10 March 2014
Day 2: 42 miles from San Diego to Alpine, California

The Harley-riding, chain smoking, baseball cap announcing Vietnam Veteran is looking at David’s recumbent bike and with a completely straight face says “Did somebody put that guy’s bike together wrong?”

We are stopped at Mary’s Donuts and Coffee, officially our first ‘second breakfast’ stop of the ride. No eggs to order but some pretty tasty pastries to fuel us on up the road. Surprisingly, we have ridden a full 20 miles before pulling over for a sugary snack. We are still in the outskirts of San Diego, which has only been easy to navigate to because neither of us had to actually navigate. For this we have Carl, the leader of “Team Death Valley”. Sadly, Carl will be leaving us in a few days, but for now we’ll gladly place him out front and follow wherever he leads, even if that means we must sacrifice a few more belly inches to support his donut habit.

Beyond Mary’s Donuts and Coffee lie the Laguna Mountains. By Seattle standards they don’t count so much as mountains, but by bicycle standards they most certainly do. Given that our destination is a campground outside of a town named “Alpine”, one can logically deduce that there might be a little climbing involved. The good news is that we are leaving behind the city in favor of greener, or perhaps browner, open lands. This should make the climbing all worthwhile.