(Written from Sky and Brian's apartment in Ocean Beach, San Diego)
Miles biked: 101.7 (1,984.6 overall)
Time on bike: 8 hours, 34 minutes, 23 seconds
Maximum speed: 29.3 mph
Roads taken: Avenida del Presidente, bike path, Camp Pendleton: Stuart Mesa Road, Vandegrift Boulevard ... Oceanside: Harbor Drive, Pacific Street, Breakwater Way, N. the Strand, Wisconsin Avenue, S. Pacific Street, Cassidy Street, Broadway, Vista Way, CR S21 ... N. Torrey Pines Road/CR S21, N. Torrey Pines Road, San Diego area: La Jolla Shores Drive, Torrey Pines Road, Prospect Place, Prospect Street, Coast Boulevard, Olivetas Avenue, Marine Street, Monte Vista Avenue, Fern Glen, Neptune Place, Palomar Avenue, Camino de la Costa, La Jolla Boulevard, Mission Boulevard, bike path along Mission Beach, Mission Boulevard, W. Mission Bay Drive, Dana Landing Road, Quivira Road, Nimitz Boulevard, N. Harbor Drive, bike path along N. Harbor Drive, ferry from downtown to Coronado, bike path, Glorietta Boulevard, bike path along Silver Strand Boulevard, 13th Street, Coronado Avenue, Hollister Street, Monument Road, after turning around: Monument Road, Hollister Street, Coronado Avenue, 13th Street, bike path along Silver Strand Boulevard, Glorietta Boulevard, bike path, ferry back to downtown where I was picked up by Sky and Brian.
Places stopped: Del Mar (for an oatmeal lunch and a midway-point breather), La Jolla (to admire the ocean view and take a few pictures), downtown San Diego (to wait for the ferry), Coronado park (to change bike shorts), Border Field State Park (the official end point on my map), Jack in the Box (to stuff myself with celebratory junk food; the milkshake was amazing), Rite Aid (to buy something).
Looking back, it is only fitting, I guess, that my most difficult day on the bike was my last one.
Throughout this trip, I had to constantly remind myself that there's really no such thing as an "easy mile." You have to keep pedaling to earn every tenth of a mile -- or lean on your brakes if going down a hill -- and no matter how flat the road is or how crystal clear the sky is, no part of the trip can be taken for granted.
I learned this in a big way Thursday.
In truth, the riding should have been a breeze and should have been enjoyable from start to finish...
The morning riding wasn't great, but I made excellent time. I biked through a military base for the first time, Camp Pendleton, and saw dudes working out on all the typical military equipment -- bars, ropes, etc. Then after a few miles through the middle-sized town of Oceanside, I joined up with CR S21, a miniature highway, and pedaled through several beachside towns.
I passed through Carlsbad, Encinatas, Cardiff by the Sea and Solara Beach -- all, from appearance, popular towns for surfers and tourists -- and finally allowed myself to stop in Del Mar for lunch. I looked at my map and realized that I was just outside of the greater San Diego area.
For the first time of the day, I thought about how close I was to the finish line. I had biked about 41 miles and had roughly the same amount of miles to the Mexican border.
After an oatmeal lunch -- the last of my backwoods food -- I hopped back on the bike, feeling good, and biked toward La Jolla. There was an increase in traffic, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the ride.
I biked up a long hill, the only long climb south of Santa Barbara, and then passed by Torrey Pines Golf Course, where Tiger won the U.S. Open with one leg last year. It was the second famous golf course I saw this trip along with Pebble Beach.
Then I made my way back to the ocean, which I biked along in La Jolla. The waves were bigger than any I'd seen on the trip and there were hundreds of surfers riding them. I stopped for a minute and took a couple pictures.
And when I got back on the bike, I started to feel it -- soreness in my ass.
It wasn't terrible pain. I could still ride in my normal positions. Plus, it wasn't entirely unexpected. I had rode over 50 miles, and throughout the trip I had felt some soreness off and on during the afternoons of long days on the bike seat.
So I rode on, starting to sense the finish line. There was no stopping me at that point.
I reached Mission Beach and biked along a crowded boardwalk next to the beach. The problem with biking on such a path is that it's difficult to locate the next turn. So it was no surprise to me that I went a little bit past my turn needed to go to Ocean Beach.
But I didn't have to backtrack much, and soon enough I was riding into Ocean Beach. I checked my odometer, because the "OB" is where I would need to ride back to after getting to the border to reach my spot of rest, Sky's apartment. It read 60 miles. I figured I still had 20 to 25 miles remaining. That meant I'd end up doing about 105 to 110 miles for the day -- a high for the trip.
The ass was sore, but not unbearable. I didn't even consider stopping at Sky's and calling it a day. What kind of finish would it be to wait until the next day and just do 25 miles to the finish line?
So I biked through the OB and then took a bike path along N. Harbor Drive all the way downtown. The ass was starting to hurt pretty bad whenever I sat on the bike, but I knew I had a nice, extended break ahead of me -- a ferry from downtown to Coronado. I thought, hoped, that it would relieve some of the discomfort.
Upon reaching the ferry terminal on San Diego Bay, I waited about 15 minutes for the ferry to arrive. Then I boarded the boat and snapped some pictures of downtown as we headed just across the bay for Coronado.
When I got off the boat and back onto the 520, I knew I was in trouble.
The rest had made my ass even sorer -- now I could hardly sit on the bike. The pain was like nothing I'd experienced on the entire trip. As I rode gingerly along a bayside bike path, I yelled out a couple times in pain.
There was no turning around, but how could I continue like this for 17 long miles?
I didn't think I could, so I stopped at a playground area and changed bike shorts, hoping that the fresh pair would bring comfort.
They didn't.
So I simply sucked it up. I turned up the volume of my iPod and tried singing along to songs to take my mind off the pain. That didn't really work, however.
Once I reached the Silver Strand bike path, a long, straight, flat path along the very narrow strip of land between Coronado and Imperial Beach, I stood up and didn't want to sit down again.
And for about 3 miles, that's what I did. I pedaled and pedaled while standing up, putting the bike in a high gear and cruising along the strip. My legs told me to sit down on several occasions, but my ass told me that'd be a bad idea. But the Strand kept going, and eventually I had to sit down and rest.
Thankfully, I was able to shift to a sitting position that wasn't quite as unbearable as before. It wasn't your proper riding position. I had my legs out to the side and my feet were angled in to the clips. But I was able to ride sitting down again, which helped me get through the rest of the Strand and reach Imperial Beach.
When I turned right onto 13th Street, I knew I had just three more turns before the finish line. I turned onto Coronado Avenue and biked past shopping malls and a high school, still riding gingerly but sitting down. After about a mile, I hooked a right on Hollister Road.
Just one more turn to make...
But my ride on Hollister seemed to go on forever. And after a couple miles, the pain in my ass become unbearable again. As I passed a stall of horses, I had to stand up -- and stay standing up.
And that's when I reached Monument Road, which runs parallel to the border. As I turned right, I noticed the large ridge just to my left that separates the U.S. from Mexico. I also saw a section of the border gate atop the ridge. It didn't look like an easy fence to scale.
I continued riding...
I knew I had a couple miles to go on the road before reaching Border Field State Park, but I was biking on adrenaline at that point. I stood up the entire way, pumping one pedal stroke after another as my iPod played "California, here we come." (Amazingly, there's no "Border Field State Park, Here We Come" song that I know about.)
I had the road all to myself. It was oddly appropriate that I was finishing my journey all on my own. After all, that had been the case for the majority of the close to 2,000 miles.
And then I reached my final destination!!! ... and it was ... UGLY.
That's right. There were several large, sharp rocks in the middle of the road. A dirt road led off to the left. And in front of me was a locked gate, which made it known that the park was closed.
My map had said the park was open Thursday through Sunday, but the sign said that it was only open on weekends. I don't think it would have mattered -- there was nothing to see, nowhere to go.
In the days and hours leading up to the conclusion of the ride, I had imagined how I'd celebrate finally reaching the end point. I'd imagined doing all kind of fist pumps, yelling in utter joy, getting off the bike and doing a face plant in a nice patch of grass.
When the moment arrived, however, I did none of that. I couldn't lie down in grass because there wasn't any. And the scenery didn't exactly inspire a celebration.
So I simply got off the bike and managed a smile, which quickly disappeared when I thought about how many painful miles I still had to ride.
Then I lugged the bike over to the state park sign so I could take some pictures to mark my reaching it. There was no one around, so I couldn't pose for a picture (although I tried, unsuccessfully, to snap a picture of the bike and I by the sign).
After the photo shoot, I sat down in the middle of the road -- the most comfortable spot there -- and called Dad. As we were talking, a military guy on a four-wheeler rode up to me and stopped briefly to ask if I was OK. After all, I was sitting in the middle of the road.
I told him yes, and he continued down the dirt road. This happened three more times during my conversation with Dad, and twice the guys asked me about the trip. In retrospect, I should have asked one of them to snap a picture of me with the bike and sign.
Oh, well. I needed to get back on the road, anyway. Reaching Sky's apartment before darkness had become another concern.
The pain didn't subside on my ride back, but at least I knew I was headed in the right direction. Upon reaching the Strand, I stood up for three consecutive miles without sitting down. The sun was going down to my left and I started to think that if I didn't make the next ferry -- they ran every hour -- there was no way I'd make it to Sky's before darkness.
But I simply couldn't stand up the entire way. I had biked 95 miles and was going against the wind. Finally, I allowed myself to sit down and again found a bearable position to sit in. I wasn't going as fast as I could have, but the pain didn't make me want to die, either. That was a plus.
The ride on the Strand seemed to take an hour, but I eventually reached Coronado as the sun was nearing the horizon and pulled up to the pier leading out to the ferry dock. That's when I noticed where the ferry was -- just offshore, heading in the other direction.
I had missed it by about 8 minutes. It was 7:38. The next ferry wouldn't leave until 8:30.
I realized at that moment that I was done riding. I had gone 101.1 miles.
It was time to ask for help. So I called Sky to ask for a ride from downtown, and when she told me that, yes, she could pick me up and that, yes again, she had a RAV4 in which we could fit the bike, I celebrated -- at least internally.
Pending a safe ferry ride, I didn't have to worry about any more riding, about any more left or right turns. I exhaled and called Dad to get a Lakers-Magic update. Then I had a man take a picture of me, the bike and the San Diego skyline.
That would serve as my ride-is-over picture. It seemed more appropriate than a picture at the border when I still had 17 miles to ride.
Throughout the trip, I had felt pretty good physically at the end of each day of riding. But, I must admit, I felt fatigued at the conclusion of my final, long day.
My legs were sore, especially my calf muscles, and my ass had never been sorer. Sitting down on any surface, even a couch, was a tad uncomfortable.
But I drew joy out of the fact that I wouldn't have to sit down on a bike seat the next day. Or the next. Or the next...
I think the trip was about the right length. I was ready for an extended break from the bike.
And I'm sure the 520 felt the same way.
Stay tuned for my final wrap-up blog, including all the intriguing numbers...
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