Photo Credit: Sean Haffey, Union Trib
I don’t live in Ocean Beach anymore, but when I did I lived near Dog Beach and the San Diego River. Actually, many people don’t even know that there is a river in San Diego, but there is. So anyway, when I lived there, I always used to jog along the river on the bike path, (yes the linked map is the actual path of the river, only the first few miles were paved at the time I lived there) and once when I was trying to avoid getting in my car I tried to follow the path on my bike into Mission Valley to make a run to Borders to look for a guide book for my trip to Spain.
Of course during that attempted ride is when I realized that the path didn’t actually follow the river that far, or at least if it did it wasn’t obvious to me. In typical San Diego “you can only get there in a car” style, it just stopped near the freeway where the there was really nothing but a perfect place for a homeless camp. And actually, I’m pretty sure there were some camps right near by, since I’ve heard plenty of stories. None the less, I made it to Borders in once piece (though I was quite out of place in the sea of cars) and got my book, but not without having to carry my bike up a hill, across the end of a freeway ramp, and even over the dry river bed on some railroad tracks that had there been a train coming I would have been killed. Oh yea, then I had to brave an actual road, which is no minor task around here since most people who are driving are usually doing something besides driving.
So when I saw this article, I can’t tell you how excited I was to read that the bike path is being extended to actually go all the way into Mission Valley, eventually all the way to Julian. If it actually gets completed, I’ll certainly make use of part of it which could connect me to the beach without ever really having to ride on a main road. And the other more noble goal of the path is to make people realize that yes, there actually is a river there!
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Originally posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 9:41 AM .
