The Adventures of Familia Bajaboy

I've been raving to Tracy for many years now the benefits of trail running. Up until recently, Tracy had primarily run on pavement. She has even completed The San Diego Rock and Roll marathon. But trail running was a new adventure and with a bit of coercion, she agreed to sign up for the Santa Monica Mountains Trail Run put on by Pacific Coast Trail Runs. There were 4 different distances but we set our sites on the 30K distance which translates to 18.6 miles with about 3,200ft of climbing. While visiting my mother, Zoe, in Sebastopol over the summer we opted to volunteer at the Salt Point trail run put on by PCTR. As a result, we each received a free entry. But more impor tantly Tracy got to see first-hand the laid-back nature of trail runners and the sport itself. The runners talked with each other, joked around, and were more concerned with the scenery than with race splits. I think this helped ease both of our nerves. At the suggestion of the race directors, we reserved

In an effort to maintain our fitness gains from this year's training, Tracy and I decided to sign up for some longer events. We signed up to do a 30k trail run in November as well as a challenging bike ride, the Grizzly Challenge. We coerced some friends to sign up and join us. Here's a brief report from the ride. The plan was to camp with friends at Bass Lake, California about 10 miles from the start of the ride in North Fork. Chuck and his wife Laura along with her parents reserved a large spot for us and we were excited to hang out before and after the ride. Our other friends Cheryl, Eric, and Kim stayed in North Fork at a friend's house. A storm was clearing out as Tracy and I arrived late on Friday night. We heard that snow had fallen at 5,000 feet and thus we might find some the following day on the ride. We decided to sleep in a bit as it would not warm until the sun had risen above the trees. After all, it was in the low 30s when we woke up at 6:30am. The r

Tracy and I were re-energized and ready to roll now that the "ToyotaHome" was secure again. The prior day was long and stressful taking a toll on the two of us. But today was a new day and we were fresh with enthusiasm for the upcoming adventure. The plan today was to head south from our beach campsite south towards Loreto. We would top off on gas and then head west across the mountains and camp on the Pacific. While I have traveled most parts of Baja, today's route was completely new for me. I have heard incredible things about these mountains and had marveled at their beauty driving south. Today we would see them up close. There are two primary roads that head towards the Pacific. We chose the road to Mision San Javier. The first few miles are paved but I knew that would end quickly and it did. The road was in great shape but had a number of steep grades. We were driving slowly anyways as the views were incredible. We stopped a number of times to get out of