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November 16, 2017
Day 4 - Brawley, CA to San Diego, CA (Thr Nov 16th)
Starting Odometer: 5,731 miles
Ending Odometer: 6,025 miles
Today's Mileage: 294 miles
Total Trip Mileage: 1,422 miles [6.025 - 4,603]]
Update: I am alive and well and resting peacefully at the E-Z8 Motel South Bay in San Diego, CA.
This is roughly what my ride looked like today.
So, this is the first time this trip that I spent 2 nights in the same state. I will be in Mexico tomorrow morning, but I didn't want to cross the border at night, and this has already been a pretty long day. So, I'll get up in the morning and get across the border and start making my way down the Baja Peninsula. I learned that they're racing the Baja 1000 right now, so that should be interesting. Also, because it's the 50 year anniversary, I'm told they're racing the length of the peninsula? Yikes.
I stopped at K-mart in Riverside and got some super glue. The only thing I need now to cross into mexico is insurance.
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Note: After taking a short break, I am now back on the road from Riverside, CA to San Ysidro, CA.
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I am currently taking a short break from riding while I eat dinner at my old stomping grounds, the Cactus Cantina, in Riverside, California. The traffic was really bad, so I decided to stop and wait for the traffic to die down a little bit. My logic being that, if I ride later, even though it will be dark, there will be less traffic, and since I'm on interstate at this point, I'm not as likely to hit a deer, I figure.
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This morning, I start out really late. The reason is because I was trying to get a few thousand photos off of my camera, which I succeeded in doing. The maid is out there pounding on the door, trying to get in, but she can't because I have all of the deadbolts and all of the internal locks thrown. So, she can't get in. And she's screaming at me in Spanish that I have to leave. Finally, I tell her to calm down. Like...you're a maid for fuck's sake. Settle down. Life will get better.
But when I finally get away, I head from Brawley, CA to Slab City. I saw a documentary on this place somewhere. I forget where. And I thought it was sort of funny. Basically, an abandoned military base where they poured concrete slabs out in the desert, never completed the construction, and then abandoned the entire base. Now, it's over-run with homeless squatters, and what made me think that I needed to go out there is anyone's guess.
Like, basically, imagine a bunch of homeless vagrants, barely alive, surviving in the scorched desert without electricity or running water That's pretty much what it's like. Hell on earth, essentially.
I took a few photos and left. But I saw a guy on a BMW GS1200R motorcycle going in there while I was coming out. So, somehow this place is sort of infamous, I suppose.
"Where you riding from?" asks the guy on the beemer
"Just from Denver...How about you?" I ask. Like...I'm very cautious with this. You don't go bragging about your adventure when you're only a thousand miles from home. You're goin g to get embarrassed in a hurry if you think a thousand miles is a road trip. Some stranger is going to smash your adventure like a whack-a-mole.
"I rode here from Pensacola," he offers nonchallantly.
"I'm riding to Tierra Del Fuego," I reply. Like....let's not make any mistake. Tierra del Fuego is a decent ride in anyone's book. A nice little sunday afternoon ride that very few people on this planet could turn their nose up at. And I tell everyone I run into that I'm going there because, let's be honest...it's a pretty audacious adventure to try to make it down there.
I leave and go to a little grocery store in a shanty town just outside of slab city. Go inside to buy some more gatorade. If I'm going to drive through the Joshua Tree national park, I'm not doing it on a half a bottle of warm gatorade.
Grab a cold gatorade and a man in a dress is in front of me with a purse is buying something. Like...dude...wtf? Welcome to Kalifornia.
I go outside and finish the other gatorade in the parking lot. Now some guy is asking where I'm going and I tell him. He tells me about a road called the Painted Canyon. When I get to Mecca, I should turn right. About 50 miles from here.
"There's a checkpoint before you get there though," he offers.
"How do they get away with that? Isn't that a clear violation of the 4th Amendment?" I ask.
"They have secondary checkpoints all over the place," he laments. "They're everywhere. There's a turnoff before you get there, so you could go around it, but they watch that road really close."
It sounds like a good suggestion, and I thank him for his advice and take off.
I wasn't really impressed by Slab City, but now I'm thinking I'd like to see the Salton Sea and, even though I flew over it more times than I could count, I've still never seen it with my own eyes.
After a while, I see a sign for the Bombay Beach (Bombed Out Beach the guy had called it back at the store), so I cut down to the beach to see the Salton Sea.
A find a little dirt hill/road and climb it without much difficulty on the bike. I get within about 75 yards of the beach and decide to walk down and check it out, as opposed to dropping the bike and getting stuck.
I'm sort of hoping that I'll find this beautiful, undiscovered beach. But the Salton Sea is just death. A polluted cess pool with a mud beach. Like, it's hard to imagine a less attractive body of water. I see a few birds wading on the shore. It's hard to imagine there is life in this place. I have to think that the birds are smart enough that they wouldn't stand there if there were no life at all in the Salton Sea. It's hard to grasp how unnattractive it is. I get on my bike and start riding away. Now, I begin to question why it is that I think I need to see the Joshua Tree desert (let's call it what it is). Like, Slab City and the Salton Sea are just a slow painful death on a hairy biscuit. No one with any sense would ever go to either place.
It makes me question my entire adventure. Like...maybe I'm not capable of making rational, intelligent, informed decisions at this point. Maybe it's too late for me. Maybe the rest of my life will be me chasing after things no one with any sense would care about.
A Quixotean quest of epic proportions. Me, swinging at the windmills, in a foreign country, where I don't even speak the language.
I decide to skip the Joshua Tree desert and instead make a beeline for Chapparal Motorsports in San Bernardino, CA. I decide to take I-10 instead of taking Highway 60 over Jackrabbit Pass. I'm just hell-bent for leather at this point. Plus, I got away very late, and then exploring Slab City and the Salton Sea has taken some time. Suddenly, I realize that I'm not going to be in Chapparal Motorsports before 4:30 p.m., then I'm going to be stuck in rush hour traffic.
Like, it's amazing that, for all of the time I spend planning every day, I still manage to screw it all up royally.
Somewhere outside of Mecca, there's a quasi-legal checkpoint, and I pull in. It's going to be very hard to explain why I'm wearing a money belt with $10K in cash in it. I don't like police. At all. But when I pull in, he just tells me "have a nice day". It's the camera. They hate seeing that GoPro up there, filming them. And just because the red lights aren't flashing on the GoPro doesn't mean it's not filming. There's no way they can know if I'm filming them or not.
He just waves me on. This is the same as it is in Mexico at their quasi-legal checkpoints. They always just wave me on. Probably, it's because I'm on a bike. No one would smuggle drugs on a motorcycle. It's not not economically feasible. You couldn't carry enough drugs to cover the cost of fuel to cross the desert.
Eventually, I make it to Chapparral Motorsports, and I race to the service counter to see my buddy Al, only to learn that he doesn't work there anymore. Mother. Fucker. Al was the coolest guy in that place and I talked to him on the phone just a few weeks ago.
Albert Terhune, is what they told me his name is.
I get my sprockets and put them in my Givi case...I now have a spare chain and sprockets.
I go back inside to look at buying a new jacket and helmet. But, there's just this wall of helmets and analysis paralysis.
How much did you want to spend, the little worm wants to know. Like...what the fuck does that have to do with anything? I've got ten grand in a money belt and this little idiot couldn't sell water to a man dying of thirst in the desert.
"Like...here's the helmet I have now....I'm sort of looking for a replacement...." I begin.
But he doesn't get it. There's just this wall of helmets. Like, you could spend days trying them all on. But I need to get on the road. Fuck this moron.
I go outside, and one of the guys comes out to pull the bikes in.
"Al went down to work in Texas," he offers. "I'm in touch with him. He's geting contracts from the government clearning up after the hurricane."
"Al was the coolest guy up here. I can't believe that he left. He was a riot."
Like...I hate how everything changes. Like...you can never go back, really. Like..I just want to come back here and walk into my old office and have everyone say "HEY ROB" and take me to lunch. But really, everything changes and no one at Chapparal has any clue who I am.
I leave and head to the office where I used to work at 14350 Meridian Parkway. But now, it's going to be like 4:30 p.m. when I get there, and it's Thursday for Christ's sake. No one was ever there on a Thursday. I'm not even clear the building exists outside of the 3 days a week that I was there.
On the way there, I realize that my fuel light is flashing. Somehow, I've totally spaced all of my re-fueling points today. Like, I'm reasonably clear that I'm not qualified to be taking this little adventure unsupervised. I have a feeling that I'm not far from being incarcerated in a memory ward in a home.
But I pull up to the building and Clint comes out to greet me. He's fawning all over my bike, which is nice. Like, it's great to have someone that actually remembers me. Fuck.
Now, I leave to go fill up at the gas station where I used to gas up. But somehow, the place is blocked off to traffic. I drive down the sidewalk to get there, and two guys yell at me that the place is (quite obviously) closed, hence the wooden barricades that I drove around on the sidewalk. Oh...Hmmmm.
So I leave and now, I'm not sure what to do. LIke...the traffic is so bad there aren't words. I-215 is hardly moving, and I'm not really excited about lane-splitting down to San Diego for 2 hours. I used to do that, but it's too dangerous. I'm not up for that any more. It's suicidal.
I decide to go to my old stomping grounds, the Cactus Cantina, in Riverside, California. So, I bust up in there, and I mean I used to eat here every night. I freaking owned this place. But I don't recognize anyone in the place. Motherfucker.
"Where's the blonde girl that used to work here," I ask the bartended. I'm so retarded I can't remember anything about her except that she was blonde.
"Ashley?" She clarifies. "She never works on Thursday."
Fuck. It is Thursday. Like...how could you possibly screw up a ride any worse than to arrive in the LA basin on a Thursday. Son. Of. A. Bitch.
My bartender isn't here. The bus boy isn't here.
The food is delicous, and the menu hasn't changed. So, there is that.
I used to live in the Motel 6 in Riverside until they came and arrested my neighbor one night, and then my neighbor on the other side of me came outside with his one leg on crutches and asked what was going on. That was the last night I ever stayed there.
Now, I think that I'll roll down to San Diego to spend the night. I'll cross the border in the morning. I don't like crossing borders in the dark. That's a bad idea.
I need to buy some superglue before I leave the country. And I need to get my Mexican insurance.
OK. I'm taking off. It's about 7:00 p.m. I have to get gas, then Waze says I should be in San Ysidro by 8:30 p.m.
Posted by Rob Kiser on November 16, 2017 at 7:53 PM
Comments
So, I guess you aren't going to move to Slab City afer all.
Posted by: Steven A Baldwin on November 17, 2017 at 6:55 AM