Tijuana Trolley - 6/00

(plus a bit of 8/00)

6/17-18 - Bright (huh?) and early (for friggin' sure!) at the break of dawn Saturday, I walked over to Yorba Linda & Kraemer to catch the #41 bus to Fullerton train station.  It's a rare Orange County bus route, in that it runs early enough where I could have made the first Amtrak to San Diego, but with my loooooong hours during the week I opted to take the extra 70 minutes' sleep and take the second train.  So of course that train was delayed in Los Angeles, long enough where I pretty much had to head directly to the former Jack Murphy stadium for game time.
     Happy to see they had extended the Trolley to the stadium, though it can be a slow ride when the thing gets packed.  The stadium was pretty much as expected...over the years it had been converted into a huge football stadium, looking a lot like the somewhat rectangular Veterans Stadium were that to have real grass and have river bluffs in the background rather than just south Philly, ha.  Great game, a pitcher's duel most of the way.  Reds pitcher had a no-hitter into the 5th, and Padres only left one runner on-base the first 7 innings.  The home team finally broke through in the 8th, runners on 1st & 2nd and pitcher's spot up.  They brought in some no-name pinch hitter, causing the Reds manager to decide his starter was through.  Padres countered by switching to Tony Gwynn, who had been on the bench after a very long game the night before.  Tony punched a single into center and the Padres took the lead for good, final 3-1.  Big crowd, 41k for a so-so team...heck, they had 60k the night before.  Got another accidental radio promo item...it was 101.5 KGB towel day!
    Post-game I headed down to Chula Vista, In Search Of the Furr's Cafeteria.  As one heads south/east of downtown on the Trolley, it gets crappy in a hurry...a strip loaded with homeless people, then the kinds of lousy neighborhoods that always seem to attach themselves to navy bases.  I was not encouraged when I got off the Trolley at Chula Vista, but actually once I got away from the I-5 corridor the neighborhoods became quiet, mixed middle-class.  The Furr's is hidden away in a non-descript commercial zone on 3rd Avenue, a couple miles away from both the city's mall and the newer franchise zone around Broadway & Palomar, probably why the place still exists?  The usual demographics for a Furr's, a mix of retirees and young Hispanic families.
    I had tried the Motel 6 online reservation thing for the first time.  My first two choices (one near the ballpark and the various Mission Valley malls, and one not far from the Chula Vista Trolley stop) were both expensive and not available.  All I could get for Saturday was the San Ysidro one, a bit far south but cheaper than what little I could come up with closer to downtown.  I'd made special requests for an upper floor, non-smoking room.  Only the second request was filled, but as it turned out the noises-from-above this time had nothing to do with lead-shoed insomniacs...instead it was from Border Patrol helicopters.
    This proximity to the border worked to my advantage, as I could take a walk to downtown Tijuana and back, all in about 90 minutes.  The frontage road the Motel 6 was on turned into a side street, which ended at a field a little over a ¼-mile from a concrete wall.  Beyond that, a large crowded city fronted by a huge Mexican flag.  A parallel street took me by a busy Kmart, a quiet outlet mall and a couple parking lots with shuttle buses for folks who preferred not to deal with the seemingly hundreds of "Buy Mexican Auto Insurance" places which cluttered San Ysidro.  Off to the right, a street off which would turn into a cul-de-sac with bus and jitney stops, and a rotating bar-gate designed to let people out but not back in again.  Beyond this, my first encounter with Mexican soil...or at least concrete.  Customs amounted to a semi-official looking young guy sitting next to a card table, occasionally nodding at some of the people passing by.  I went into the immigration office to make sure that was it, and to ask for breakfast restaurant suggestions.  An official who spoke better ingles than me mentioned there was a Denny's and a Sambo's on Avenida de la Revolucion.  Neither would be my idea of a good time.  Had I asked how to find that street, I am sure he would have pointed at the Hard Rock Cafe sign hovering over the city.  Not much to the small part of town right outside the border station...to the right, a short street lined with immigration attorney offices and drug stores.  To the left, a few more farmicias and muy mucho taxicabs.  Up the middle, a monstrosity of a cinder-block strip mall right out of East LA, half-filled with places selling tacos, beer, and yes still more drugs.  I avoiding making eye contact with the mall, so at first I missed seeing the foot-bridge to downtown.  Walked down the cab street until, near the end, a cabbie got my attention.  "You do not want to go that way...the bridge is that way" he said, pointing towards the earthquake hazard of a mall I had just tried to avoid.  "But, for $10 I will drive you downtown.  Besides, it's a 2 mile walk...how about for $7?"  I already knew it was only a mile, but I thanked him and headed for Cinderblockland.  Actually, had I some idea where I was going, and perhaps had some time to explore and a better command of the local lingo, a cab ride would have been useful.  This thought really hit me simultaneously with a breeze shift about a third of the way across the bridge.  A breeze carrying the scent of the foul liquid where the water should have been in the middle of the concrete ditch which at one time was the Tijuana River.  Thankful I had not had any breakfast to that point, and having lost any desire to have any for some time after, I avoided both breathing through my nose and looking down until I was past the worst of it.
 The city got a bit more interesting beyond the bridge.  The vendors were overstocked with the sorts of things most turistas seem to want...jewelry, glassware, various versions of Pikachu in plastic, ceramic and papier mache, and the occasional dashboard Jesus statue.  Since neither these, drug stores or bars interest me much if at all, it was confirmed that Tijuana's not my kind of town.  Ave. de la Revolucion had a number of American franchise restaurants, such as the above-noted Hard Rock, El Torito (why go to Mexico for a mall-parking-lot version of Americanized Mexican bar food?!?), Kentucky Fried Colonel, and Jack in the Box ("Breakfast Combo, $28"...stupid me, I did not even bother to study the exchange rate before entering Mexico...28 pesos would've been about $2.75, officially anyway, and what really IS the sign for pesos anyway?).  Needing to get away from all that, I took a right on Juarez and found a shopping street seemingly more geared to the locals.  I even found a slightly quaint side street with an open-air fish restaurant and only a few gringos, someplace to maybe head back to should I come back, preferably after a refresher course in Spanish.  Back to the bridge, a quick "gotta buy SOMETHING" poke into a small, clean convenience store (a can of the Mexican version of Fresca, no ingredients listed but had a number to call for informacion, for 7 pesos or 65¢...darn, unlike Canada, no Mexican change for my US$1), then follow the crowd to the US Customs.  Had to do that, as there were no signs pointing the way, even once inside the building.  There was a long line to the right, signs there only en español, and a maze of pipes leaning eventually to a few booths with only one or two people waiting at each.  I eventually settled on the maze route, which some uniformed guy then said was "the right way."  Only questions were for citizenship and for purchases.  Satisfied I was not smuggling drugs or aliens in my can of soda, he waved me on and said "Have a nice dia...uh, I mean DAY!"
    I opted to head more or less straight home, even though I got up to downtown San Diego not much past noon.  Public transit from the Fullerton train station to home is theoretically direct, thanks to the #26/Yorba Linda Blvd. route, but this one starts late, ends early, and does not run at all on Sundays!  Another job for the #41 bus, then 2+ miles of hot, sunny walk to get home.  Just as well I took the early afternoon train...got to try out the new "Pacific Surfliner" Amtrak and the state of California had just added to the fleet.  Comfy seats, and a much more useful tray table.

8/5/00 - My second San Diego run was just a quick day-trip.  Any temptation to make it a full weekend was removed by the lack of affordable lodgings down that way.  Heck, even many of the overpriced places were booked up by the time I checked.  I decided to add variety by taking Amtrak only to Oceanside, where I would pick up a North County Transit bus to the ballpark.  Had a couple hours to explore beforehand, and was disappointed to see that Oceanside was somewhat crappier in person than it appeared from the train.  Of course, the area nearest downtown and the train station is also just a wee bit too close to Camp Pendleton, thus takes on the sleazy look of a town living off a military base.
    My main reason for going back to San Diego this particular weekend was because the Cubs were playing the Padres.  I'd kept the weekend open for the longest time, but had just about written it off due to the expense of an overnight stay.  Well, a last-second change of plans by Fox TV moved the Saturday game from 7:05 to 1:05, making a day-trip possible.  Thanks to a big day for Sammy Sosa, the Cubs would prevail 7-4.
    Tried to tape the San Diego radio I had missed last time, but my luck with FM was no better than last time.  Up in "North County", the major San Diegans were too many hills away, and a lot of Los Angeles biggies were coming in especially on the north sides of hills.  Did get a good amount of the 102.1 formerly licensed to Oceanside (now to Encinitas??), with their somewhat eclectic alt.rock.
 


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