Tourists!

Mike, our craigslist angel, drove us down to San Diego in style in his Chevy Silverado.  The ride took about 7 hours instead of 2 weeks.  And that was that. And we are so totally cool with how things have been working out.

EXTREME TOURISM!!!

With the advent of our new-found bicycle-hate, we have lost our sense of spontaneous adventure and have become dirty, dirty tourists.  Upon arriving in San Diego, we met up with Diane, one of Colleen’s parents’ high school friends.  Diane has been letting us stay in her comfy guest bedroom in her beautiful home in Del Mar, CA (just north of San Diego), complete with swimming pool and hot tub, beer-loaded fridge, two feisty dogs, great location 2 miles from the beach, and guaranteed sunny weather everyday.  We feel like the stars of a reality television show, and we have no shame about it.  Diane has been letting us use her car to drive our lazy buns all over town.  In a flash, our lives have taken us from sleeping in the bushes, scared for our lives, to stewing in a hot tub, hoping it never ends.

Day 83: We paid a visit to downtown San Diego, where we totally went SHOPPING!  (And got a $30 parking ticket for getting back to our meter 7 minutes too late.)  We totally bought some CLOTHES, and we look super totally cute now.  We went to Balboa park, and took like, totally fabulous pictures of everything so that we can show our mediocre travel photos to our friends when we get back and have nothing substantial to say about the photos.

TOURIST MOMENT: As we rode the FREE! Balboa Park tram, our cap’n noticed something unusual to the side of the tram.  “And now, if you look to your right,” he said, “you’ll see a tree that fell down.” [[noticeable pause]]  “Wow, that was the most exciting thing I’ve seen all day.”  Colleen and Liz erupt into laughter.  No one else found it all that amusing.

Day 84: We took this show down the road to Tijuana, Mexico, where the cityscape changes drastically within the space of a few feet at the USA-Mexico border.  After walking across the border without event, we made a bee-line for the margaritas and cigarettes like the well-behaved tourists that we are, although Tijuana is no longer the tourist destination it used to be.  The tell-tale signs of economic decay are all over the place.  Completely vacated plazas, abandoned sales booths, and crumbling buildings lined the streets in some parts of town.  In others, overly persistent salespeople practically stalked us down the street, telling us repeatedly, “It’s my turn now!  Please, come in, just look. I give you something free.  Please, lady.”  It’s fun to shop, eat, and drink for cheap.  It’s not quite as fun to know that the low prices result from all sorts of economic and social impoverishment.  If we had more time, money, and protective measures, it would have been interesting to bus deeper into Mexico and see what its like beyond the border.  (Summer 2011? Who knows…)  But for now, our short visit of colorful booth-shopping, 3/$1 taco-eating, $1 beers, buying fruit salad, fresh chorros, ice cream bars and candy from street-carts, and free tequila-shots everywhere will have to suffice, and we enjoyed our visit thoroughly.

Day 85:  BEACH. Finally. ‘Nuff said.

We’re still not sure exactly what we’re doing for the next few days until the race…  But things are simmering down.  Just as they ought to.