January 1st, 2004

New years day. We bike against a serious headwind towards the town of Cayucos. We meet a little rodent along the way and Johanne coaxes him off the road with a stick. As we arrive in Cayucos we see a large crowd of people coming into town from the beach. By some crazy luck we meet up with Jeremy, a guy who we had met in Seattle along with Community Alliance for Global Justice. He tells us that we haven’t arrived in sunny California. Those people were at the beach for the annual polar bear swim. We spend a few hours in a café and our friend Rich picks us up in a truck. We head up to Atascadero where we enjoy the company of the rather large Morey family for dinner.

The next day we say good bye to Rich, Denise, Erin, Benjamin, David, and Andrew and are driven out of the hills back to highway one.

A few days later we arrive in Oxnard. Back in Cayucos we had met Tom Rooney and are welcomed into his house by his wife Miriam. Tom soon shows up and proceeds to wait on us hand and foot for the evening. He serves us a multiple course burger dinner and makes sure that all our needs are taken care of. We meet Miriam’s son Andy who shows us his breakedance moves. After a good nights sleep we leave for LA. We are clean, well fed, and rested but one bike helmet less as I locked the door behind myself and left it inside the empty house.

We follow the Pacific Coast Highway through Santa Monica. The traffic is somewhat hectic and we have some serious trouble talking from our bikes because of the noise of the cars and trucks. The hillside to our left is covered with the most modern of modern architecture. It seems that every house is more outrageous than the last. And although individually they might be interesting, as a whole it makes for a landscape of jumbled themes that do not go together. In short, it’s ugly, not to mention excessive.

We hit a bike path that takes us past much of Los Angeles’s ugliness and have to check into a youth hostel that lucky for us we happen to be near around sunset. We manage to do a little nighttime shopping while our bikes rest in our room under lock and key.

The next day we head off through some serious L.A. stress-inducing traffic for a good few hours before gaining our freedom. At one point we rise above the city going up a hill and are privileged with a wonderful view of disgusting brown smog. In the evening we head towards a town where we’ve been told that we can camp. Night falls along the way and when we arrive we realize that it’s a trailer park and only self contained CO2 producing vehicles are allowed. Stumped we continue down the beach in the dark after a dinner of humdrum tuna sandwiches. We decide to risk the illegal sleeping on the beach, but first we stop by in a local café to wait till midnight. We sleep fitfully under a lifeguard tower listening to the waves that crash against the cliffs under our heads and worrying about law enforcers. They do show up, but only at 6:30 when we’re already on our way and their leading questions about where we slept last night don’t confuse my foxy lady.

We head towards San Diego with a couple visits to make. In St Clemente we meet Steve, an older man riding a bike who offers us the use of his campsite. We opt for the slightly early stop and ride into the campground accompanied by Steve. Enunciating in slow syllables, Steve tells us how he went to Vietnam when he was eighteen and as a veteran he is entitled to thirty free days a year in every State campground in the US. Surviving on a small injury pension his life consists of camping out of his van in different spots all over the States. Steve’s down to earth honesty and lonely stories touch me profoundly. I wish I could give this big man a bear hug and inspire him with some hope. Our new friend serves us pork chops and we hit the road the next morning with a newly filled canister of white gas for our stove thanks to his generosity.

Today we’re hoping to get to la Jolla where Johanne’s friend Maud lives. We follow the interstate on bike paths and occasionally on the shoulder. At one point the bike path is closed because it runs through an army base. A sign says “Bike path closed due to Marine maneuvers” nonplussed we continue along the path, but do get a little nervous when a helicopter approaches from the east. After stopping to phone Maud at a highway rest stop we are pumped for the visit and begin to bike like crazy monkeys towards her place. We arrive at a University campus just before La Jolla in the dark and manage to find a phone where we receive dubious directions from Maud and her man who don’t seem to know where they live. We head down a long dark slope with aching butts due to the lengthy ride and Johanne gets a flat and an energy shortage. She repairs the tire that somehow had been punctured by a pebble while I run five blocks for a candy bar so that she doesn’t fall over when we continue. We get there finally and after a sumptuous dinner and some good old Quebec slapstick comedy we flop into a big bed.

We spend a day amongst friends we walk on the beach and go to the movies, speeding around San-Diego’s highways in a car on our way to the flick is surreal after three months of biking.

San Diego – Chula Vista
On the way through San Diego we stop our bikes by a pirate ship in the Marina and chow some good lentil soup that rocks our pirates palates. We move our bums south of San Dee through semi-industrial wonderfulness across bridges past prisons and army firing ranges with hospitable rifle sounds. Eventually we arrive in the suburban city of Chula Vista with a flatty flatty tire and a good ole need to rest up amongst family.

Arnoldo’s house
My aunt and uncle, Consuela and Arnoldo, as well as my cousin Connie and her husband Enrique. Welcome us into their home with open hearts. My nieces Denise and Ivanna sacrifice their room for us and we give the tent a rest to sleep in a bedroom full of lace, pink, and the inevitable barbies. My aunt “Nene” has decorated the bathroom in faux-leopard and we dig it. There are faux-leopard shower curtains, cups, toothbrush holders, towels, and even picture frames that frame pictures of leopards. The majority of our first ten days at Chula Vista was spent at the family kid’s clothing store where we did research day after day in order to put together a list of groups and contacts for the project in Mexico. We went into San-Diego a couple times including a guided tour with my cousins and their well-informed friend Raul. Raul was a very down to earth individual and we greatly enjoyed his company. We joined him once again near the end of our visit for a Vietnamese soup and a trip to a downtown outdoors store for more equipment (especially a new helmet for my precious brains). We enjoyed a vibrant family life at home with the girls who were exceptionally full of energy especially when it came to climbing all over their granddad or other family member. Family contacts hooked us up with a local radio station in Tijuana and we crossed over for an early morning interview. Our ten day stay turned into a good two weeks because Johanne picked up some sort of skin reaction. Both her knees were covered in extremely itchy blisters and sleep was nearly impossible. After numerous medical consultations we found someone who had a good treatment and diagnosed the now enormous blisters as poison ivy or something similar.

Mexico
We joyfully leave the United States and do an easy day of riding into the city of Tijuana. We roll around the downtown area to the tune of “hey buddy, I’ve got free parking for you”. Thanks but no thanks. We find a cheap motel room and spend three days enjoying good Mexican food, and achieved a comfortable level of familiarity with a couple restaurants. We met three organizations that work with and for maquiladora workers. It is quite interesting meeting people who work in direct contact with the victims of such a blatantly unjust system of exploitation.