As I left San Diego around Noon on 7/3 and headed east toward the border town of Calexico, CA/Mexicali, MX, about 120 miles from San Diego, I was filled with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
I decided to cross the border there for 2 reasons: 1) As I have never been to Mexico, I did not want my first city to be Tijuana for all the reasons that one can think of; 2) in a past life, I was a huge Grateful Dead fan, and I still am, anyway, a favorite song of mine has always been, Mexicali Blues, a fun cowboy tune, and for those 2 reasons, it made perfect sense.
Oh yeah, also there is a FedEx location there which was perfect because that meant I could ship something via FedEx and pick it up in Mexicali thus fulfilling one of the underlying objectives of the trip.
As I said, I was filled with very mixed emotions, on one hand, I was exhilarated to start this daunting journey and also extremely anxious about crossing into Mexico for many reasons: most everyone in Chicago, my home town, had nothing very encouraging to say about driving in Mexico and especially driving Serendipity in Mexico.
The vision bouncing around in my head was that of banditos waiting at the border for hapless Americans to kidnap and/or deprive them of their possessions as they crossed over into the great lawless, vastness, which is Mexico. As it turned out, besides the fact that Serendipity was unique, no one batted an eye as I drove around.
After getting my bearings, I decided that I would not venture too far into Mexico on the first day and found a decent name-brand hotel to stay the night. It was also very close to the FedEx location which meant I could head there in the morning and then head south down into the Baja.