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The Long San Juan and Fullerton Loop Ride Report

This whole week a few of us planned on riding a gnarly trail called San Juan. Its near San Juan Capistrano in South Orange County…beautiful place. So Jeremy was our tour guide, his friends Wayland, Dave and Dave along with Joe Solancho, Priscilla and I, drove about an hour to get to this trail head. Just to give you some background of this trail…its tough! 12 miles of switchback climbing and exposure…meaning if you were to fall, you could fall off the edge of the mountain, seriously.

The drive.

Here’s the last time I saw Dave and Dave…

Last time I saw Jeremy.

You see, Jeremy is a rather fast rider and sometimes lacks patience for us slower folk. I was tending to Priscilla who was having a hard time making it up the mountain because she felt scared of the exposure, so I let the 2 Dave’s and Jeremy ahead because I didn’t want to slow them down. Joe and I were on big bikes, we each had forks that has over 6 inches of travel and 35 lbs rigs, this meant that when we came to the narrow switch backs, we would sometimes get stuck and get off our bikes. Of course, doing all that slowed us down big time. On occasion we would see Jeremy and his pals traversing the mountain.

You can see Jeremy and the 2 Dave’s in the picture, just look at the red, white and blue specs.

Joe was cool enough to hang with Priscilla and I.

This is the why Priscilla didn’t like this trail…the trail was pretty narrow.

At mile 2…about an hour into the ride, my knee was starting to act up and Priscilla wasn’t feeling good about going up any further because the trail was getting more technical. We told Joe to go ahead and let the rest of the guys know that we turned back. We said our goodbyes and Priscilla and I got on our bikes to head back down. But all of a sudden, Joe showed up again. He decided to go down with us since he wasn’t having fun either.

Joe went ahead of us since I wanted to keep an eye out on Priscilla. But she knows how much I love descents so she said for me to ride ahead and get my thrills and if I hear her scream, that was her signal that she got hurt. I got a few shots of Joe riding down some of the switch backs…looks pretty cool.


You can see Joe on the top single track…he’s that itty bitty spec.

Once I got down the mountain, I get to my car, and Joe was already packing up. Then I noticed there was a forest ranger that was giving out tickets to all the cars that didn’t have an Adventure Pass. Since I didn’t have one, I quickly loaded up my car with my gear, threw the bike on top and drove away! Oh by the way, Priscilla was still up on the mountain making her way down. As I drive away, I yell out the window to Joe in Tagalog (Filipino talk) that I’ll be right back. I said it in our language because the ranger had just finished giving Joe a ticket.

I drove up the road and pulled over hoping that the ranger would leave. But since there were over 30 cars there, I figured he’d be busy for a while. As I sat in my car, Joe in his car and Priscilla on her bike roll up. Apparently Joe told Priscilla that I just got up and left her. But she didn’t realize that all I really wanted to do was avoid getting a ticket! Aye…that’s all I need…another expense.

Priscilla and I stopped at her favorite Messican Restaurant called Las Golindrinas for some tamales and a breakfast burrito. Once we were done we decided to drive out to the Fullerton Loop for a quick jaunt.

Here we are at the Loop.

Oh by the way, for those of you that don’t know, I have this fetish for eye wear. I LOVE SUNGLASSES! So I’ve been craving a pair of aviator glasses for a while and when I saw them at the dollar store, I scooped these up…how you like em?

One of the things I’ve learned in mountain biking is, when you see horses, you pull over and stop. Why? Well for one thing, they’re way bigger than me, they have big ole’ feet that can kick my face back to the Philippines…and its just courtesy. So I take this picture of Priscilla practicing proper trail etiquette, and as soon as I snap the photo, this chump behind us rides through and startles the horses…dork.

To cap off our ride, Priscilla wanted to play… so she had me turn around and then she ran into the mustard plants and hid. Can you guess where she is?

Anyhow that’s our ride report. It was a pretty neat day, we didn’t have fun at San Juan, it just wasn’t my kind of trail…I still hate climbing, but we did get a ride in at the Loop, so that was pretty cool. Oh by the way, Jeremy, I told the ranger that you left us behind and when he heard that, he asked me which was your car and when I pointed to your Pilot, he walked right over and started writing your ticket…sorry dude!

By the way, I’m not mad at Jeremy. I can’t get mad at my Boo!