It's all downhill after Julian, I was told. It's taken me 3800 miles or so to realize that the problem lies in my interpretation of the word "all." I now understand I have been interpreting the word too strictly to mean "100%," while most people use it in a more figurative, hyperbolic sense, and what they really mean to say is "mostly," "quite a bit," or even "somewhat." But why would anyone use the bland, lukewarm "somewhat" when they could use the exciting, decisive "all"?

That's not to say I didn't fly down many mountains in a sunny, happy, blur, taking advantage of the second set of brake levers I'd had the foresight to install back in August to keep my forearms from cramping up. But with so many huge hills between me and San Diego I was bound to ascend enough of them that I wished I had left the motel earlier and given myself a larger window of time to get to Sam and Fred's place.

I also remembered along the way that hadn't allotted much time to navigate busy San Diego traffic, had no game plan at all, and still had no working phone or GPS. So I stopped in Ramona, a cute California mountain town with a nice array of locally owned cafes, restaurants, hardware stores, and clothing boutiques, hip enough to have massage therapists and tattoo parlors but not so pretentious that it didn't have a few fast food chains too. I stopped into a public library to look at maps and figure out how to get through San Diego, then broke my own "no fast food" rule and hit the McDonald's across the street for lunch. With only a few days left on my journey, I keep thinking about how everything I do might be my last before I return to real life and my standard healthy eating habits. I solemnly savored my last McDonald's fries, my last Chicken Selects, my last strawberry Faygo. Come to think of it, that was my only strawberry Faygo.

Back on the road I continued through dramatic hills that became more and more thickly dotted with precariously perched houses as I progressed, sometimes imagining I could see the Pacific on the hazy blue horizon as I reached a peak. Against this beautiful setting I contemplated the bittersweet denouement of my three and a half month journey, simultaneously the most difficult and the most rewarding thing I've ever done. I thought about the things that I would miss. I thought about the things I have had quite enough of for the time being. If I had to put it all into a chart it would look something like this.

So clearly I have mixed feelings about finishing this trip, about everything except the damn Cremora. If in all my remaining years on this planet I never saw another packet of that pasty aftertaste-inducing powder I'd die happy.

When I reached the outskirts of San Diego my ruminations were abruptly interrupted when I saw that the  scenic Route 67 was about transform into a busy freeway. Amazingly, my phone started working again once I was in range of the city, so I decided to make the most of it and use Google Maps' walking directions, which suggested a route primarily involving a road called Mission Gorge.

Mission Gorge. That sounded scenic, but also potentially hilly. It was both. But I lucked out, as Mission Gorge featured a generous, beautifully painted bike lane almost the whole way, its protective, solid white lines cordoning off the traffic and letting me climb and coast in peace. Once in a while I'd lose the bike line along trafficky stretches along busier-than-normal strip malls bloated with Christmas shoppers. I stopped in one of them that had a Target. I can't even remember what I was looking for, but I quickly became overwhelmed by the consumerist frenzy inside, decided it wasn't important, and got back on the road.

Why had I imagined San Diego would be flat? Was it the sign coming into San Diego city limits that said "Elevation: 13"? Clearly it depends on where you place the yardstick, as I patiently waited for my route to flatten out and it never did. San Diego kept me working the whole way to Sam and Fred's neighborhood, with the hardest, steepest hill ambushing me in the last mile. I came very close to pronouncing it unclimbable, my first since Pennsylvania, as it took all my body weight just to turn the pedals. But it seemed like a shame to give up on it after all the other terrain I'd tackled. I got a built-in break at a red light in the middle, and  doggedly perservered to the top.

From there it was a quick downhill coast to Sam and Fred's place. Sam had learned of my trip through my interview on Let's Go Ride a Bike and had gotten in touch to offer me a place to stay if I needed one, and when I learned that my high school friend in San Diego had already left for the holidays, it turned out I did. I was glad it worked out that way, as I was eager to meet some fellow long-distance bikers. They attempted their own cross-country bike tour last year in order to relocate from Philadelphia to San Diego but ended up stopping in Texas ("We're quitters," explained Sam matter-of-factly.) where they loaded their bikes into a U-Haul to complete their move.

They'd kindly invited me out to dinner with their bike club friends at a place called the Linkery which featured locally-provisioned organic artisan foods and yummy house-made sausages, then to Eclipse Chocolate with all sorts of exotic hot chocolates and desserts with unlikely ingredients (sage, cayenne, green tea, to name a few). I really enjoyed the group, a diverse bunch of bike afficionados of all ages, interests, and nerdiness levels. One guy was particularly into old bikes. Another was a woodworker who'd created beautiful laminated wooden fenders for his bike. Some work on bike advocacy and improving San Diego's bike infrastructure. Some race. Some just ride for fun. All were smart, fun, friendly, and welcoming.

I particularly enjoyed comparing notes with Sam and Fred about our trips and trading road stories. Since I have had many moments when I felt like I was hanging by a thread, I was most curious about what factors caused them to quit. They admitted they'd overpacked (they brought a lot of cooking ingredients and even made fancy meals like sushi while on the road) and wore themselves out with an aggressive schedule. And ironically, their strategy of stitching together bike trails much of the way to avoid riding on the highway contributed to them giving up. On the bike trails they met a lot of other cyclists who criticized everything about their trip—they were told they were going the wrong direction, at the wrong time of year, with the wrong gear, and so on. At first I was shocked to hear this as generally people have treated me with respect, admiration, and awe, but once I thought more about it I realized that the occasional criticism I received was always from fellow cyclists. That is so sad!

So cyclists, please resist the urge to advise and criticize unless you're asked. You have no idea how annoying and demoralizing it can be. I once left a mountain biking group because too many well-meaning people insisted on voicing their unsolicited opinions about my gear or lack thereof. I was told I should get elbow pads, shin guards, Camelbaks, rear shocks, disc brakes, protective eyewear, bike gloves, clipless pedals, and a whole litany of other not-really-necessary gadgets. One guy even urged me to wear dorky knee-length socks like his to reduce the likelihood of ticks biting my legs. I remember thinking, can't I just ride my bike around in the woods with you guys? Please? Aren't I allowed to take my chances with broken bones, dehydration, and Lyme disease? It's mountain biking for God's sake. You're supposed to fear for life and limb, at least a little.

And Fred made a good point that if someone is going on a long-distance bike tour, they are probably looking for a challenge, so why take all the challenge out of it? If someone wants to ride a one-speed wearing flip flops into a headwind through the Rockies in December, let him. What difference does it make to you? Much as I've complained about the many hardships of the trip, I would not have changed a single thing about it (except possibly buying red bungee cords instead of yellow—I wasted way too much time hunting for those things in fall leaves and desert grass). If hardship is character-building, I'm now a few notches closer to becoming the next Mother Theresa.