Sunrise in Ocean City, New Jersey

I didn't actually stand there, with the Atlantic at my back, and say something so appropiately vague and vaguely hopeful. Such are the province of rakish adventurers wishing to assure their everyguy status. I am not rakish.

In wishing to complete a coast-to-coast trip, I made the brilliant decision to start my journey at Ocean City, New Jersey, at the brilliant hour of 4:30 in the morning, suckering my brilliant friend Amy to join me. Being almost as daft as I am on occasion, she agreed to accompany me for this first leg of the trip. I really wanted to see the sunrise on the first day of my trip, you see.

My 25 years of memories regarding Ocean City all have a similar trait: crowds of families and their obnoxious children, leathery tan old women, hormonal teenagers patroling the boardwalk at night... But this early in the season, at 4:30am, the boardwalk stood eerily devoid of anyone.

It was a moment more conjured than remembered, with attention to detail forfeited for an overall desire for importance: to fix my eyes over all that is America and demand a mere tenth of the anticipation I'd felt over the last six months to live up to its potential.

Amy and I sat in a lifeguard tower, slowly losing ourselves to exhaustion, while finishing a bowl of fruit salad, dropping forks in the sand, relieving ourselves under the boardwalk, singing "Under The Boardwalk," eating breakfast at a small cafe, then heading back to the car parked a mere hundred yards from the beach.

It didn't happen, this moment of grandeur that belongs to the beginning of all long and epic voyages. It couldn't have. I stood there, with the Atlantic at my back, and all the rest of America in front of me, and said, "well, here goes nothing."