We had been wanting to do the Corrizo Gorge ride for nearly three months. On two separate occasions, our planned trip to Corrizo Gorge was cancelled because of rain. Rain?!! In San Diego? On two separate occasions?!! Yes, it was hard to believe, but it happened. We hoped that our third try would be successful. After all, the third time’s always a charm, right? That’s certainly what we hoped when Judy planned the trip for Sunday, April 06. We kept an eye on the weather reports and were in near disbelief when earlier that week, weather.com indicated that showers were likely on Saturday. If rain spoiled our Corrizo Gorge trip three times in a row, that would surely be a sign that we shouldn’t ride it! Of course, we knew that weather forecasts are notoriously incorrect and thus took the forecast with a very small grain of salt.

Lame Weather Forecasts
As Sunday neared, the forecast gradually improved and by Thursday of that week, the weather people were forecasting nice, sunny weather. The more you look at weather forecasts, the more you learn not to trust them unless it’s one or two days before the forecasted date. It sure looked like we’d finally be able to do Corrizo Gorge.

Our plan was to get an early start on Sunday morning to avoid the potentially hot mid-day temperatures of Jacumba. That turned out to not be necessary as the high that day was only forecast to be 59F, actually a bit on the cool side. Nevertheless, the plan was set and Patty, Dave, Brian, and Ann were to meet at our place at a bright and early 7 AM. From there, we’d caravan and meet Ryan at the Texaco station right off the Jacumba exit at around 9 AM.

Flat Tire
As I was taking our bikes out of the closet on Sunday morning, I realized that I had a flat front tire. It must have been a slow leak from our Elfin Forest ride the day before. The last couple rides had produced many a flat tire. Judy got a slow leak from our Palm Canyon ride the preceding weekend as did a number of other people in our group. When I switched out Judy’s flat tube, I inadvertently replaced it with an inner tube that itself had a slow leak that wasn’t discovered until the next day. I ended up changing 3 flat tires in two days. Pain in the ass!

The flat tire was soon fixed and everyone arrived more or less on time. As we were getting ready to leave, both Patty and Brian realized that they had each forgotten their headlamps. Fortunately, Judy and I had some extra headlamps although they were of the old-school variety and didn’t produce a whole lot of light. Brian and I drove and shortly after we had gotten on the freeway, Judy realized that she had forgotten her sunglasses. Since we were running a bit late, we decided to just buy a cheap pair in Jacumba. Unfortunately, all of these little mishaps were merely a sign of things to come.

Don’t Forget About Daylight Savings Time!
It turns out that we would have had plenty of time to go back and retrieve Judy’s sunglasses because we soon got a call from Ryan who had apparently forgotten that today was the first day of Daylight Savings Time. This despite the fact that Judy had specifically highlighted this fact in BOLD, CAPITALIZED, UNDERLINED TEXT on the RohJuh.com Forums.

Of course, the rest of us arrived at Jacumba before Ryan. We loitered around a bit, some bought some drinks at the Shell, and Judy got a pair of stylin’ beatnik shades. It wasn’t long before Ryan’s Iraqi Liberation combat vehicle came rumbling in. Everyone was now here and the weather was great. Corrizo Gorge, here we come!

Major Doh, and I Mean Major
Patty asked Ryan if her bike had any flats from the Palm Canyon trip and Ryan’s face went lifeless. Patty’s bike? Yeah, you know, the red Sugar 3. The one that you were supposed to bring with you. Ryan had forgotten to bring Patty’s bike! Please tell us you’re kidding about not bringing Patty’s bike!!! Nope, not kidding. If there’s some sort of supreme being, it seemed that he or she was intent on preventing us from riding Corrizo Gorge.

So now what? Patty and Judy offered to hike Corrizo Gorge while the rest of us rode it. First, we didn’t think that that was such a good idea because Judy had semi-sprained her ankle the day before at Elfin Forest (and Ann, who had hiked Corrizo Gorge before, didn’t think that hiking it would have been very good for Judy’s ankle). Second, we simply wanted everyone to be able to ride the trail! We ran through our options and decided that the best solution was if we were able to find a bike shop nearby that rented bikes. We asked the guys at the Shell if they knew of any bike shops in the area and they said we were out of luck. We called Information, but they weren’t too helpful; they could only locate a small handful of bike shops and they were all far away. So we decided to try our luck at finding one ourselves by driving west to the next biggest towns. Brian and Dave would stop in Pine Valley while the rest of us would drive on to Alpine to look for a bike shop. We’d try to stay in close communication via cell phones.

Sure, We Rent Bikes
Brian and Dave struck out at Pine Valley, but the rest of us found a bike shop right off of Tavern Rd. in Alpine. I walked in to the store and asked if they rented bikes. Yes, we do. Awesome! However, we don’t have any right now (presumably because they were rented out), but we were going to put together this new one anyway and you can have that one. It’ll only take a half-hour to put it together. That’s not too bad we thought. We’ll grab an early lunch at one of the stores nearby while we wait for the bike to be put together. Sweet! It was looking like everything might actually work out!

We’d be getting a later start than we had anticipated so I decided to ask the guy what time they closed. “We close at 5.” Hmmmm, we might have a hard time getting the bike back in time. Patty asked whether we’d be charged another day if we returned it say, early morning the next day. The old man looked perplexed and after a few seconds, a lightbulb went on. “Ummm, did you say you wanted to rent a bike?” Uhhh, yeah. “Oh, I thought you wanted to buy a bike. Sorry, we don’t rent bikes.” You’ve got to be kidding me! The man was nice and apologized several times but c’mon, did you really think we would be willing to buy a new bike sight unseen (it was still in the box) and without first agreeing on a price? He mentioned later to me that he and the co-owner had actually looked into renting bikes, but ended up deciding against it because the insurance was too high. And he also informed us that there were no bike shops that rented bikes anywhere nearby.

So we were back to square one. After some deliberation, we decided that Patty and Judy would take my 4-Runner and drive to Laguna to hike around. But first they’d check around the town of Laguna to see if there were any bike rental shops. Judy had remembered reading in a magazine that there was a bike rental shop around Laguna. If they found one, they’d rent a bike for Patty and then ride the Big Laguna trail. The rest of us would ride Corrizo Gorge. If Patty and Judy wanted to do Corrizo Gorge some other time, I was willing to do it again with them.

Another Flat Tire
We headed back to Jacumba where I unloaded my stuff from the 4-Runner and Patty and Judy left for Laguna. The rest of us got ready for the ride. As Ryan unloaded his bike, he realized that his back tire was flat. Aye carumba, could anything else go wrong?

Ryan’s flat tire was soon fixed and we got on the trail. The trail was pretty fun and of a gentle grade (no steep climbs or downhills). You ride along the railroad track for some parts and ride on the railroad track on other parts. You go through a few railroad tunnels, some of which can get pretty dark inside. We discovered that ordinary backpacking headlamps like the Zipka don’t do a whole lot. Ryan’s Nite Rider was awesome and lit up a good portion of the tunnels. Dave’s biking headlamp worked pretty well too. There were also a few bridge crossings that could be kind of scary if you thought too much about how high up you were.

Exposure and Cacti
One of the tunnels had collapsed inside (apparently a large fault line runs through much of the ride) making it very difficult to pass through the tunnel. A detour ran alongside the side of the mountain and while there was nothing super technical, the cliff-side exposure brought about a certain level of difficulty and forced us to walk some sections. In addition, various cacti were sprinkled along the trail ready to greet those riders who failed to steer precisely enough.

When we reached the large trestle (the main railroad bridge) we took some pics, played around on the piles of railroad ties, and then turned around to head back. The entire out-and-back was around 17-18 miles and we were all pretty tired by the time we got back to the cars. The weather turned out to be warmer than the forecasted 59F. We didn’t know exactly what it was, but temperature-wise, it was actually very pleasant.

Hey Ladies, Check Out My Long Travel
We packed up and drove out to Alpine where we had planned to meet Patty and Judy at 5:30. When we got there, we found Patty and Judy flirting with Steve, an apparently hard-core mountain biker that they had met on the trail while hiking Nobel Canyon. Steve had a pretty tricked out Turner bike with which he was trying to impress the ladies with. Of course, his gear jargon was instantly lost on Patty and Judy who only noticed that his bike was shiny and a pretty color. He also tried to impress the ladies with his mountain biking scars, but Patty and Judy rolled up their pants and sleeves and gave Steve a sound beating. Dude, don’t EVEN try to play that with us ’cause we’ll kick your ASS in the Scar Game.

Actually, Steve seemed like a really nice guy and told us a bit about Anderson Trail and about how this crazy guy had set up barbed wire, ditches, and planks with protruding nails along the trail in an effort to thwart mountain bikers. He told us about how he and some other mountain bikers had recently worked with the local sheriff to resolve the matter and how they participated in a trail restoration day to help mend the relationship between the local residents and mountain bikers. Likely as a result of many of the actions that he was involved with, Anderson Truck Trail is now open once again to mountain bikers. Go Steve! Your fellow mountain bikers truly appreciate your efforts!

Everyone was ravished so we decided to go get food. After a quick stop at the Claim Jumper to check out the wait time (it was too long), we ended up at BJ’s in La Mesa. Everyone filled their tummies over talk about the Atkins diet. Some of us went a bit overboard by topping things off with Pizooki and Brownie desserts. Dr. Atkins sure wouldn’t have approved of these high-sugar, high-carb delights.

As we emphatically demonstrated, even the best planned events can go astray. Most of us got to do the ride, and I took plenty of pics to help capture the day, not only to help us all remember it (since it’s pretty obvious that we all could use some memory assistance), but also to help Patty and Judy decide whether the ride is worth their time in the future. And despite the unfortunate mishaps of the day, it’s days like these, when things go wrong (but not that wrong), that are actually the most memorable.

Three Brians and Ryans?!!
I got some pretty good pics overall, but the one that takes the cake has got to be the panorama in which there’s not just one, not just two, but count ‘em three Brians and Ryans. Betcha didn’t know that there were that many of them. As if one of each wasn’t more than enough! In addition to the great pics, there’s also two short movie clips showing off some seriously hardcore ridin’ skillz. Prepare to be amazed. Check ‘em all out.

Posted by Roger at 8:40 pm.