I was sort­ing through some papers yes­ter­day when I encoun­tered a con­tact sheet of images of a Tecate-Ense­na­da bicy­cle ride sent to me at the time by friend Ran­dall Higa. I did Tecate-Ense­na­da sev­er­al times. It was a favorite of mine. Our way to do it was to take two cars, each able to car­ry six peo­ple, six bikes, and all our gear. We’d dri­ve both cars to Ense­na­da on Sat­ur­day and leave one there, return­ing to Tijua­na for a fun din­ner at Car­ni­tas Uru­a­pan, near Caliente Race­track then back into the U S of A for the night.

Sun­day morn­ing we’d dri­ve the sec­ond car the forty miles east to the out­skirts of Tecate U.S.A., park, then bike into down­town Tecate Mex­i­co to help fill the main street with thou­sands of rid­ers. The ride itself was a very non triv­ial 73 miles. It could be very hot and the route climbed over some moun­tains and includ­ed a long stretch to the coast usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied with heavy head winds. It was very inter­est­ing ter­rain and not a route I’d ride with­out such a group so I espe­cial­ly val­ued this annu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty. Post ride we’d load up the bikes on car num­ber two, Michael’s this year, and retrace our route to Tecate, cross the bor­der, redis­trib­ute all the gear on the two vehi­cles, and head for home.

An unusu­al event occurred on our return home this year. I had placed a cou­ple of our bikes on the roof racks of Ran­dal­l’s Chevro­let, one being friend Michael’s. Along Inter­state 5 through Camp Pendle­ton Michael’s bike fell off and was run over by a fol­low­ing car. Michael was a mile or two behind us and by the time he arrived and pulled up to park behind the Chevy I had his man­gled Raleigh in hand and got to give him the news straight­away. A sad inter­lude in our day but it did not ruin our over­all adven­ture, espe­cial­ly in retrospect.

Fun Times! There are more images of our out­ing. Click on my then redish beard­ed, Kliban cat shirt­ed self to see more.