San Diego

Monday we left LA after a two month attempt to find work. What we managed to find was meager and sporadic. We are sad to say goodbye to our new friends Pierre, Lindsay, Ryan, Chris, and Jordan and my old friend Colin. You will be missed, and your kindness will not be soon forgotten. We gave our farewells, closed out our P.O. box and filled our water tank for the next part of our journey. We met with the last few kayak shops on the West Coast along our route to San Diego, the last major city in California. Our hopes of driving to Central America had been long forgotten after our struggle to find work and our high cost vehicle repairs, not to mention me losing my passport right before we came to LA. Some things are not meant to be, at least not now. In San Diego, we had Mexican food in Old Town and then crashed for the night next to the Department of Transportation. In the morning we took the time to explore the area and go paddling. It’s disappointing that most of the Southern Coast is overdeveloped or cliff. I look forward to my summer paddles on Cape Cod. Our plan to spend another night in the city changed once we had biked around Ocean Beach, ate delicious lunch at Cass St. and checked out some other areas, and we started our journey to our next stop, Slab City. We only made it 100 miles before we needed to eat and sleep. We pulled off the highway and parked on a back road overlooking the desert and Mexican border. We could even see the fabled wall dividing the two countries. I thought it was just a myth. That night we were visited twice by the border patrol. “You just camping?” the officer asked. “Yes sir”, I responded. “Okay, right on” and he was off. This was much less of an ordeal than other encounters with law enforcement officers. In LA we were pulled over for the Panda Paddles sign on the back of our bus. The officer claimed that we needed proper permits to hang a sign on our bus and he asked if it was commercial. This seemed suspect to me; more like, let me see if I can get the punks for something while I have them pulled over. He even went as far as entering our vehicle without permission.