Even with the cruel absurdity that is the Bay Area ratio, riding in San Francisco was an absolute blast. This is where ripping the cargo around unloaded REALLY felt like I was piloting a speeder through some trench runs and even more so on the Ornot Tuesday #aftercakeornot ride. I’ve had this on my todo list for long enough that expectations were quite high and damn if y’all didn’t live up to them and then some. The route is just a flawless chefs kiss of city climbs, zoomzoom road descents, sneaky tourist appeal for riding under the GG, and all with bits of flowy singletrack interspersed. Oh plus coffee n donuts afterwards at the shop parklet! If you’re lucky enough and show up on a cargo bike they might even let you take home the leftovers.
Los Angeles
Some people say that #lasucksforcycling but uhhh the 350 miles that I noodled around in the week I was there there I would have to disagree. Even with the 7.8 million cars (half of which seem to have vanity plates) I kept rambling upon plenty of what felt like random bike lanes and pathways and roads that simply felt kinda chill. Loads of shops scattered around the city too and while GSC had been top of my quest marker list, Allez La feels like a perfect scaled down improvement upon the original. Oh ohhh and their group ride was the most fun I’d had jamming around on my Omnium in ages. Big climbs, fire roads, group pics at the tippy top, and then a lovely noodle of singletrack back down that cargo barely managed to squeeze through. Followed by a ripping road descent back into the city with post ride hangs at Collage Coffee. Thanks to Kyle for leading us along on a damn good time!
San Diego
"What's your favorite city that you've been to??" has become one of the frequent questions tossed my way after I got a year into this new life and at this point I should probably work on figuring out an answer? Whoops it turns out every city with even a few scraps of a bike scene is an absolute blast and I'll never get tired of getting stuck somewhere for a week and rambling around with the locals. San Diego was the first major city after getting back in the US and hoooh boy it was interesting flipping my brain back into track bike in traffic mode. I stayed in town long enough for a couple group rides and an alleycat, and daaamn vibes were good! Thank you to everyone at bikingis.fun, Nice n Easy, and SD Bicycle Coalition for making the SD bike scene a very good one.
Mexico Part 7: Everything Else
Couldn’t think of a theme around all these so here’s simply some more of my favorites from the trip.
Mexico Part 6: Bikes
Aw hell yeah you KNOW I was bike checking nonstop down there! Every kinda beat up old big box store mtb with all the bits torn off it running freewheel no brakes baybeee! All ages and all kindsa rides. Big extra shout out to the kids in Tónichi who showed us the good camp spot by fully sending the sketchy trail down to the river. Even saw a few of the classic Mercurio Magnums! The stoke was always shared when crossing paths with a fellow ciclista.
Mexico Part 5: Dogs
You grow accustomed to it, the constant background noise of them, in a way that living next to a highways white noise just burrows into and builds a home in the dead space of your brain until the first night you have to fall asleep without it feels WEIRD AND WRONG.
Street dogs in Mexico are so ever present that it became a joke. We'd be wayyy up in the mountains far from anything resembling civilization blowing up our sleep pads, quick pause and glance at each other; no dogs tonight? Maybe? Hopefully? Then without fail half hour after getting into bed BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK all night long.
Gated community on the outskirts of a city? Dogs. Church storage room in the middle of a town? Dogs. Campground on the edge of the tallest waterfall in the country? Dogs. The first night I crossed back into the US and stayed with a Warmshowers host in Yuma was the classic, it's quiet...too quiet...sort of vibes. No dogs? Well okay I'll take it, but may still put my ear plugs in just to feel familiar.
Mexico Part 4: Cops
Don't talk to cops. Don't look at cops. Don't acknowledge that cops even exist. We were told tales of the corruption rampant amongst the city police, supposedly less so with the national guard, but also might be unmarked white trucks that could just roll up on us??? Unfortunately (obviously) I wasn't able to get snaps of the many encounters we had with various forms of armed individuals in Mexico but thankfully none of them went bad. Two gringos with the added confusion of very large loaded up bicycles granted us a considerable privilege as we moved through the country.
Mexico Part 3: Roads
Alright real talk...I've never felt safer riding a bike than I did while riding a bike in Mexico. Even in the cities PACKED with traffic everyone driving past us would pop on their hazard lights, slow wayyy down, and usually be waving with delight at the two gringos on bicis.
On the quieter roads, deep in the mountains or along the desert coast, drivers would just chillll behind us until it was clearly safe to pass (also waving and politely honking as they did so).
This impeccable behavior combined with the most gorgeous roads I've ever been on (Grand Canyon in Arizona doesn't have shit on MEX16 through the sierras), made for the best bicycle times I've had in the last 500 days.
Mexico Part 2: Food
I'm not sure how to communicate my feelings about eating in this country. As a mediocre (read: functional but not creative) chef in the before times I suppose I've always enjoyed eating out at new places if someone else is taking the wheel. However, becoming the cargo bike dumpster daddy has settled the bad parts of my brain knowing that zero grams of plastic waste have been brought into the world through the food I've eaten in the last year anda bit.
While it's a very good thing that a country like Mexico doesn't overproduce to the extent that America does it suuuucks not being able to dumpster dive down here. EVERYTHING (even the plates) is wrapped in plastic, sometimes twice just to keep the sauce from leaking out.
During the 1119 miles of riding through Mexico I have brought into the world 23 plastic bags, 8 styrofoam cups, 4 plastic forks, 9 plastic spoons, and 34 wrappers of various chips / candy / cookies / etc. No amount of new flavors expanding my pallet will make me feel good about that.
Mexico Part 1: Texture
The most memorable part about Mexico so far is the texture. Everything either has a sort of incomparable weathered age or a trying-too-hard perfect smoothness. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground like it feels all of America (east coast skate spots being the only exception) is coated with. I don’t know if it’s the history of all the small towns we’ve ridden, lack of resources and give-a-shit-ness to prioritize upkeep, or simply that if it works it works and who cares what it looks like.
