After my day of rest at the beautiful little campsite off the bike path, I rode until I made oceanside, stopped at the beach there and made coffee and oatmeal on my little coleman one burner and celebrated having made it to the ocean. It's been months since I've seen it. Oceanside seemed like a pleasant little seaside town...people surfing and playing in the sand...everyone seemed friendly. Cleaned up after breakfast and asked a cop for directions...he told me that I had to ride though Camp Pendleton, but said all I needed to do was show my ID and they would let me ride through. I guess they try to be accommodating since they are taking up quite a bit of the local coastline. I pedaled up to the gate, ID in hand and showed my driver's license to the nice young soldier dude. He very politely informed me that they would unfortunately not let me through because I didn't have a helmet. I was kind of thrown by that and told him I didn't own one. He said sorry, regulations...nobody can ride through without a helmet. Besides, he informed me, I was at the wrong gate anyway and they couldn't let me through there even if I did have a helmet. He said I would need to enter at the main gate, across the freeway. I asked the soldier dude if he thought they might let me in there and he said he doubted it. So, crestfallen, I pedaled off to the main gate. Apparently the first soldier dude had called them and told them about me because the second soldier dude here at the main gate seemed quite animated about flagging me down. He somehow had gotten the impression that I was attempting to pull a fast one...that the first soldier dude had already told me that I couldn't enter the base. I said, "no....he just said he wouldn't let me in and that that was the wrong gate." To make this long story a little shorter, I ended up talking to 5 different soldier dudes, all very adamant that I couldn't come on the base without a helmet. So I asked the guy who seemed most in charge of the whole thing what I could do then...and he suggested a route that took me about 20 miles east, back the way I had just come, to go around the base. It seemed like there was simply no option, because that certainly wasn't one for me. I asked if there was somewhere nearby that I could buy a helmet and he informed me that he really didn't know, but that if I did then maybe they would let me through....MAYBE? "What do you mean MAYBE?" That's when he informed me that they might not because I had so much stuff...like maybe some of it was explosive devices or something. Finally, he went off to ask someone if there was anywhere I could go to get a helmet, and I suggested to one of the soldiers who were assigned to guard me, that maybe they should have "loaner helmets"...yunno, turn it in when you leave the base on the other end...they said that wasn't really one of their primary concerns. Then the head soldier dude came back and said it must be my lucky day, because his superior had told him to just let me go on through. I was elated by then, and told him to tell his superior that I loved him. They gave my bags a cursory search and I was off into the rarified world of military base world....to the sound of artillery practice and stuff being blown up. Right here I would insert a photo of the soldier dudes but I had the feeling they wouldn't want to pose for me....so here's a picture taken from the inside of my tent...which has nothing to do with this story...
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| looking out from within... |
Well I had been told that at the other end of the base was a bicycle path I could get on, but when I got to it, there was a big iron gate across it and two guards...a soldier dude, and a soldier dudette. I asked if this was the bike path and they said it was but that it was secured...and I couldn't go through....again...so now it seemed I wouldn't be allowed to leave...eventually they said they thought the bikes were being detoured onto Interstate 5!...the main north to south freeway that runs through california...the one that always has those signs prohibiting bicycles and pedestrians...I couldn't imagine that I was being given accurate information but I pedaled up to the onramp and sure enough, there was a sign that said "bicycle detour" and the sign about prohibiting bicycles had that line blacked out with electrical tape. So off i pedaled to Interstate 5....and that ride was such a war zone that it made the explosions on the military base seem like a Chucky Cheese by comparison. Cars and trucks where flying by me at 70 to 80 miles an hour...huge trucks whose slipstream whooshed me around like I was riding through a hurricane...and there was no way to get off...all I could do was keep pedaling and wondering whose brilliant idea it was to detour the bicycles onto a main interstate. Finally, after a long, hot and generally terrifying ride, I came to the offramp where I could finally leave the freeway. After a while, things seemed to mellow out and I was just watching the towns and beaches go by. Eventually, exhausted, riding in the dark, I simply couldn't go any further and found a small tree to lean the bike against, roll out my sleeping bag and collapse into sleep.
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