Day Thirty-four
Imperial Beach to the Mexico border, 16
Up early, breakfast, and on the road at 7:44 AM. Today’s ride is short but there are a lot of logistics to attend to when I am finally out of the saddle.
I saw parts of Imperial Beach twice
Tenacious Tape to the rescue
About a mile into my ride I reached back to see if the patch on my cycling shorts was still covering the growing hole on my right rear haunch. It wasn’t. Let’s just say there was a waxing moon on my form-fitting lycra outerwear. I don’t wish such a sight on anyone, so I returned to my room and affixed a new patch of black Tenacious Tape to my shorts, and started down the road.
Imperial Beach has an east-west strip of all the typical chain stores and restaurants, and modest, low rise housing to the south of the main drag, Palm Avenue. It’s a town of working people, chain link fences, and not a lot of thought to residential landscaping. But the streets are clean and there’s very little litter. Not much money here, but it looks like people care.
I pedal east through town and turned south on Hollister Street.
Tijuana River
In both 2024 and 2025, American Rivers named the Tijuana as one of America’s most endangered rivers.
The bottomlands of the Tijuana River are lush with thick, green vegetation. The river smells like an open sewer. The plants are lush but the place isn’t healthy.
It comes down to will, money and cooperation, which as we know has declined rather than grown in this area in recent years. The river’s discharge makes swimming in the ocean at it’s mouth too poisonous, and these beaches are closed for health as well as political reasons.
Still, this southwest edge of California is a quiet, pretty place. There is a nice campground along the banks of the estuary, away from the stinky main river channels. The place has promise.
I reach the end of my road sooner than I had hoped…
Just 8 minutes of riding shy of where the border meets the ocean beach, at the entrance to Border Field State Park , there is a “Park Closed” barricade.
Border Field State Park inaugurated as a California State Park by First Lady Pat Nixon in 1971. It seems to be closed often due to sewage issues and in 2024, its operation was defined by Order Number: 935-669-001. Border Field State Park is often confused with Friendship Park….
…Friendship Park resides within the Border Field State Park. It was once a small circular space with the Boundary Monument #258 sharing half its base with Mexico and half with the U.S. However, the Monument is now only on the Mexico side and the U.S. side is blocked by a fence.
Friendship Park remains closed on the U.S. side
In 2008, as part of the implementation of the “Secure Fence Act of 2006”, the U.S. Homeland Security obtained the Friendship Park from the State of California through eminent domain and began restricting access in order to install 600 miles of border fencing. In 2020 the park was completely closed to the American public.
Had I been on the Mexican side, I could have cycled right to border beach—close enough to throw sand into the United States. But for Americans in America, accessing this park is illegal. The contrast between the U.S. - Canada border and U.S. - Mexico border is stark. Take another look at the first post of the West Coast Trip.
This was the terminus of what was to be a 11,600 mile bicycle ride around the edge of the USA, but turned out to be 11, 558. But before we get too bent out shape, consider that I am still young and it’s taken me 44 years to get this much of the ride done. Maybe sometime in the next 40 years, things will change and I can ride the final 2 miles.
With Jerry and Lorenzo as my witnesses, I declare the ride finished and mischief managed.
Jerry and Lorenzo—father and son out for a drive—thought they’d look at the park, too. We had a good, ironic laugh together at the situation. It was Lorenzo who said I could just cross at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, among the busiest border crossings in the world, just five miles east, and then ride through nice neighborhoods and past the bull fighting ring to the border beach on the Mexican side.
We also talked about me just riding past the sign and seeing how far I got, but I pointed out the surveillance camera, and soon after, a U.S. Border Patrol truck moseyed by. I considered asking for a lift but missed my chance as the truck drove away.
I started pedaling east, then north, towards my life after the ride
First, I have to get myself and the bike home.
I retrieved my bike box from the UPS Store in Imperial Beach box, dis-origami-ed the box and disassembled the bike enough to fit in, along with my cycling-specific gear. I paid for up to 55 pounds of contents plus box, and kept stuffing it until I reached 54 pounds. Leaving the well packaged bike box with UPS to be shipped home, I walked out with just one pannier bag, all I would need on my multi-modal trip home.
My trip home starts on today with a bus from Imperial Beach to San Diego, the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner from San Diego to Los Angeles Union Station, an airport shuttle to LAX airport, and a 15 minute walk to my hotel.
On Sunday I fly to Seattle, ride light rail into the city, hitch a ride with my brother, reclaim my car at Shilshole Bay Marina, and after a celebratory party with family, drive to Missoula. I should be home for dinner on Monday.
I’ve tried to share with you the daily events that slowly stitch together a long distance bike ride, my personal foibles and wonderments, and my impressions of the towns and country through which I have ridden.
The rider becomes the landscape
Different ways of travel provide different looks into the world, each way being its own lens of sorts, showing some things while concealing others. The immediacy of cycling, and it’s every present physical risks and hardships, folds and kneads the rider into the landscape, not simply observing it, but for just a few moments, being part of that landscape.
Other ways of travel bring different looks into a place, but I will always maintain that finding a way to be part of the scene—rather than merely a passive observer—creates an opportunity for authentic connection that the mere observer can never experience. Earned experience, adventure travel, first-person interaction—these promises the risk of changing the traveler in significant ways that cannot be predicted before the trip begins.
So how have I been affected? What parts of me have been reconfirmed, what have been debunked, and what has the heat and pressure of daily suffering annealed me into? I will have to re-engage my “normal” life, and see what I do differently, how I show up differently, before I can answer these questions. More to come, later. Thanks for following my ride.
