ST: Day 60 (Finish)

Daily Miles: 43

Total Miles: 3,234

I woke up at the campground under cloudy skies. Light was just beginning to enter the day, and the small hill behind me was barely illuminated. It had rocks and crags on it and looked dark and mysterious, as if trolls lived up there, amongst the boulders and small shrubs, keeping watch over the valley.

My tire was soft (the one giving me problems, now on the front wheel) so I inflated it back to pressure. I wasn’t going to fool around with it to try and find the leak. It would get me the 40 some odd miles to where I was going for the day. 

I left the campground early, around 6:15, and passed all the tents from the tour group. Nobody was up yet and the whole operation looked suspended. I pictured all the people in thier tents, in thier sleeping bags, dreaming about the big challenge ahead of them, and wondering what the expedition chef was going to cook up for them in the morning. Pancakes? Eggs? French toast? 

A part of me did envy them, and a part of me felt sad. They would never get to meet the nice and strange folks I had met and stayed with. But I suppose they would develop a traveling community together, and get to know one another more deeply, which sounds nice and not so lonely. Their experiences would be collective in nature and shared. They would make life long friends, or enemies, depending on how everyone got along. 

I didn’t make any friends and had few shared experiences. Perhaps sometimes this is a good thing. It gives you time to be with yourself and think about yourself objectively. What things are working, what things need some fine tuning, and what parts need to be replaced altogether. You miss people and places a lot of the time. But you learn to be happy by yourself and take pride in your individuality. It makes you be a better person, friend, son, sibling and husband, even though the benefits may not be so transparent. 

The ride into San Diego was cold. It was all down hill most of the way, and the generated wind chilled my bones. It sprinkled a few time but never was it actually raining. About 15 miles from the ocean I passed through a nice park in a gorge on a two mile bike path.

 A river ran through the gorge and the path wound its way through it, hugging the side of the hill. It was a paved path with two sides and a concrete divider. One side for walking or riding one way, the other side for walking or riding the other way. Common sense would have you stroll along on the right side, same as a road. But people don’t like to follow the rules, and that’s how a dog almost got killed by me and my bicycle. 

A lady was walking the wrong way. She had two dogs, both leashed. She saw me but didn’t go over to the other side, the one she should have been on anyway, until a few seconds before I passed. The leashes were one of those retractable things, on a spool, that you can lock at any length. Well, she didn’t lock the leash, and when she pulled the dog into the other side, the dog didn’t come because the leash wasn’t locked, and the thing lunged at me. 

I braked and swerved away. I was inches from clipping this stupid thing right in the gut. It was one of those small little yappy dogs, and it had no fear of death. It was a kamakazi dog and it nearly killed us both. 

Clear of that aggravation, I was back on my way to San Diego. I finally hopped on the bike path that lead to the ocean and Ocean Beach. It passed under some freeways and there were a lot of homeless people living in tents beneath the overpasses. It was a little tent city. Some people were around sitting and smoking cigarettes and I didn’t know whether to feel sad or scared. 

I soon felt the sea breeze and the air was salty and wet. It brought back memories of the beginning of the trip on the Atlantic. There was a channel to my right and the tide was out, revealing mud and shallow water, where a flock of a hundred or so seagulls were resting. It smelled bad like rotten eggs and reminded me of how Cape Cod smells during low tide, when you can walk out real far and find sea shells and hermit crabs and other sea life that didn’t get pulled out with the tide.

And then the Pacific came into focus and I found myself at the beach. It was wide and open and stretched into forever, and finally there was no more road to ride, and I had reached the end of the route. People were enjoying the beach and nobody payed any attention to my arrival. Volleyball was being played and people were surfing. Walking their dogs. Running. Strolling out into low tide and trying to find seashells and rocks and seaweed. 

I just stood there on the beach and watched it all. The waves rolled in one by one, crashing on the shore. Clouds hung out into the horizon, with small patches of light blue escaping. It was raining somewhere out there, off to the north and south, but for now a little sun shown on the shore and made pebbles sparkle in the light, like glitter, or stars twinkling at night in the mountains under clear skies. 

There was chatter in the air and laughing. A lifeguard stood and watched with binoculars at the surfers. He looked at me after taking the binoculars away and gave me a wave. I waved back and smiled. I wondered if he knew what I had just done. I wondered how many cyclists he’s seen ride to the shore and dip a tire in the ocean. He would never know if they were starting or finishing. And I suppose it didn’t matter. 

There are no true starts and ends in life except birth and death. What happens in between is a stream of conciousness that occurs mostly in your mind. Life has meaning not because of what we do, but by how those things make us feel. 

Happy, sad, Proud. Angry. Frustrated. Lonely. Jubilated. 

Everything makes us feel something.

Staring out into the deep blue, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel. I get this way at the end of every long trip. It’s mostly the least exciting part. The destination is never really the point. What happens between the beginning and the end is the why to every question you ask yourself. It’s the reason and the motivation.  

It’s the story of your life. 

And it should make you cry. 

I just want to say Thank You to everyone that read along. I appreciated all the comments received and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 

Thanks as well to all my friends that helped me along the way. Matt and Kacy. Lyall and Miriam. Sandy and Mike. Rusty for connecting me with his friend in Austin. And all the warm showers hosts that let me stay with them.

Thanks to mom and dad, who had to worry about me cycling in all that stupid traffic. You can relax now! (At least for a few weeks)

And of course a huge thank you to my wife Carolyn. This trip would not have been the same without your understanding and support. You are the best and I love you.