PowerCycle

11/22 After slacking off in Chula Vista for a week I finally rolled into Mexico today! The morning got off to a bit of a shaky start. When I finished loading up my bike to leave this morning I looked down and noticed that the front tire was flat. Argh. So I filled it up to see if I could hear where the leak was coming from. No such luck. I popped the tire off and replaced the tube since it already had 5 patches on it. Once the tire was back on I started pumping it up to 80 PSI. I got to 60 and the tube exploded. Scared the crap out of me. Fortunately I had a second tube (same kind) so I put that on. It managed not to explode but that left me with zero spares. I checked on the internet for a shop on the way to the border and spotted one so off I went. Not sure how this happened but I missed the road I was supposed to take for the bike shop. I’ll be spending tomorrow morning looking for the elusive bike shop that’s supposed to be in town here.

Crossing the border was mostly painless. The first thing that kind of sucked was the pedestrian turnstile that everyone walking/riding has to go though. I could tell my bike wasn’t fitting through fully loaded so I took off all the bags. Now I have 5 bags, a bike and me to get past the gate. It’s impossible to get anything over to the other side without going through it so I enlisted 3 people to help bring the bags through and set them down on the other side for me. The first 2 guys I asked didn’t speak English but they figured out what I needed so they took the first 2 bags. Then another guy came along and took 2 more through for me. He spoke English and much to my delight, also happened to be an international attorney. I have his card safey stowed away.

Once the bike was through I loaded it back up and rode through a covered walkway. Standing off to the side behind a small table was a guy dressed in army fatigues. He motioned me over and asked to see what was in my bags. So I lifted the first one up and set it on the table. He quickly realized he’d be there all day with me so he asked what I had with me. I told him camping stuff, clothes and food. He asked if I had anything illegal to which I answered no. Then he waved me on. Sweet. 20 feet later I arrived at another gate with a guy standing there. He asked where I was going so I told him Argentina. He pointed over to a button and told me to push it. I looked down to see if I was standng on a trap door, didn’t see one, so I pushed it. A green light lit up and he told me to keep going. I guess this was the point I made it into Mexico.

Next I needed to get my tourist form so I could stay up to 6 months. That was in the immigration building which was right next door. The bank I had to go to and pay the US $20 fee was also right there. I also managed to dump all my change and get it converted to Pesos. I found out later that they don’t have 1 cent coins here which is awesome because I hate pennies. They have 10, 25 and 50 cent coins. They also have $1, $2, $5 and $10 coins.

I was all set at this point so I kept following the walkway that headed into Tijuana. Made it about 100 feet before I got to another freaking turnstile. This time I pulled the bike up on the back wheel leaving everything strapped on and walked through that way. It was tight fit but I made it.

Finally I was in. I opted not to hang out in TJ and set off for Mex-1D. This is the toll road that runs along the coast and keeps me from having to ride the shoulder-less and very busy “free” highway Mex-1. I knew in advance that bikes weren’t allowed on it but I also knew that the police would probably ignore you if they saw you riding on it. Well that turned out to be false. Right when I was leaving a rest area 2 uniformed Federal police in an unmarked car pulled into the parking lot ahead of me. By unmarked, I mean it had nothing in or on it that would give it away as a cop car. It was basically a dirty looking, older model, tan sedan.

Anyway, one of them held his hand up when I went to ride by and pointed to the no bike sign. He didn’t speak English so I tried pointng at my bags thinking maybe he’d let me go by because I had a bunch of stuff with me. Yeah that didn’t work. He did make some kind of gesture that led me to believe that if I went around this spot and got back on the road I’d be fine. I made a 180 and went looking for a way down into the neighboring residential area. I found a spot and rode for a few minutes before finding a place to get back up on the highway. Unfortunately for me I didn’t ride far enough and in 2 minutes I saw the toll booth. It has about a half dozen lanes, each of them staffed with a toll booth operator. One of the ways of dealing with this, from what I read, is to just ride up, dismount and walk on the narrow sidewalk that runs to the right of the booths. Hopefully the people working there would just ignore you. That’s exactly what happened. I walked right though, hopped on my bike and kept riding. Of course for the rest of the ride I expected the police come tearing up behind me and haul me away.

Here are my initial impressions of Mexico: the people are great. People riding bikes waved and people in cars and on motorcycles honked and waved. Cars moved over even when I had plenty of room and when I didn’t have room they slowed down to a crawl and waited until it was safe to pass in the other lane. The roads, including 1D, are pretty bad. They are paved but they are very rough. There are tiny chunks of broken glass all over the place which sucks for me because I have no spare tubes now (lots of patches though). The areas outside the touristy zones are in bad shape. I didn’t venture into any of them but in TJ and here in Rosarito you could definitely tell that this is still a developing nation. There were some upscale residential areas on the outside of town which kind of surprised me. I was even more surprised to see Walmart and Home Depot stores.

In Rosarito there are a lot of stray dogs. They just wander up and down the street looking for scraps. It’s not uncommon to see horses, donkeys and camels(!) on the streets here. The camel was being towed behind a truck while the guy driving annouced via loudspeaker that there was a fair going on (the motel guy told me this). People aren’t big fans of stop signs here so I’ll have to be careful. I had some fun trying to take money out of an ATM and even more fun buying and then trying to use a calling card. My cell phone gets signal but when I try to call I get “outgoing calls blocked”. I have an AT&T prepaid plan which I thought would let me make calls. Guess I was wrong. The ATM had nothing in English so I couldn’t even tell how to get my card read. A Spanish-speaking guy saw me bumbling around so he took my card and showed me what I was doing wrong. The instructions were all in Spanish too but I got through it.

The calling card was also in Spanish but the guy at the motel here speaks English so he translated for me. I guess they have special calling card phone booths here. They aren’t in English either and I’m still not sure how I managed to call my Dad. This not being able to speak Spanish sucks but I’ll start practicing and hopefully get better with time.

No other issues other than I drank a hot latte without checking to see if the water was filtered. I’m sure I’ll regret that one. The motel here was US $25. Love that. Saw some for US $10 but they looked a little rough.

GPX Track