The four-day weekend was all anyone could ask. On Friday, February 20, I flew into San Diego with Jacquie Phelan in tow, courtesy of Dave Duncan, owner of
Bike Borrego. Dave picked us up and after a two-hour drive, delivered us to
Borrego Springs, a town that lies in the center of the enormous expanse of
Anza-Borrego State Park. The "Anza" in that name is the
Spanish explorer who eventually made his way to San Francisco Bay by this route. This is desert country, and as in any desert, where there is an oasis such as Borrego Springs, there are people.
The purpose of my trip was to promote my book, Fat Tire Flyer: Repack and the Birth of Mountain Biking. My traveling and cycling companion, Jacquie Phelan, is a three time national mountain bike champion. In connection with my book promotion, she and I were the "celebrity leaders" on a couple of mountain bike excursions. People paid, some dearly, to ride with us, with the proceeds going to the Anza-Borrego Foundation.
More pix and story below.
In the afternoon of Day One, Friday, after we arrived in Borrego Springs, Dave took us sightseeing. The desert was blooming with all sorts of flowers in response to a recent rain.
We went out to
Font's Point, a cliff that overlooks spectacular badlands 300 feet below.
Font's Point overlooking the badlands. The tiny speck is at the top of the cliff is a person.
The badlands
That evening, I spoke for about 45 minutes in a theater to an audience of about 80 before a showing of "
Klunkerz", a film about mountain bike history in which I am featured, then I sold and signed copies of Fat Tire Flyer.
Day Two, Saturday, we were ferried along with 27 other riders to a point high above the town, where they paid, some dearly, to ride with me and Jacquie. I broke out my cycling shoes and discovered that I had the left shoe from each of two different pairs. So glad I specified SPD clipless pedals, but well, here we are. No shoe change, so let's ride.
My brother Jim lives close enough that he and a friend came out to take part, and on rented bikes they took their first ride in years. The 400 feet of climbing over two miles to start the descent was no challenge for longtime cyclists, but it was a good day of exercise for those unused to it. Once over the summit, we descended Grapevine Canyon.
From the crest we had 12 miles of gentle downhill on a 4% grade. The surface was mostly two-track, with an inch of two of loose sand covering the hard tracks. The tracks were separated by a barrier of sand eight to ten inches high. My borrowed bike sells for something like $4000 less than the one I ride at home, and I was riding on clipless pedals in my regular shoes.
For most of the descent I stayed with Jim and his friend, whose experience level had them at the far back of the group. Speed is your friend on that surface, and the slow pace had Jim on the ground a few times and both knees polished raw. He was also the only rider to get a flat tire, which seems unfair. But he soldiered on and went the distance. We finished with a picnic in a park above the city after 2700 feet of descent over 12 miles or so.
On Day Three, Sunday I was better prepared to ride. Since I didn't have my cycling shoes, Dave replaced the clipless pedals with a good set of flat pedals. Jim had skipped the second day's ride over the same route, which changed my approach for my second ride over the same route. This time I had seen the trail, I was better prepared with flat pedals on the bike, and I wasn't riding at the back of the group.
If you get up to speed on that sandy surface, it's like riding on ice. You can't make sudden moves, and sometimes the bike shimmies a little side to side. Crossing over the center to line up a turn means getting the brief bite of the deep sand on each wheel and a side to side shake from the diagonal approach. It works better if you go fast, but not everyone wants to do that. Since this is desert, every plant is armed with two inch spikes, so you have to be careful about cutting corners and getting whipped on the leg or arm.
On our second trip down Jacquie and I didn't have to wait for our local guide to show us the turns, so we could rip it top to bottom. Jacquie is obviously a great rider and it was a great downhill. She and I and one other rider pulled out huge gaps on everyone else, riding mile after mile neither touching the brakes nor turning the cranks. That faster you went, the more you floated. The inch of sand that denied traction provided just enough drag on that perfect 4% gradient for us to sail along with a tailwind at 20-25 mph, in air that didn't seem to be moving. How could it be over so soon?
On Monday, Dave took Jacquie and me in his truck up Split Mountain Wash, a slot in the hills created by a fault line. The wash has vertical sides and a flat bottom which was covered with deposited silt and granite cobbles of all sizes. We were followed by friends in another vehicle. As we moved up the rough road in the canyon, we saw huge granite boulders strewn everywhere and worn smooth from their travels, torn from mountainsides far away and brought miles by flash floods. These dominate the bottom of the canyon. Here and there, ten or fifteen feet above the roadway the water has scoured a small indentation in the red sandstone cliffside, and deposited a contrasting gray twenty pound granite river cobble. It sits there waiting for the next high water to move it a mile further down the canyon.
A mountain biker approached, and he turned out to be the rider who accompanied Dave, Jacquie and myself to the start of the previous day's ride. He had already gone some distance before we found him, so he threw his bike in the back of the truck and joined us for the guided tour.
Dave explained the magnificent geological exposures created by a localized fault that is responsible for the name "Split Mountain." A woman from the other vehicle posed for me, standing in front of a sheer sandstone face to show the scale of a layer twisted into a knot.
My friend Carolyn shows the scale of the anticline.
Dave showed us fossilized footprints of a dog, a large cat, a camel, a gomphothere, and a llama on the underside of exposed slabs, not indented but hanging from above in bas-relief. When he pointed them out on the canyon wall 30 feet above our heads, it was still hard to spot them, even with binoculars. Whoever found them first had sharp eyes!
Fossilized footprint of a large cat.
Fossilized llama footprint
After returning us to the flatter terrain, Dave took Jacquie and me on a walk across the desert. In the open territory you don't need to follow a trail, but you have to watch out for hazards in the form of vicious spikes on nearly everything that isn't a rock. Recent rains had produced a burst of wildflowers of all colors. Dave led us to an overlook where he could point out the features of the hills across the valley.
Desert Lily
Barrel Cacti and Ocotillo
Beaver Tail Cactus
Beaver Tail Cactus in bloom
Don't pick the flowers. Just sayin'.
The Teddy Bear Cholla is named that because it looks fuzzy. It isn't.
On the way back into town we visited a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a couple of babies, some of the dozens of steel sculptures that dot the landscape over many square miles of the valley. There are relatively realistic and life-size extinct animals such as dinosaurs, gomphotheres and gigantic camels, life-size modern horses and cattle, a huge sea serpent, a 20-foot scorpion and similar size grasshopper, a monster tortoise and more, all randomly distributed out in the middle of open desert landscape.
If I wrote about all the wonderful people Jacquie and I met, the barbecue, the accommodations and so on, this would be far too long to read. After our adventure, Dave took Jacquie and me back to San Diego and we got on a plane and came home.
The end
1:54 PM PT: I made a Flickr album that includes a few more of my photographs.
https://www.flickr.com/...