Category Archives: USA

bikes, city, MTB, travel, USA

SD Zoo & two more rides

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The day off from sightseeing today – I get a bit sick of it & today’s early start hasn’t helped my energy levels (it may have been the three hour well-paced ride this morning). Yesterday I went off to the renowned San Diego Zoo nice & early. I’m not much of an animal person, but it’s a great place & it exceeded my expectations. Particular highlights were the reptile house & all the snakes, lizards & komodo dragon.

Also, was pleased to see a different kind of pheasant (Malay Great Argus) – the photo is a little poor through the netting. And I spent a good while looking at the kiwi foraging in the dark – I don’t remember ever having seen one so close in NZ (that’s not to say it didn’t happen – only I may have been quite young).

The new elephant enclosure was pretty good – but it’s not quite the same as seeing them roaming the streets in Thailand or Nepal or even going for a trek on one. Giraffes have always been a particular favourite of mine, so it was cool to see some tall-tall ones & some short-tall ones (the youngest being only a few months old).

The gorillas were good to watch as well & a special mention must be made of the polar bear. I have never seen one so playful & active – all the ones I have seen in exhibits (or anywhere for that matter) have looked rather bored. This one had oversized ball to play with in its enclosure. It was a big day of walking & some pretty decent hills in there too – so I hopped on the Skyfari cable car to get back to the top – as you can see it’s a big zoo:

Back home & a brief refuel (for me, not the car) & then off to meet another MTBer from mtbr.com . We rode for about an hour and a half on some tracks that are supposedly off limits (“I mentioned it once – but I think I got away with it”) – not that you would know, we must have seen thirty other riders out there. Some nice rocky & dusty trails up a canyon (interrupted by a brief mechanical – Allen managed to bend a tooth on his granny ring perpendicular to where it should be – this in turn caused shifting problems & then broke the chain – just as well I had a breaker & Missing Link), before we went up a side canyon under a pretty canopy. Quite a nice middle-ring climb with a few technical bits to keep it interesting. Reached the top of the mesa & then we hit one of the five routes down. Really tight trail with very low overhanging twisted trees – reminded me a little of beech forest riding in the South Island. The first route downhill went for ever & it was a lot of fun. Reaching the bottom, we went up the same route & down a different one – this one was even closer & more technical – good fun, but a bit shorter & didn’t seem to flow as well.

As if that wasn’t enough, I was up at 5.30 this morning for another ride (the one that got canned on Tuesday). Drove about twenty minutes to meet another mtbr.com mate. After a bit of tuning (my brakes don’t squeal quite as much now), we were riding by 7 o’clock. A few miles of road before we hit Mission Trails, then under another freeway before we hit the outskirts of the same Marines air base as Monday – this time on the opposite side & well away from anything. The riding was extremely hard packed drit trail with a few ruts left over & the odd rocky patch. Hard & fast. A nice long series of switchbacks to climb a fair way & then the switchback went all the way down – some were quite gnarly & very dusty, rocky & rutty. Started to miss 2.3 tyre on the front when I almost lost the second corner, but no problems after that – just fun. Continued winding our way up the valley/canyon for a while with a few pinch climbs. Reached a gate & decided since it was 9 o’clock, it was time to head back. Big chain ring down a lot of the path back down & really starting to enjoy the rocks. With a brief mechanical stop (it turns out the pivot in Chip’s Blur had snapped) & a couple of good climbs, we were home at 10.00.

Popped in to the SDPD Northern District HQ to try & get my stolen money back – apparently I have to wait until Monday 3 pm when we go over the scene of the crime with the DA & detective. Which is a bit of a pain in the butt, as I was planning on driving to Vegas that day – it will be a late night, but which night in Vegas isn’t?

A bit worn out & not wanting to do the tourist thing again just yet – I drove Chris out an hour east on I8 to pick up the van – which has had its radiator replaced. It got back safely & our eventful camping trip can finally be put to rest.

bikes, city, history, MTB, travel, USA, vehicles

A car, a ride & a few museums

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Hopefully a quick update before bed tonight – it was a restless night & early morning. Yesterday was pretty uneventful – read a bit of Mark Twain (thought I better start one day), picked up my rental car – it’s a black Dodge Avenger that easily swallows the bike in the trunk (which is the main thing of course), has some interesting build quality & unfortunately for the size of it, is underpowered (2.4) & mated with a good old jerky automatic gearbox (sure beats riding all over town though)

– & went for another ride. This ride was much closer to home with one of the guys I met on Sunday, generally around Rose Canyon – we crossed railroad tracks, scrambled under the freeway, clambered up & down canyons, bushwhacked where the trail was overgrown, crossed the bottom end of a military base (the Topgun one incidentally) – a good work out for almost two hours & all only five minutes from home.

Monday morning up bright & early (5.30), bike in the car & off for another ride. Surprisingly, it rained a little in the night & I was not expecting that the ride would be cancelled because there was a small chance of rain. Nevermind, there is always Thursday morning!

So the cancelled ride freed up the rest of the day & I was off to Balboa Park to check it & some of the museums out. The park is one of the oldest in the States & 1200 acres, home to numerous museums & the world famous San Diego Zoo. Many of the buildings along El Prado were put up for the 1915 Panama-California Expo (that was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal) & are Spanish themed & are pretty darn cool.

I went to four museums – the San Diego Air & Space Museum (heaps of cool old planes & space stuff – suits, Apollo 9 command module), I quite enjoyed this as it had a lot of modern history in it; the San Diego Automotive Museum, this was OK – too many hotrods, but the old original cars were quite neat (but I rate the old Te Puke Vintage Auto Barn higher); the Fleet Science Center – was OK also, lots of hands on sciencey stuff; & lastly the Museum of San Diego History – the smallest of the lot, but I loved it & finding out more of the history of the people of San Diego.

Booked a room in Las Vegas for the start of my road trip next week. The plan keeps changing, but hopefully two nights in Vegas, two or three in Southern Utah for riding & visiting Grand Canyon (North Rim), a day riding in Mammoth, riding around Tahoe somewhere, a bit of sightseeing in San Fransico & then come back to San Diego down the coast. I’ll just have to see how much I can fit in & how much driving I can take (that’s getting close to 2000 miles).

Bed & hopefully a better night’s sleep calls – off to the zoo tomorrow.

bikes, MTB, travel, USA

Riding at Big Laguna

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Returning to civilisation, I found a message waiting for me about a potential ride the next day. Mountain-biking is great – since posting on mtbr.com a couple of weeks ago I have had many tips & offers of rides around San Diego & further afield. I sorted out to go a fair way back to where we had been camping up the I-8 with a group on Sunday to ride at one of the most beautiful rides in the SD area. Unlike most of the local rides, it has trees. So after a nice sleep in & getting organised, the GT was loaded on the back of another pickup (they make some sense, not much, but at least a little bit) & we were off to meet the rest of the group – I was pleasantly surprised to hear a (slightly Americanised) Kiwi accent from one of the girls.

All up, there were seven of us – Roger (who originally contacted me) was riding his brand new Yeti XC carbon fibre bike. It was very light & very well specced, as one would expect. We started quite high (after about an hour’s drive) at 5500 feet & for the most part were riding around a basin that was meadow & pines. I was somewhat sceptical of the beauty of the sparse trees & general dryness of the place, but it grew on me & was quite pretty in places. We climbed a fair bit & got to here looking out to Mexico:

A nice sweet flowing descent that had tricky rocky switchbacks to start with & then flowing, but was very dusty & loose (almost caught me out a couple of times – also running a Maxxis High Roller upfront for the first time may have had something to do with it). In a new experience for me, I was complimented on my riding style – thanks Gabby . But I was also slightly embarrassed as Roger & I concurrently realise that my rear tyre was on the wrong way around – it must have been like that since the puncture-fest that was Karapoti ’09. Getting back out towards the meadow, we skirted around it & ended up going past the dry Small Laguna Lake & then up a quarter mile climb (the altitude really had my lungs heaving here – much worse than Nepal last year) to Big Laguna Lake, that actually still had some water in to it. There wasn’t really an inlet to the lake (it must come from snowmelt), & the outlet was pretty slow – so it was pretty stagnant. Still it added to the vista. A nice cruisy ride with some neat people & hopefully a few more rides to come in the next few weeks.

I should pick up my rental car tomorrow – will give me a bit of independence for sightseeing & more importantly riding.

friends, travel, USA, vehicles

A camping expedition with a boat

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The title should have been “A boating expedition with camping”, but due to the unfortunate circumstances of this week it is the opposite. Boat hitched up to the van, Chris & I left first for Squaw Lake on the Colorado River. It was east on Interstate 8, climbing over four thousand feet from San Diego & then down in to the desert. To say the hills were rocky was bit of an understatement:

Of course, at over ninety degrees (I’m slowly learning to think American) & with no AC & the sun it started to get reasonably warm in the van. The desert was as you would expect a desert to be, but still interesting so far. I was surprised to find the All-American Canal supplies irrigation & drinking water to much of the area we drove through (part of Imperial County) & it is the largest irrigation canal in the world – there was an awful lot of crops growing & some huge lines ups of various baled hay & grass. Also of note on the long straight drive was the intermittent sightings of the US/Mexican border & the Border Patrol vehicles careening around the desert. In to Yuma (only of note to me due to the film “3.10 to Yuma” that I think I saw on a plane somewhere) to gas up the van & boat. Through the back blocks to the Imperial Dam & the turn off to Squaw Lake (really a bit on the side of the Colorado River) & the campsite – the rest of the family arrived within half an hour of us. Funnily enough, camping in the desert is rather different to the camping I was used to – rocky, hot brown.

Putting the boat in we were frustrated to find that it didn’t go – after exhausting the jumpstart packs, Eliot moving batteries from car to boat, boat to car, van to boat & boat to van & pulling the battery shield off, we found that the workshop had not earthed the battery correctly – nuts. We would have to wait for a new battery from Yuma tomorrow to give it another go. Still there were tents to put up (we managed some sort of grass by a couple of palms) & dinner to have (poor Andrea still on the soup diet throughout the weekend due to the teeth situation). Eliot got a great fire going & then it was off to bed – I didn’t sleep well, probably due to the heat & small tent.

Chris & Beverley went in to town to get supplies & a new battery. The boat started first time after the new battery was installed, so we loaded up & prepared for a day on the river. Predictably, the boat didn’t start second, third, fourth or any time (we may have worn the starter out the day before) so we spent most of the morning anchored about fifty feet from our campsite lounging in the sun, playing on tubes & getting thrown in the water. With the boat u/s, Eliot & Andrea took off back to San Diego & the rest of us went on a bit of a drive to Arizona (just across the river). Passed the military’s rather large Yuma Proving Ground (a big testing range – one of the biggest in the world), stopped for ice cream at some swanky riverside village (a lot of RVs, condos all in the middle of nowhere), found another settlement & looked down on where we should have been playing on the water.

Upon our return we took a walk up one of the hills behind our campsite – it wasn’t too big & all the rocks reminded me a bit of the Tongariro Crossing. As it was dusk, the light was pretty cool:

Here is our campsite – our tent is below the right had tip of the small island.

Another scrumptious camp dinner & some strange story-telling rotation around the campfire (mine was at its usual woeful standard) & it was off to bed. With the whole tent to myself & it being a bit cooler I slept much better & did not wake to the brilliant sunshine until 6.30. With not much else to do we packed up early, loaded up the boat & paddled it back to the ramp – we must have looked quite strange amongst all the ski boats, party boats & jet skis going out. With out the thrust of the boat’s engine, we struggled to get it to sit on the front of the trailer (the full tank of gas didn’t really help much). After much adjustments we were on our way. Of course, with in five minute of leaving we were on the side of the road dealing to this a blow out on the boat trailer. That was dealt with without a problem & we were on the road yet again. Back through the same desert & the boat rocking around on the trailer soon had me dozing off. After lunch just past El Centro, I was awake again & looking forward to the change in scenery climbing the hills.

Unfortunately, in the heat the van didn’t much like towing a boat from sea level to over four thousand feet. As the engine climbed in temperature & started steaming we pulled over at one of the conveniently placed radiator water troughs on the side of the I-8 & topped up the radiator. The temperature dropped, but we didn’t quite make it to the top. Not surprising really after all that had happened in the previous few days. So Chris & I were stuck on the side of the interstate that a van that didn’t go without making some awful noises & a boat that didn’t start. But I did get a ride in a towtruck to Jacumba & we waited for Andrea to come out with the pickup to tow the boat home. The van is still up in the Sierras somewhere with a cracked radiator. I think we finally made it home at 6pm. An eventful, but enjoyable camping trip.