Beach camping failed meet my romanticized expectations. If I stopped and thought for one second, I'd have realized my fantasy of being the only person on an expanse of beach, slowly watching a tiny campfire and fiery sunset simultaneously dwindle to embers, and falling asleep to the crash of waves could not happen in Southern California. For starters, they don't let you camp on the sand. Secondly, the sound of traffic drowns out the sea. And there's enough foot traffic along the beach path, even at night, to inspire frequent bouts of paranoia that some shady figure would steal my bike.

The real victory was reaching San Diego. The hard work of traversing a continent was done, leaving a practically negligible 140 mile ride up the coast. If you boiled my whole trip down to one spinning class, these last four days would be equivalent to the 5 minute cooldown at the end where the instructor plays Celine Dion and has you inhale deeply. And something about the sun, palm trees, and ocean breezes of Southern California had lulled me into believing that nothing would ever be difficult again.