| chula vista, california to playas de rosarito, mexico 47 miles "It took him long enough." I can feel my ears burning as my friends and relatives debate whether I was frightened of crossing the border from gringoland. The border. Don't let anybody tell you it's not militarized, automobilized and fractured in a thousand different ways. The navy and marines own the coast from camp pendleton to san ysidro--just try taking a picture too close to one of the ubiquitous aircraft carriers and find out. San diego has beauty, uncontrolled development and a vibrant bike culture. National city to the south is famous for its "miles of cars." The sound of engines follows me into tijuana. The environmental health coalition of san diego is fighting to preserve one last bit of undeveloped shore in chula vista. Albert Avillo paints rocks, and build sculptures, joggers jog, doggies prance and the birds fly free. Maybe it's doomed to "development.". I take dozens of pictures there, sending them to everyone. Three days later, Albert is featured in san diego's conservative newspaper. Chris, a former anchor-out now living in a national city, tells me stories over tea designed to make even a hardened sailor's blood congeal. The port authority, an illegally constituted organization according to chris, forced everybody out of a protected cove where they had existed for years and into an exposed anchorage. In the middle of winter. An el nino winter. Chris' elegant trimaran was smashed by a bigwig's craft. Beside's being a bigwig, he owned stripclubs, and his boats were in the girls' names. "It's just business," the bigwig told Chris when he tried to get compensated for the trimaran's loss. "Nothing personal." The bigwig collected half a million dollars from FEMA, the federal emergency organization designed to distribute money to the politically connected, before it disbanded. Chris is planning a move to clear lake with a converted greyhound in a few months. He's tired of fighting. San ysidro, the last u.s. town before tijuana, is more mexican than some of its southern neighbors. There is a different vibe here, less hurry, more smells, cheaper food. I think i'm going to like mexico. I don't like tijuana, though, and ride my bike all night to avoid the dead-end streets, heavily lighted and patrolled paths which migrants to el norte use to walk to the promised land, and mean dogs that chase my bike. The signs to ensenada all lead to the toll road. I am stopped at the gate and told bikes are prohibido. I am not looking forward to biking back to tijuana to take the via libre. I am trying with my paquito espanol to beg the guard to let me pass, even though i know how dangerous it is to be riding down this road on a cloudy, new moon night. In the u.s., this would be a no-win situation, i think. Here, he radios to a gringo to pick me up, and i am driven the last few miles to rosarito in style. Hasta luego! jeff |