Goathead Thorns!

Do you ever find it weird that there can be something in the world that you have never, ever heard anything about and yet, in very short order, events transpire that make you well acquainted with that very entity?

Wow, that sounds like a very deep rhetorical question and what prompted it was my adventure this weekend with two flat bike tires and a sore right heel. Mechen and I went for a bike ride this past weekend with the goal of making it to Carlsbad for a scenic local sight-seeing trip. My main goal was to find a lovely scenic bar at the end, which I probably could have easily talked Mechen into joining me. Instead, our tires went flat at the worst part of the 101. In between Leucadia and Carlsbad, there is nothing apart from little housing colonies. No ATMs, no bike shops, no cabs, no Coaster station. When Mechen examined his tires, there were all of these little thorns stuck in them. WTF? Shouldn't thorns yield before tires? Intuitively, I would have a tire beat a thorn in a revised version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" but then I would be wrong. Because those little suckers were way tougher than our tires. I looked on my tires and said, "I have one too!" I promptly pulled it out which was a mistake, indicated by the audible hiss and rapid deflation of my back tire. Boo.

Fortunately! We were almost directly across the street from a 101 bus stop. This was lucky because, again, there was nothing on this stretch of highway for about 2.5 miles in either direction. We put Mechen's bike on the bus, locked mine up since someone had grabbed the other bike holder and merrily proceeded back to Cardiff. We then picked up my bike and walked to Blue Ribbon Pizzeria which was delicious, as always! We also rented Inception. We didn't watch it until yesterday afternoon. It was slightly hard to follow but excellent. Lest you think we were wasting a beautiful CA afternoon, it was raining. We had already done our outdoor activity of hiking Iron Mountain earlier that day.

The weekend highlights also included Ricotta pancakes from the Edible San Diego magazine. They were delectable!

Other March highlights included a trip out to Anzo-Borrego, a bike/hike to Torrey Pines and the Inservice. The latter was not really a highlight, but at least it's done. I'm a little worried for a surely got several questions wrong but it's out of my hands and as much as I can let the stress go (it's difficult), I'm trying for I won't get word until May.

Hasta!