Gringo :
Touristic Information.
Bicycling In Tijuana.
Post-NINE-ELEVEN Update:
THE PEOPLE HAVE DISCOVERED A SECRET: Bicycling has become the latest, fastest, and therefore best way for daily commuters to beat the long morning waits to get into the United States. The bikes slip through the lines of cars ON THE RIGHT and into Customs faster than cars or pedestrians. On the north, around the Trolley stop and along fences in the streets all around, you can see hundreds of bikes locked up during the day. A most curious development and one proof that the people know that necessity is the mother of invention. And no one loves their mother more than Mexicanos. MMM-mmm yes....
Back to our previously scheduled programming:
We -- neither one of us, D or M, have ever ridden a bike in Tijuana. But we've seen plenty of people who do! Kids going to work or school. Adult peddlers (yes, pedalers too) pedaling and peddling and balancing their trays of wares to sell, riding on heavy duty work bikes that remind Dano of when he had his paper route and had to huff and puff up and down the lesser slopes of Mount Helix; and yes, other adults, more bourgeois sports-types, heading out on their shiny mountain specials cranking up toward the hills....
You can see people going up the ramp to the pedestrian bridge over the river and through the mechanical bull plaza of Viva Tijuana shops to grandmother's border we go.
Every now and then you can see the determined bicyclist tourist or worker coming through the border turnstyle, rearing his bike up on its rear wheels to fit into the spinning gate between the 1st and the 3rd worlds. She doesn't know that maybe the customs officers will open a gate and let her out into the roaring traffic. Or maybe the pedestrian corridor is safer, after all....
Sometimes you can even see some braver souls pedaling along the levee -- Now THERE's a ride the gringo wants to take, miles up the river wall without having to cross a single street, just cruising along the gravelly road on top the levee, passing under the occasional shadowy bridges stinking of urine, where only the bravest of joggers dare to run. Bicyclers are a breed apart. They don't need any of this writing to tell them how to have fun and be careful.
But... did you know that the architect engineer who worked on the zillion-dollar marble & palm tree WORLD DISCOUNT CENTER at the border (on the U.S. side -- it's NEW!!!) once had coffee with Mike and Maria in Cafe Francais on 7th just off Revolucion? No? Well, it's true. As true as anything here. More than some. He's half German, half American. Nice looking guy. Saw him twice, both times on his bike.
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