Day 50 + 51: Rest days - And last days in the USA
Two rest days in downtown San Diego. But given how unprepared I am for the Baja Divide, there wasn’t much resting. From what little research I have done, the next 2 ish months will be tough and make the last 6 weeks look easy.
The most important point on the ever growing Todo list is to get wider tires for my bike. I can’t fit wider tires on the back but can do wider on the front. For the Baja Divide, they recommend a fat bike with 3 inch tires, given all the sand you supposedly have to cycle on (or in? Or through?). I can’t do this as I don’t have the tire clearance. Spent the morning hopping between bike shops looking for one that can do the work on short notice. Eventually I found one. They tried to talk me out of 2.3 Inch tires on the front and pushed me to go with 2.1 Inches. I insisted, so they broke out the ruler to prove me wrong, and proved me right. 2.3 Inch would fit comfortably. So I left my bike with them overnight and asked them to do whatever amount of a service they could do before the following morning.
Then walked around the old town for a while before meeting up with Kerry. Kerry is a bike tourer I met a few weeks prior at a campground in Oregon and we had agreed to meet up when I got down to San Diego. We drove to some scenic point overlooking the city with views out to Mexico down the coast. We even saw a US Navy Aircraft carrier coming into port with loads of planes circling it overhead.
Kerry then treated me to dinner with a beautiful well wishing grace before the meal. He unfolded maps of Baja and we strategize practicalities of Mexico while hunched over maps, which he donated to me. He gave me some contact with a ranch with a cafe on the divide where I can camp.
Also reached out to Inreach support chat. Long story short the inreach was working but not the messenger app that supports it. The app allows using the InReach through the phone which is handy rather than trying to type via scrolling with an up and down button and an ok button. But I can’t get the verification code for the app due to roaming away from my home network so they need to set it up on their side. So the support agent needed to open a ticket on their side for this. Hopefully I will have this sometime next week. But is non-blocking for starting the Baja divide.
Up until now, I have been able to just figure out routes day by day. That will stop now. For Baja I need detailed GPX tracks of not just the route but of all resupply (food/water) points. This should have been an easy Todo item. Just download the GPX track from the bikepacking website and move to the Garmin. However, the GPX tracks are so large that they wouldn’t move across. Well at least I presume that is the reason. Even upgraded to premium rideWithGPS for the “split route” functionality. However this wouldn’t work in their app so I tried to use a browser on my phone which was a nightmare to use and still didn’t work. Eventually decided to call in tech support from home and my brother split the routes on his laptop (Thanks Declan!). Even then it was still a pain to move them to the Garmin as the usual way I was moving them was getting rid of the important map notes. So I had to export each 200km split of the GPX track from RideWithGPS, then in port each to Garmin, but on the browser version, then open the Garmin app to pin and sync it. And repeat this by 12. Such a pain.
Did a few more items from my Todo list. Is funny how I can leave my job, go into the middle of nowhere, and still have an ever growing Todo list…
Played some chess in the hostel which was fun.
Regarding the plan for the next few days. I reckon I have enough of the important Todo items to cross into Mexico tomorrow. I debated crossing at Tijuana but decided that crossing at Tecate is smarter. This is further inland and much safer. Kerry volunteered to drive me out to the border crossing tomorrow.
I think I will spend a night or so in Tecate after crossing the border. Just to get settled into Mexico, finish some Todo items and draw a mental line under the USA.
