Mexico Fun Ride

Our second annual fun ride down in Mexico. This is a ride that starts in Rosarito and ends in Ensenada. Last year it was just Randall and myself. This year Ted and Howard decided to join us. We stayed at shannon's house on Friday night down in SD. We woke up at 5:30 in the morning to arrive at the bus station at 6:30. The bus departed at 7:30 and we arrived in Rosarito at 9. We proceeded to the start line and Ted and Howard went to pick up their race numbers. All started well. We actually started towards the front this time, so we didn't have to wait very long to actually start riding. I began my stop watch once we crossed the start line and we were off.


The morning was foggy with a slight wind. We all stuck together for about 5 minutes and then Howard fell back, so it was going to be Randall, Ted, and myself for the race.

About 16 minutes into the ride I see Randall pull over to the side of the road and slow down. I wasn't sure if he was just checking something or if something had fallen of, so I took a quick scan of his bike as I passed by. I quickly saw that his rear tire was flat. We all stopped and helped Randall get his tire fixed. We pulled out the spare tube and started installing it. After it had been fully inflated Randall attempted to pull off the pump and the seal came out with it and the tube deflated. We then tried to repair his blown tube. Since he had it a deep pothole he had 2 punctures in his tube side by side. We decided to patch it with 2 patches. Unfortunately when we went to pump it up it wasn't holding air, so we again had to take the tube out and then try it with just one patch. We got it on and pumped up the tired. Then, once again when Randall pulled out the pump (this time we we using Ted's pump instead of mine), pop. The seal broke off his second tube. We were out of tubes now and only 3 or 4 miles into the ride. We had already told Howard to keep going since we would probably be able to catch up to him. This was a good 30 minutes ago, so he was long gone. A vehicle passed us and told us that there would be a truck following the last person and would be able to pick him up and maybe give him a ride to the next check point where he could get another tube and continue the ride.

Ted and I continued on the ride. We rode together past the first checkpoint. It was nice to have someone to ride with. I had stopped my watch while we were with Randall and started it up when we continued riding. Somewhere between the first checkpoint and the first downhill I began to inch away from Ted. I was about a mile from the first hill when I passed by Howard. It was on a downhill and I was traveling substantially faster than him, so I was only able to say a quck hi as a passed by. Now I was for sure alone and the hill was about to start. I remembered it being long, but it seemed longer than I had remembered. My goal for the whole ride was to not walk at all. I made it. At the end of the 2 mile hill there was the halfway checkpoint. The whole middle of the ride is a little flat and a lot of uphill. It was hot and very tiring. Of course once the hills were done, there was an 8 mile downhill where i'm pretty sure I hit speeds up to the high 30s. From there I came back to the coast and rode along the highway for a good half an hour until I hit the finish line. It took me 3 hours and 45 minutes to finish the race which would give me an average of 13.3 mph. I beat my last years time by about an hour and a half. Surprisingly I wasn't even as tired as last year and my legs didn't cramp up at all! At the finish line I waited about 35 minutes for Ted to arrive. We all eventually made it to the finish line. The final results were

Me - 3 hrs 45 minutes
Randall - 3 hrs 50sih minuts (we found out later that he took a cab back to the start line, fixed his tire and started over again)
Ted - 4 hrs 20 minutes
Howard - 5 hrs 30 minutes.

Everyone had a good ride and a good time. It's shame that this was the last Mexico ride. Maybe it'll start up again.

Took a few pictures while on the ride as well as some video.

Enjoy!

Documented Video of the Day