Thoughts of an incredible year of travelling filled my mind, as I rolled on towards my destination, towards San Diego, and the border. Although the bike trip was only weeks old, I had been travelling for a whole year. It was a pretty amazing feeling. Buoyed by thoughts of this, of meeting my friends in San Diego, and of reaching my goal, I had no idea I that that night would one of the lowest of the trip so far.
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| Long Beach |
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| Long street, long trees |
The brightly lit day turned to dark, overcast skies. The sun fell, and then so did the rain. The bare dirt of the rudimentary campsite turned to mud, as the smoking embers of a fire from earlier in the day hissed out. I sat in my tent, alone, again waiting for the rain to stop long enough for me to run out and cook, and then return to my tent to eat. Another break in the rain allowed me to wash up briefly before I was back in the tent. I don't know whether it was the return of the bad weather, the fatigue of over two weeks on the road, another night camping alone, or all of the above I suppose, but a despairing mood began to clutch at me. At first I thought it a strange thing, so close to my goal, but then I realised that the thoughts that pulled at me uncomfortably were 'What the hell am I doing?', 'Why am I doing this by myself?', 'This is not easy' and 'Can I do this?', and the like. It clicked that it was probably because I was close to the end that I was thinking these thing, close to the point where I had to decide whether to continue on after San Diego, into Mexico. More specifically, I realised that the reason doubt found me that night was because I had already made that decision, and my mind was already reaching ahead. There was no turning back, and Sarah Blasko sang that back to me in my head.
In addition to music from Sarah and her friends, some timely and kindly thoughts from my own friends helped a lot that night - thanks, you know who you are. Hence along with better weather the next day, the thought of seeing my friends in San Diego meant that I was in much better spirits.
The road to San Diego was straight and flat, and the only diversion was the road through the San Clemente military base, which you can cycle all the way through. I was hoping to see some interesting military things, but it was mainly residential with a few drill training courses. After that it was more pleasant cycling along the ocean, and then I hit the northern edge of San Diego, and I was there! Seeing the odometer reading just under 1200km was a pretty good feeling that day, January 7th. It was a year and two days since I had left Australia, and I had just cycled from San Francisco to San Diego!
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| Happy odometer moment |
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| Del Mar, San Diego |
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