Let's run errands, and find hills.

On Sunday we did about 22 miles out and back starting on the Adventure Cycling map of the Southern Tier. The beginning of this route is also Bubba's route that we will take on March 7. There is a bike lane, mostly, but it tends to disappear at some critical times. Also there are two freeway overpasses to negotiate with traffic either entering or exiting the freeway. Very difficult for me to crane my head on a recumbent  to see what is curving up the ramp so I decided I needed a mirror on my right side,  which we bought at the end of the day. One steep hill to climb, so my granny gear came in handy. We stopped before a long descent and turned around at that point. See the 1st photo. The weather report was predicting rain and we could see it in the mountains in the east. (Honest! It was! It even sprinkled on us later).
On Monday we decided to get some items at REI which is about 10 miles from our hotel. Dave's inflatable pillow ( Cocoon brand) deflates, so we were interested in trying another brand. Also REI replaces items that don't work, unlike trying to do that via mail order with other stores.
Dave found a route with bike lanes so we climbed to the Kearney Mesa area on Linda Vista road. Note the words "mesa" and "vista". The hills were quite doable. After we did some shopping we added a loop. One hill was especially steep, called Murphy Canyon. We should probably go back and do that for a full day to simulate the mountain climbs. Very difficult to make ourselves do that though!
We had dinner in Old Town on the way back. Thanks for the recommendation of the Casa de Reyes restaurant, Carolyn. Very pleasant courtyard with patio heaters and potted plants all around. We ended up with 27 miles.
One thing about trying to train in the city is that there are so many stop lights with long waits for the turning lanes that we couldn't maintain any kind of sustained heart rate. The bikers we saw here are much more comfortable in traffic and they are out in the turn lanes and go with the traffic, whereas we often use the pedestrian crossing lanes with the buttons to change the lights. Much slower but safer. Hopefully we will still get the training we need by seeking out hills.
Tuesday we plan to bike on Coronado island.

Sunday, overlooking mountains where we turned around.

This is a sign on the bike path that we use quite frequently to leave our hotel. Haven't seen one yet! Pictures of the birds below are also seen from the bike path which follows the San Diego river. We even saw a seal in the river during the morning on Sunday.

This is at San Diego University, a very pretty campus where the buildings have an old Spanish architecture.