The trip really starts... we're in San Diego!

We made it to San Diego today!  The three-day cross-country trip was great, although we got pretty stinky being cooped up on the train for all that time...

The train left Pittsburgh at midnight, and we quickly settled in for the night.  Although I (Daisy) sleep fine, Jason just could not fit himself on the seat.  The three nights on the train turned out to be fine though - during the second night I actually just slept on the floor and left the whole double seat to Jason.  The train is surprisingly fun, we ate food from Trader Joes, played cribbage and Yahtzee (Jason got two yahtzees in one game!), and had a nice layover in Chicago. We randomly ran into an old friend of Jason's (Hey Steph and Jon!) on the street, and had lunch with two of his college friends from Delaware, Pam and Erik.

The people at the table before us left this cup, and I was pretty excited about it.

Miraculously, the train got in to Los Angeles an hour early this morning, and we ended up catching an earlier train to San Diego.  Once there, we put the bikes together, dried out our still wet tent, and started the adventure.

Getting bikes on and off trains is surprisingly easy.  Look!

Specifically, we got on the trolley to the border.  It was quite an adventure to get our fully loaded touring bikes up the three steep steps into a city metro car.  Actually, I got stuck about 2/3 of the way up and had to wait for Jason to haul the bike up for me.  The people in the car looked at us like we were crazy.... and they were probably right.  We managed to get the bikes safely off the trolley as well, but needed teamwork.  At this point, we were within sight of the border.  We rode a bike path along a peninsula (that used to be an island until the highway went in), and made it to a ferry just in the nick of time to get a ride back to downtown San Diego.

We really did start at the border!  This picture proves it.

We made our way to Jason's friends' house (Thanks Matt and Kira!), where we were greeted by two bouncing dogs.  After much needed showers, we were treated to dinner (Thanks Matt, Kira, Colin, Jaime!) and a hilarious stroll in San Diego Old Town.  Apparently there's some plaque somewhere that commemorates the first palm tree that was planted in California but now no longer exists.  Actually, there are three plaques, which we never found.  None of them are actually near a palm tree.We know they exist because of smart phones.

Tomorrow we are setting out for the mountains!  We have been warned of the heat, the steep roads, etc etc, but we are not worried... we are excited!