in this town (they have a bad habit of having neighborhood pets for lunch, dinner, and even snack).

I took off on a trail toward the Fortuna Saddle (Fortuna is a long mountain with two summits on either end of a saddle)... and then must have taken a wrong turn somewhere (they don't always put direction signs on trail junctions here) as, an hour later I found myself on the 'Rim Trail' instead, heading north parallel to the mountain instead of toward it. Said a few not very holy words since by then much of the sole of my shoes had been de-grooved from climbing up the rough loose-pebbles trail surface. My water is more than half gone and it was getting sunny and hot.... And I hadn't spotted even a hawk! 

But then I remembered that I hadn't set out to hike any mountain at all... I was only going to check out a pedestrian bridge, and that was done a long time ago. And so, having talked myself into not beating myself up over having gotten on a trail to nowhere, I had some fun looking around and taking another round-about trail back. There's some good views to be had on the Rim Trail, too. One of these days I might persuade myself up the mountain again and actually getting to one of the summits...  But for now, here is a slide-show/video summary of the hike, pretty much:

I gather this place would look even more inviting in the spring months when the flowers are blooming... If you like the music, it is the finale from Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier from a 2004 performance at Zurich Opera. Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Zurich Opera Orchestra. Nina Stemme (Die Marschallin), Vesselina Kasarova (Octavian), and Malin Hartelius (Sophie) did the singing. A great DVD of the show is commercially available!

A foggy little heatwave...

Greetings from Didacus the Saintly on the southern shore of California. We've been having a heatwave again with summerly temperature, so I hopped on bus 901 yesterday morning hoping to catch some breezy relief at the beach. I toted the camera with me, of course, looking to catch some good beach photos to adorn my AC beach articles with... Unfortunately, the cooler weather on the waterfront yesterday was made possible by the as-stubborn-as-the-sticky-chewed-gum-under-your-shoes marine fog. This....

... was downtown looking particularly shady from the Coronado Bridge at around 10AM. Even Hotel Del Coronado looked rather less than impressive when you can't see for more than a city block ahead, so I bypassed it and went straight down to Silver Strand State Beach right south of the Navy SEALs' training facility. This is the thin stretch of sand bar that connects Coronado to the mainland, of course. There isn't a windbreak anywhere, and so smart people tend to stay off it when the weather gets like this.

I've been out of school long enough to no longer qualify as smart, though, so I practically owned that beach yesterday morning... along with a few least terns and sprinting godwits (there's one in the center of the photo below).

After a while I gave up and caught another bus 901 south looking to catch a northbound Blue Line trolley back to downtown from Iris Ave Station... but then I figured that the day was still young (and somewhat sultrily smoky), so I hop on a bus 934 and headed for Imperial Beach instead....

Stopping at Tijuana River Estuary on the way there. On a clear day you could see into Tijuana, Mexico from the visitor center. But this day was obviously anything but clear, so I went around trying to catch some rare birds on the salt marsh.

There weren't many, to be sure, but I did run into this flock of white crowned sparrows occupying a bush on a hiking trail...

And this egret was roaming around all by himself in the middle of the marsh.... making me wish for a proper high zoom camera than this point and shoot Kodak.

The Estuary is just a few blocks south of Imperial Beach fishing pier, and that was where I headed next, still looking to bag some good beach photos. 
 They say you should be able to see the high rises of downtown's Columbia District from the tip of the pier (with red-roofed Hotel Del in front of them to boot), but, 2 hrs and a basketful of fish and chips later,

that gray curtain was still hanging over the island. I pointed my cameras at the surfing locals out of sheer frustration. There were a few good surfers there, though the waves weren't that big, I think.


 
So... after all the exertions... no spectacular beach photos for yours truly, though I was very happy to visit the Tijuana River Estuary. Now if I could just find the wit to write all the places up properly...