Alpine to El Centro, day 2

Stiff today, those were some tough hills last night.  Slept long and woke up to three chihuahuas sleeping atop the couch next to me.  Shovelled some oatmeal and was on my way.  Another late start.  Great to see my cousin, though.  She and her Mom made me feel like family. 

The mountain towns of Pine Valley, Live Oak Springs, Boulevard were fresh, wooden, and, as the name suggests, wafting with pine.  Oddly, though, I missed the heat of the desert.  I enjoyed the up and down of the hills, all the old west signage and rusty yard givings, and the feeling of having been along the highway, Old Highway 80, with my Dad a long time ago, in another life (the one of dream-like memories.)

I had been warned the days proceeding about all the immigration "coyotes," when I talked about wild camping. I knew there was a risk, and had decided against it so close to the border. But, I wasn't expecting the onslaught of border patrol I began to encounter descending from the mountains. Just outside of Jacumba, still up around 3000 feet, I started to see white trucks passing both ways. Then, out of nowhere, and after I'd been alone on the road, nothing for fifteen miles, a man in a green uniform poked around about a bush. Slightly further on, a sea of figures appeared on the hills to my left. I slowed, incredulous: they were statues and mannequins poised, it seemed, as sort of border-crossing scarecrows. 

I can only guess whether they were for ill or naught, but either way, the gravity of the situation down at the border sunk a little futher in.  I knew I was only some hundred feet from Mexico, when the Fence appeared.  It looked ridiculously fortress-like, but ended rather abruptly and arbitrarily (somewhat like our beloved shoulders and bike-lanes.)  What are we coming to?

The next stage of what was turning out to be an epic day had me descending, giddily and fearfully (I would have been shredded had my tire punctured or I lost control and crashed), at a very steep grade for 11 miles, going, I'm guessing, at least 40 to 50 miles an hour.  The views (and the wind) were fantastic, and a semi even whistled at me.  However, I was relieved to reach a lesser, more relaxed grade and decided to push on the thirty miles to El Centro.  The wind at my back, two hours of sunlight left, it was smooth sailing from there.

Underneath the helicopters and floodlights of the border and RV Park, on a bed of gravel, I slept like a rock, myself.  Nothing like ninety-five miles of sun, wind, and pedalling for a solid night's sleep.