Stagecoach Bike Century Background

Some places live in our hearts and our minds. Ocotillo, a desert town 80 miles east of San Diego, is one of those places for me. It sits dusty and austere just on the edge of the Anza-Borrego State Park. My grandfather Ben had been a King's Canyon horse ranger, until he met my grandmother, a teacher in Ely, Nevada. They lived in La Mesa when he became a civil servant and one of the founders of the North Island Credit Union. He loved the desert and my earliest memories of camping were feeding the kangaroo rats at Borrego Springs. Here is a picture of us at Borrego Palm Canyon in 1949.

He liked the desert and bought a trailer/house shack in Ocotillo. I would go down with my grandparents on weekends and holidays. We would wander around the lunar landscape with its prickly vegetation and spare, big sky beauty. The power of powder was revealed to me in the form of a .22 rifle and the merciless killing of numerous beer and soda cans. We hunted petrified wood and talked to the petrified denizens of this arid outpost amid the nuclear fears of the 50's.

So, when my friend Mike told me about the Stagecoach Century Bike ride, it was hard to resist. It starts in Ocotillo at about 300 ft elevation and turn around close to Shelter Valley at about 2600 feet. The weather defines the ride. You have already paid your entry fee, so if the wind decides to blow or it turns cold, the sparkling desert sun of your hopes meets the cold ass reality of your fears.