On a beautiful Saturday morning in San Diego, I put my bike on my car's bike rack and drove to my friend's house to go for a casual bike ride with him and his girlfriend. Our plan was to ride to and explore the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego. I've never really spent much time in this area, but once we survived the non-bike-friendly streets of Hillcrest, mostly Washington Street, we arrived in a very nice, quaint neighborhood, with very nice houses that had plenty of curb appeal.
The styles and colors of the houses were very diverse. Some looked like small cottages, some were huge mansions, and some looked like a house you would see in Germany or some other European country. And the colors were blue, pink, yellow, green and every shade in between. Not only were the houses unique, but so were the streets. We explored many "Not a Through Street" streets and found ourselves biking down steep hills just to have to ride back up again. In these areas were houses built on steep canyons, some with views of San Diego and the Pacific Ocean.
After about an hour we decided to ride down Juan Street, the steep road that takes you in to Old Town. We got a little turned around (not lost), and I actually had to use my Android phone and Google Maps to find our way to the street. So we road down Juan Street, which is steep and narrow, but not as steep as I thought it would be. Once at the bottom we found that the roads into Old Town were closed to cars. But we could ride our bikes, and to our surprise, we found a Cinco de Mayo street fair celebration taking place. We had no idea, so this was a bonus. We just wanted some tacos.
We locked up our bikes and walked around, quickly finding a taco stand where we each bought one very delicious, and hot, taco. So after a taco you need a beer. We found that too, and drank a beer or two while watching all sorts of interesting people walk by. Then we headed back out to explore the festival. Along the way we watched a wrestling demonstration, which was very popular, based on the crowd, a lowrider car show, with lots of brightly painted, custom cars, and then some kind of equestrian event with women in bright, colorful dresses riding horses, side-saddle of course.
Knowing we had to ride back, we walked back to our bikes and headed home. I opted to ride my bike, not walk it, up Juan Street without stopping, which I did, but the two tacos and two beers sitting in my stomach made the ride more challenging. We took the most direct route back to our starting point, completing a very fun and physical bike ride.
