It is February, 2003. The rain is coming down and the wind is a howling in Portland, Oregon. We check the weather reports and see that it is sunny and 75 degrees in San Diego. A nice long ride in the sunshine is just what we need.

We pack up the Huckleberry, our coupling tandem, and off we go on the light rail to the airport. The whole nation is on high alert and must be searched before boarding the plane, and we are no exception. Our bags, including the ones with the Huckleberry, are searched for whatever bad things we might think to bring on board. We stood right by the bags that contained our precious bike while they searched through. Before opening the bags the security people name the bike parts they could see on the x-ray machine. They are very sensitive to our need to make sure the bike is okay and gently finger through the bike tubes before carefully closing the bags. We appreciate their thoughtfulness and are glad they are on the job. We want to make it to the sunshine all in one piece.

We have decided to do four one-week bike trips this year so we are trying to be very thrifty. In order to get discount tickets we have to take a flight that changes planes in Las Vegas. We hope for some time to drop some quarters in the slots but are late arriving and just barely make it to our connecting flight. Oh well, next time we are around gaming facilities we will give them some of our money, but not this time.

We pick up the rental car and find our way to the Sweetwater Campground. Our plan is to camp for four days and motel it for three. We like camping, so we thought it would be a good mix. Sweetwater Camp ground is a very nice place, filled with RV's. We are the only tent campers, so it is quiet. We love it. It is up on a hill that looks down on the city lights.

We set out to find a grocery store to stock up on camp provisions and stop at a few small places that are mostly cigarettes and booze. We feel a bit out of place until we finally find a bigger store where we are able to get most of what we need. Just as we are leaving, three men brush past Bec on her way out the door. They begin yelling at another person and run after him. A couple of rough looking guys in a car in the parking lot cheer on the man being chased. Anxious to get away from a place where folks root for the shoplifter, we get in the car and leave as fast as we can.

Back at camp we settle in to being campers with a fire in the pit and sodas in the hand. It is a lovely evening.

Sunday morning we drive to the Wild Animal Park to visit the place where the animals run free and the people are caged. We take a train ride around the park and discover that rhinos have this very powerful rhino scented perfume. Louie comments, "I think this is almost as bad as our cat, Cloudy, but not quite!" Bec has to clean the cat litter daily because Cloudy has some sort of bacterial thing going on. Perhaps Cloudy is related in some way to the rhinos!

After the train ride, we go on a walkabout, stopping to rest at a bench overlooking the huge animal enclosure. We watch as a giraffe decides to kick at a rhino. The rhino stands there and takes it until four other rhinos come to its rescue. They all stand there and face the giraffe who decides that five rhinos are four too many and saunters off.

Herds of other animals take turns running across the make believe plains. Bec hopes that if she gets to come back in another life as a wild beast, that she gets to live in the wild animal park. They keep the predators close to the prey, but it is smell, not eat. Strictly paws off!

Back on the walkabout we come across some pink flamingos. Two of them are having an argument about important flamingo things. Another joins the fracas. The two argue at length with the one who finally gives in and struts off to another area while the rest of the group mil around looking like folks in a lobby during an intermission at the opera.

After the Wild Animal Park we visit some of Bec's friends from long ago, Kim and Stan Jones. They are a lovely couple that feed us a delicious dinner. Their beautiful home is decorated with pictures taken during their under water adventures as scuba divers. We have a nice evening comparing biking and diving stories.

Monday we are thankfully back on the bike, riding from the campground to Sea World. It is a big adventure that Bec has mapped out using a book we obtained from our friends Rodger & Mary of the Santiam Slow Spokes, a bike route map of San Diego County, and our topo computer-mapping program. Most of the ride is on bike lanes and paths with some busy roads. Wow! Even the roads with bike lanes take all our skills to negotiate. Bike lanes, being what they are, plop us out in dangerous places to fend for ourselves. The worst of these put us in the middle of four lanes of fast moving traffic where two roads intersect. I hang onto my helmet as we negotiate our way over to the edge where the bike lane begins anew. Whew! We decide Portland traffic is not so bad after all. We arrive at Sea World just in time to catch all the shows and one thrill ride before it closes. Louie would have liked to go up the tower to take pictures, but we run out of time. We like all the shows. They are very well done.

We finish Sea World just when it is getting dark. Negotiating the inadequately signed bikeways in daylight is difficult, but we find that doing so in the dark is darn near impossible. Bec has matters pretty well under control except for one small problem. The bikeway that would get us back to Sweetwater road is down in a river canyon and we cannot find a way down. We are lost in the dark and cannot figure out which way to go.

Not to fear. Bec has this thing about "Travel Angels". Whenever she is in a tough spot on a trip, they appear out of nowhere. Sure enough, one does. Across the road, in the turn lane, a man calls out to us asking where we are headed. We tell him that we are trying to find Sweetwater Road. He sits through a couple rounds of turn signal changes while telling us that 30th street turns into Sweetwater and how to get there. We are back on our way. Thank you "Travel Angel" whoever you are. We get back to camp safe and sound and enjoy another nice evening by the campfire.

We wake up to, guess what, rain! But, being Portlanders we decide not to let a little rain stop us so off we go to the zoo. The skies open up to the biggest rain San Diego has had in a year. Roads flood and freeways tangle. People crash into each other in droves. Stores close. Schools close. Louie would not have believed it if he had not seen it. At the zoo, only a few hardy souls join us to view the animals that all look as wet and cold as we are. Bec buys a plastic bag poncho to try to stay warm. We should have brought all our rain gear, but we were dreaming of sun not rain. Staying only long enough at the zoo to do a bus ride and a walk through the rain forest (what else), we head out for Balboa Park. Louie wants to tour the park but Bec is cranky, cold and wants to get back to camp before dark. Back at camp, it stops raining long enough for us to enjoy one last campfire. The air is filled with the perfume of the eucalyptus trees that grow all around the camp.

On Wednesday morning we wake up to see colorful hummingbirds flitting around the bushes that border our camp. Then it begins to pour down rain. We make an executive decision to go find a Laundromat so that we can wash and dry all our clothes since Bec does not have any dry clothes left. The rain does not stop and the flooding continues. There are only a few drains in the streets of San Diego because it "never rains there". Consequently, when it does, it is a big mess. We head for the motel a day early after deciding that the tent may float away if we don't.

We had planned to ride to Old Town but drive instead due to the flooded roads. We have a good time anyway even though some of the stores are closed because of the rain. Louie is duly impressed that after visiting 30 or more gift shops, Bec has not bought a thing. She just cannot find anything that tickles her fancy. That night Louie treats Bec to a wonderful harbor cruise and dinner for Valentines Day. The boat lazily floats about the harbor giving us a view of the San Diego Shore line, the Silver Strand, Coronado, Mexico, and the Navy boats.

Thursday is our ride out the Silver Strand. The morning air is misty with the clouds still clinging to the sky. We ride into National City and on to Chula Vista, passing the Navy base on the way. We see an armored troop carrier at the gate with a soldier manning a large gun pointed at the road we are on. A sign tells us the base is in "threatcon". That does not sound good. At gates where there are no tanks the soldiers stand with a hand on their gun holster and rifles raised. These are frightening times.

We manage to find all the bike paths with the one out on the Strand being very nice. We see this strange structure that has one ring of posts, two small fences and one huge fence around it. Obviously they don't want people going in there. Inside is a squat rectangular building bordered by military vehicles. We decide it must be a missle silo of some sort.

At the end of the strand we see the historic Hotel Coronado, but Bec feels that it is now robbed of its splendor due to huge modern hotels/condos that surround it. Bec remembers it as being the definitive sight at the end of the strand, but now it is lost in the crowd. Louie, thinking we were going to do a lollypop ride, is delighted to discover that we are to board a ferry that will take us across the harbor to San Diego so that we can circle back to the motel. We decide that this ride was much better than the rides to Sea World and the Zoo because we were able to stay out of traffic most of the time.

On the way back we stopped at Anthony's, a restaurant that one of our cycling buddies, Joe of the Vancouver Club, told us makes the best tuna salad sandwiches. They hand select and can their own tuna. He is right. It was pretty darn tasty.

On Friday, our last ride takes us up the coast. It turns out to be the most delightful ride. Finally, the sun is shining. We get to see surfers competing with what looks like whales for space in the ocean, but neither seems bothered by the other. It must be a normal occurrence. Louie also notices that the sea gulls in San Diego squawk with an accent. How can that be? We also saw lots of seals sunning themselves on the beach.

We end up riding past Torey Pines where Tiger Woods is playing in an important golf tournament. Thank goodness most people are headed there from the other direction. We see long lines of cars trying to get into the parking facilities.

We get treated to a bit of road that is closed to traffic, wonderful. We see this bridge that spans the canyon and know that somehow we have to get up there to get back to San Diego. We are not sure how that is going to work until we get directly under it at an intersection with a bike route sign that points us up this long on-ramp onto the freeway which we ride for ¼ mile. It is the only way through this one stretch. After that, we struggle to find the Rose Canyon bike path. There is only one sign that sends us in approximately the right direction, but we are on our own after that. It is the only way we can get back because the only other road is a freeway that has signs posted telling us we cannot be there. After a few wrong turns and one U-turn we do find the path. Motorists have all these signs that tell them where to go, but us cyclists are left to our wits. How we ever find our way is miraculous. We end the ride with a tour around Mission Bay Park and a nice farmers tan.

Saturday is reserved for a bus tour of Mexico. The tour is both good and bad. The bad news is that we get railroaded into a lobster dinner. Louie does not eat in protest, which is easy because he does not like lobster anyway. Bec, on the other hand, has no scruples so she devours the lobster with great joy. The good news is that we get to learn a lot about Mexico. The reason that most of the people are so poor is that all the wealth is in the hands of a few families. The constitution states that those families own all the land. Everyone else can only lease it for 99 years and then everything they built on it goes back to the family they leased it from for them to sell to the next poor peasant. The new president is trying to change all that but sadly may not get it accomplished. He says he has a group of men waiting to finish the job after he is gone but the guide thought that perhaps they would all get assassinated. Even Americans who came to Mexico to retire get their homes confiscated at the whim of the families who own the land. The families that own all the land are very wealthy, but they do not live in Mexico. Not being able to obtain real estate has caused great poverty. However, a new middle class is being established. If a person goes to school they can get a government loan to start a business. It is working. Many people's lives are improving. President Fox is also tearing down all the shantytowns and building condos and homes that folks can buy for little money on installment payments. Roads are being built. Bec remembers in the 60's that there were only mud roads in Tijuana. Now it is all paved. However, Revolution Avenue is still the same, much like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, but on steroids. All the shop owners try to lure you into their shop to buy whatever. There are lots of strip clubs with men out there trying to get us to come in for a two for one drink. We could only manage to buy a pair of sandals, a tile number plate for the house, two bottles of Kahlua, and some prescription drugs that are much cheaper in Mexico than they are here even with insurance. Everything else just was not worth carting back.

Saturday evening we visit another of Bec's friends, Beverly Rank, and spend the evening finding out what we are all doing now and remembering what we all did then.

Sunday, we head out early for the airport. Our cab driver fusses about the bags because we have four heavy ones. No amount of explaining that they contain a bike makes any difference. He still cannot figure out why they are so big and heavy. At the airport the security people again take great care in looking through the bags. We make it past the first checkpoint, being one of the few people whose bodies are not searched more thoroughly. Our luck runs out when they pull Bec out of the boarding line to do a shakedown on her. Much to everyone's horror they find a small bike tool in her hydration unit backpack! Tools are verboten to bring on the plane. Bec apologizes profusely explaining that she forgot she had put the tool in there for a bike ride earlier in the week. She explains that the tool is very hard to find and a specialized one just for bikes. They notice that she also left the blinky red light on the hydration unit, which gives credence to her story. So they admonish her to never let that happen again and give her back the bike tool and send her on her way. We appreciate their indulging us by allowing us to keep our rare bike tool and feel lucky that they did not cart her off to jail!

The flight home ended like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride as we bounced and bobbed through the air, wings tipping, plane shuddering, and pilot struggling to get us on the ground in Portland. Whew! Game over! We had a great time, but it sure is nice to get back home. We are greeted with what else, but rain!

We could see that San Diego is trying hard to make more bikeways, routes, and paths. They also are spending money on beautifying their overpasses. Some of the small ones over the freeways have trees and benches on them to make pedestrians more comfortable. However, they need to upgrade their signage so bikers can find the bike paths from the bike routes. Like most bike paths, unless you already know where to find it, it is lost.

Some of the bike routes are down right frightening, and this comes from a pair of seasoned bike commuters. In our opinion, the one on Pacific Highway should only be ridden by very experienced and aggressive riders. The one on Harbor Drive, near the convention center, was another difficult area. The signs kept telling us there was a bike lane, but we could not find one since the road was filled all the way across with cars, busses, vans, limos, and taxis. We had to pick our way carefully through them.

We are pleased that we got to ride all the way around the San Diego Harbor, Mission Bay, and along the coast. The only place we missed riding was around Escondido because of the heavy rain. We enjoyed the attractions and the camping. Except for during the heavy rains, the heavy traffic moves right along at breakneck speeds, even off the freeways. Even though we had a great time, we are happy to be back in soggy old Portland.