We loaded the DRZs in the pickup and took a trip out to the Inkopah and Jacumba
Wilderness area. From San Diego, it takes about an hour to get there. Unlike
heading north, heading east out of San Diego is great because once you get past
Alpine, there's no traffic. Only the people with the sorry need to drive into
hell (i.e., where there's a lot of desert and a lot of carrion-peckers to strip your bones clean) go that way. The weather was
perfect and the skies were clear.
From top left to bottom right:
- Bikes
freshly unloaded. "Bito," my bike, is waiting for me to break his clutch lever,
which I will gladly do within about 15 minutes. The best part was when the bike was falling over and I jumped clear of it so it wouldn't pin me. Guess what I dove onto? Right, a cactus. God bless chest plates.
- Highway 8 cutting through the mountains.
- Chris enjoying the waning hours of the day.
- A killer view of the desperate landscape.
- Self portrait. Don't I look like a female Darth Vadar with prescription
sunglasses on?
- I'm smiling because I realized I forgot to pack Chris's camelbak and if I
keep smiling maybe he won't figure out what I did.
- There was an old paved road that went straight to the edge of a cliff. I
don't know if it was the old highway or a road built specifically to deal with
the construction of Highway 8, which is a good ways below.
- You can't see in this picture, but the sand below is full of footprints.
This is a pedestrian superhighway for people avoiding the standard border
checkpoints.
- I'm watching for people with guns...
- ...because they are crawling all over the place out here in No Man's Land. "Have target, will shoot!"
At one point in our journey, some guys set up their shooting range with nothing
more than a few rocks as a backdrop. Turns out we were riding
behind their backdrop in their line of fire. One wide shot and there would've
been a shocked dirtbiker rolling around on the ground wondering who dropped sizzling
ketchup on her. Chris immediately roared
up the hill to tell them they were in the wrong. Although I thought Chris was
heading to a sure meeting with death-by-gun, the guys were actually very
apologetic. We told them there was a sign that said "No Shooting" because people
like us were trying to ride around without unnecessary perforations added to our soft flesh. Then Chris started talking to them about guns and, christ, you
would've thought they'd all been in the same fraternity together. Guys and their guns...I'll
tolerate it until I'm knocked on my ass by an authentic World War I British Enfield rifle.
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