Critical Exponent

The Desert Tour was everything Knox and I could have hoped for, and more. After our little hotel fiasco-cum-windfall, we spent the first few days sightseeing around San Diego on foot and running last-minute errands to get our bikes ready for the trip. We walked along the waterfront, visited the arboretum in Balboa Park, and walked in Coronado. San Diego struck me as a blandly pleasant city: the streets were wide and clean and everything seemed nice enough, but the parts where we were seemed to lack a certain vitality, a certain je ne sais quoi, during the day. To be sure, at night the Gaslamp District came alive with partyiers and revelers, all the more so because it was St. Patrick’s Day.

The biking part of our trip began on a Sunday: we took the street car to the neighboring town of El Cajon to avoid the hassles of city traffic. From there, we immediately began a steep, arduous climb, after only fifteen miles of which we decided to call it a night at the town of Alpine. We were off to an inauspicious start: we had a heavy rain shower shortly after we began, and had to buy giant Ziplock bags to protect our tent and sleeping bags, as we had purposefully not packed wet-weather gear; this was Southern California, after all! The reality was that, in spite of our visions of cavorting in Souther California shirtless, the area was in the middle of a cold spell the likes of which had not been seen since 1991. In fact, on the second night of our actual biking, as we were crossing the mountains through Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, we were surrounded by snow. The park and its campgrounds were closed, but the volunteers manning the welcome center made a few phone calls and obtained authorization to open up a cabin for us, and near the bathrooms at that. Yep, we were the only ones there, in a little hut with a wood-burning stove (which we kept lit throughout the night). It was all very Brokeback, what with the isolation, the camping, and Knox’s neo-cowboy hat.

The morning held even more surprises for us: a fresh inch or two of snow covering our path out of the park, and sleet and sludge on the main road. We hitched a ride to the town of Julian, locally famous for its pies, with some San Diego chiropractors in the area for the first time. It was all downhill from there (literally, certainly not figuratively!). A hailstorm accompanied us on our departure from Julian, and my fingers were seared by the cold that rendered my biking gloves thin wet rags. As we lost elevation, however, the weather turned gradually warmer and drier, and we were amazed at how quickly our surroundings changed into spectacular mountainous desert views. During one of our stops, in fact, a fellow bike tourer with four Ortliebs to my two passed us with a fleeting greeting.

Our stop that day was Agua Caliente state park, a natural hot spring in the desert. We soaked in both the indoor and outdoor pools with fellow vacationers, most of them elderly folks, until closing time (5pm most weekdays, unfortunately). We pitched our tent in the sand among the not-so-shy cotton-tail rabbits and got an amazing view of the mottled sky after the sun fell.

After an equally spectacular sunrise, we got on our bikes and pedaled on to the Yuma Desert. We passed through Plaster City, a giant drywall manufacturing plant, and a multitude of plowed fields made possible by the wonders (hah!) of irrigation. Though we were considering biking up to the Salton Sea, we decided to spend the night in El Centro, where we stuffed ourselves with Mexican food and enjoyed the motel hot tub.

The last and longest cycling day found us on an the worst roads of all: cracked, abandoned pavement running parallel to the highway. Though we were tempted to spend some time at an alluring hot spring oasis by the side of Highway 8, we pedaled on. What few irrigated fields there were had been abandoned, and before long we came to the sand dunes that could easily be the set of any Saharan (or Star Wars!) epic– save perhaps for the helicopters that seemed to hover near us every so often, probably an immigration patrol trying to convince itself that latex-clad bikers were probably not undocumented foreign nationals. In the midst of this isolation, no less, my bike broke down: the vibration from riding the warped pavement had sheared off one of the screws holding up one of my front racks, and right as I fixed that, my front tire went flat (no visible puncture, perhaps it there was something loose in the bent valve). We persevered, and at 5:14, after 194 miles of biking, we crossed the [not-so-mighty] Colorado River into Yuma, Arizona.

Knox’s parents were waiting for us on the Arizona side of the bridge. After introductions (and an all-too-public change of clothes) we had dinner and headed back to the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, where they are stationed. We were able to stay in our own guest trailer, and were treated to good home cooking and friendly ribbing during our stay. We went on several hikes at the refuge and in the Kofa Refuge, during which we were able to see barrel, saguaro, prickly pear, and agave cacti, as well as ocotillos, palo verdes, wild honeycombs, lizards, bats (and bat caves), and endangered frogs. The highlight, though, has to have been the rattlesnake that Knox and I stepped over one night and which was only pointed out to us by Knox’s nephew (who joined us with his mother toward the end of our stay).

Though I enjoyed meeting Knox’s family and we all got along really well (even Miss Whitney, the slightly spastic new family dog which one night ransacked the home while we were away), it was all too soon time to part. After a brief visit to the Yuma Crossing museum, we boarded a bus back to San Diego. We got a brief glimpse of Calexico and got carded by immigration authorities. As we suspected, there were a lot of border crossings and border patrols during our whole trip, in part because of geography and in part because of the political events in Washington.

We stayed just one night at the Hotel Solamar, enjoying a fancy dinner and all the accoutrements of luxury, before departing on our respective flights– Knox to Seattle, me to Boston. The time has just flown by, but we consider ourselves pretty lucky to have the type of life where we can take such crazy, wild vacations– and we’re already thinking about the next one.

We are just getting ready to leave the hotel in San Diego and begin biking. We decided to stay an extra day here because we wanted to rest before we set out and our arrival in the city was less than smooth.

My USAir flight was one of the most uncomfortable I’ve been on: I was in a middle seat, and there was no food on board, in spite of what the gate agent in Boston had told me. Knox arrived at a different terminal, and we were trying to find a cab large enough for both of our bikes. We finally did, but the driver was clueless and we had to help him find the address. When we unloaded everything and went to check into the Park Manor Suites Hotel, a gay-friendly establishment on the edge of Balboa Park that had been recommended to us, we were told they were overbooked and there was no room for us. By this time it was about 1:00am PST, or 4:00am EST, and I was livid! “Do you know how hard it was to get a cab? Did we not tell you we’d be arriving late? Did we not give you a telephone number? I’m gonna blog about this!!” So here I am, with a warning to all travelers: the Park Manor Suites, apparently like other hotels in the area, will overbook rooms and not tell you that you’ve been given the boot. Funny how they get you: if you reserve and don’t show up, they take your deposit; if you reserve and show up, you don’t get a room.

The receptionist said they would put us up at another hotel (they even have a form “walk letter” prepared for these situations), and he spent the next half hour calling and failing to get a van cab to take both our bikes. We finally got two regular cabs and went to the Hotel Solamar, an upscale establishment on the edge of the Gaslamp District (food!). In terms of amenities, we got the better deal, I suppose, but we had really been looking forward to settling in with no hassles and being close to the park.

At any rate, since then things have been looking up. We’ve been walking all over San Diego and stocking up on the essentials we need for the bike trip. We’ve already had fancy meals, a quick dip in the pool, and many pictures. And now, we must stop dilly-dallying and start biking east.

In a few hours, I will be flying from Boston to San Diego, where Knox will join me from his current work stint in Seattle.

Our ultimate goal: Yuma, AZ, by way of Joshua Tree National Park.

Yes, we’re taking our bikes. Yes, we’re biking in the desert. Insane? Perhaps. Intense? Most definitely!

Lest you worry, we expect to be in cell phone range and Knox’s parents (whom I’ll finally meet!) will pick us up from Joshua Tree, or earlier if we wimp out… It would be great to bike all the way from Joshua Tree to Yuma, but there isn’t enough time.

The adventure awaits… as does my cab.

O’Connor is finally free to express her opinion.

Here’s a good defense of atheism:

Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God’s will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God’s favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

In a world where humanity is so content to hurt and marginalize others in God’s name, theists would do well to take note.

Happy Pi Day!

Is it more important to help kids get adopted, or to bash gays?

The Boston Archdiocese has made its choice.

The boyfriend got featured in today’s Boston Phoenix.

I’ll have to fight off all the groupies now…

… that it could trigger a Homeland Security investigation.

I think the world map in a century or two will look very different:

The Antarctic ice sheet is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper that provides the first evidence that the sheet’s total mass is shrinking significantly….

It is one of a slew of scientific papers in recent weeks that have sought to gauge the impact of climate change on the world’s oceans and lakes. Just last month two researchers reported that Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, and a separate paper in Science today predicts that by the end of this century lakes and streams on one-fourth of the African continent could be drying up because of higher temperatures.