Great Sky #6

Sydney-Lanier Bridge in Brunswick, GA

Florida is a long state

Three more long days of riding and we're still in central Florida!

After a very refreshing day off in Englewood thanks to my Uncle John and Aunt Margaret's hospitality, we awoke on Sunday morning to very inhospitable and uncharacteristic freezing temps. We made our best effort to bundle up for an early start to Tampa but north winds gave us an extra challenge. Are we really still in Florida?! We seem to be attracting weird weather. I hope this trend doesn't follow us to California...

With a frustrating morning behind us we finally made it to a lovely and bikeable neighborhood north of Tampa - Temple Terrace - which has a very successful Safe Routes to School program.  Jason Jackman, the SRTS coordinator for Hillsborough County, and Sharon Monahan, a local bike safety educator, led us on a tour of the neighborhood with a few other local advocates.  Temple Terrace was great, but beyond that block of quiet neighborhood streets Tampa was an intimidating grid of multi-lane high-speed arterial avenues. 

Temple Terrace

Steph's friend Brigita and her man Rob put us up that night in Palm River, complete with a delicious dinner, backyard campfire, and s'mores!  We even took over their kitchen to make some fresh burrito fixins for this week's lunch.  Amazing hosts - thanks!

Choppin'

From Tampa we headed back east into central Florida - self-proclaimed redneck country.  The day was warmer and the roads a little quieter but I think we were all feeling the second week slump.  Poor Steph was starting to come down with a cold and we were all a little sore and road weary.  We took it easy that morning and gradually perked up as the afternoon got warmer.  Our destination that night was DeLand, an attractive historic college town north of Orlando and home of the Florida Bicycle Association Headquarters.  FBA President Tim Bustos hosted us and filled us in on statewide bike initiatives.  We enjoyed a delicious and entertaining dinner at DeLand's best cuban restaurant with Tim and Ted, also of the FBA. 

Middle of Nowhere Florida

RASR, Manatee, and Tim

Tim and Ted tipped us off to Blue Springs, a necessary stop on our way out of DeLand and winter home to a whole colony (pod?) of manatees.  The spring stays a constant 72 degrees year round so the manatees flock to the warm water - 218 were counted today!  We've become quite attached to the mammal, the namesake of our home on wheels, after Stephanie had a close encounter with one in Miami.  We've been dying for a chance to get a good look at them ever since so we were thrilled at our good fortune to catch them at Blue Springs.  The excitement of our visit with the marine giants psyched us up for another big day of riding.

Mama and calf

Look close - those blobs are all manatees

Mid morning we finally got back in the saddle and headed across the Ocala National Forest - two bald eagle sightings and a red-tailed hawk!  The skies were clear and sunny but the headwind was back at us.  Seems like every time we turned the wind turned too.  Three fabulous ladies, Melinda, Jane, and Gayle, from the Gainesville Cycling Club met us in the afternoon and led us for the last 15 miles into Gainesville. 

County Road 346 into Micanopy, FL

RASR and Jane, Gayle, and Melinda

We stopped at the County Commission meeting in town to remind the Commissioners to make bikes a top priority.  Thanks to Dekova Batey - City of Gainesville Bike/Ped Coordinator - for arranging and giving us an excellent introduction to the Commission.  We were definitely impressed by Gainesville's bikeability. 

Tonight Gayle and her husband Bruce are hosting us at their beautiful home in downtown Gainesville. Gayle and her bike friends prepared a gourmet dinner for us complete with appropriately-themed wine and excellent conversation.  Thank you to all of our new Gainesville friends for making us feel so welcome, and especially to the Wheelers for opening their home to us!

And we still have another day and a half in this state.  Tomorrow to Jacksonville and then we'll finally cross into Georgia.

Great Sky #5

Sunday morning in Englewood FL - 36 degrees at dawn

Rashes, Roadkill, and Riding America

With our first week behind us and over 300 miles covered by eight skinny tires we have all become very well acquainted with our saddles and looked forward to a day off. We had a spa day for the bikes, nursed a bum rash, and drained our legs in preparation for our trek through Northern Florida. Weaving through the big cities and cruising the straight rural roads in Southern Florida, the wildlife I notice most are the birds. Long necks, short ones, bright feathers, bland colors, all types spending the winter in paradise. Unfortunately that happens to be the most common type of roadkill I have seen in the sunshine state (yes, sometimes I ponder about such things like roadkill while biking 6 hours a day), which I find odd because birds are suppose to fly fast and dodge oncoming traffic unlike the curious raccoon and squirrel in the northern states which I am more accustomed to. Word of advice for Florida motorists...watch out for the birds and bicyclists.

Stopping in through Palm Beach Gardens we got to stay with Stephanie's family and have a first weeks ride celebration. Thanks Marti, Debby, Katie, Jen, and Rien Ray for the warm welcome, route reckon mission, and highway lunch buffet. We also got a Palm Beach County Police escort on the busy Route 80 for 15 miles to Okeechobee Lake. Keeping the road safe for us and a brief reprieve from traffic was much appreciated!

Palmer Girls and Rien Ray

Road Side Buffet Frenzy

Palm Beach County Police Escort

Thank you Real Bikes shop on Route 41 in Venice, FL for hooking us up with new tires. I foresee fewer flats in the future. You guys are awesome!! And a big thanks to the Coastal Cruisers for referring us to David Reynolds at Real Bikes. It was so nice to meet you all. Venice is a great bike friendly community and beautiful town. You are all so lucky to have a town with bicycle and pedestrian lanes as great as this with a beautiful legacy trail to ride on.

 

Coastal Cruisers before their Saturday Ride

 Bum Blog: 5 out of 10, not so hot.  Eshhk... I'm working on it

Posted by Stephanie

Great skies

Many things make an impression on you when you're biking all day and the scenery is always changing.  One of my favorite things to note is the sky, which I have my eye on anyway to keep track of the changing weather.  So stay tuned for future posts of "great skies" - here's a few samples from our first week:

#1 Key Largo, storm rolling in

#2 West Palm Beach sunset

#3 Lake Okeechobee

#4 RASR team on Lake Okeechobee dike

Multi-day Catch-Up

Phew. It's been a couple days and we're still alive! 4 days of 50+ miles. Quick day-by-day update:

Day 2 was about 50 miles, Marathon Key to Key Largo. We had no rain, but a certain special bridge nearly took us all out with super-hard wind. Thanks so much to Patrick Sauter from Fixed Gears bike shop in Key West who joined us for half the day, after a full first day. You were so much fun and so helpful to have with us! At lunch time, we met up with Mark Terrill from Islamorada who gave us a wonderful historical tour of the area. We then met up with Monica Woll, Florida Keys Heritage Trail Coordinator, and her friend Dotty for the rest of the afternoon. They shared more interesting local information about the Keys and helped us score a wonderful seaside campsite.

RASR with our Godsend, Patrick.

Victoria's Secret Model Shoot Beach on Islamorada.

Manatees! (Trip mascot and name of our van, so we had to stop)

Jeanie decided to bring a passenger along for the afternoon- a coconut.

Day 3: Key Largo to Coconut Grove, and most of us clocked about 70 miles. Tom and Chucho from the Everglades Bicycle Club met us first thing from the John Pennekamp State Park in Key Largo to guide us all the way to Key Biscayne, and then back to Coconut Grove. At lunch in Florida City, we picked up Peter Schuetz from the Green Mobility Network, who helped Tom and Chucho give us a full tour of the area around Miami as we biked back and forth. The real exciting part of the day was our FIRST SCHOOL ASSEMBLY! Mickey Witte from iBikeSafe helped us set up a talk at the Key Biscayne Community School in the afternoon with 6-8th graders. We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed working with the kids, something that iBikeSafe gets to do everyday as they educate kids on bike safety. Looking forward to more to come down the road (literally :). A big shout-out to August Neal from Green Mobility who was an extremely gracious host last night- we hope you can come join us as some point!

Goodbye Florida Keys! Thanks for the awesome kick-off!

First School Assembly at Key Biscayne Community School.

Chucho and Tom, our awesome guides for the day.

iBikeSafe, Key Biscayne Community School Coach, and RASR.

Thank you so much August!

Day 4 we conquered about 70 miles, from Coconut Grove (Miami) to West Palm Beach. It was our first day relying completely on Jeanie's bike route, without any local guides. We went straight through downtown Miami in rush hour and no casualties to report! We met MPO bike/pedestrian coordinators of the six counties from Miami-Dade to Indian Creek to report on our trip and our ideas for improved bike safety in this area. In the afternoon, our route took us along the beach in Ft. Lauderdale (brings back memories of Spring Break '09 with the Middlebury Womens Water Polo Club). HUGE thanks to Mack Cycle bike shop, who hooked us up with lots of tubes and tires and miscellaneous other needed gear as well as gave Jane a full bike tune-up in the morning while we were moving northward. In the afternoon, we took a tour-de-mansions as our route led us along the coast until we reached West Palm Beach. Tonight we're staying with another fabulous host, Stephanie's Aunt Debby Richardson. Pool and sauna trip before a delicious dinner and lots of fun family time.

Pillaged Dunkin Donuts for lunch from the MPO meeting (thanks!).

Jeanie tests out the extenda-arm for her camera- so dorky none of us can keep a straight face.

Thanks Mack Cycle for your amazing generosity!

End of day 4. Still smiling :)

The scenery was wonderful.

Preview for tomorrow (2/9): 95ish miles heading west around the southern end of Lake Okeechobee, aiming for Englewood, FL on Friday.

Posted by Chelsea

Day 1 - Marathon

Wow - what an amazing start to our trip!  We really couldn't have picked a better place to start.  Beautiful, warm, unbelievably nice people... we had a blast in Key West.

We connected with Clinton, a native Key West "Conch" and leader of a cycling group called the Mile Zero Heroes, via his blog the Conch Republic Cyclist, (http://conchrepubliccyclist.com/).  He served as Key West's finest tour guide and arranged a pre-trip reception for us at Cowboy Bills bar with the Mile Zero Heroes.  It was super motivating to meet local cyclists that are excited about what we're doing right before we kicked off.  We were surprised to discover that though Key West seems like paradise for cyclists that are everywhere in the city, the fatality rate for peds/cyclists is actually very high.  Safe routes are needed here!

Clinton, a great new friend

A conch-playing lesson - thanks for the perfect gift!

Special thanks to Nancy, owner of Cowboy Bills/Salsa Loca for hosting us in her most gracious style and making us feel incredibly welcome!

Mile Zero Heroes and RASR

Though it apparently never rains in Key West, we started our day in pouring rain that managed to follow us all day.  We'll take it as an omen that the sun will shine for the remainder of our trip.  Despite the "terrible" Key West weather (though it was still 75 degrees), we had an awesome group of MZH turn out to ride with us on day 1.  Thanks to all the Heroes that we met and that came out to ride with us!  You are all awesome!  We'll be back for SMART ride...

US-1 Mile Zero

RASR+Hannah at the southernmost point

US-1 made for some exciting riding.  In 52 miles we battled alternately driving rain and decent headwinds, interspersed with breaks to change flat tires thanks to all the junk in the shoulder and occasionally squeezed by 45 mph traffic.  Our team had five flats and our hosts fared even worse!  It was a challenging road for our first day but we all survived in good spirits. 

Second of five flats on the day

Pit stop at Baby's Coffee - amazing coffee!

Ophthalmologists with the Baby's logo

Awesome lunch stop

We're thrilled to finally be on the road and to have had such a great start.  Tonight in Marathon, FL and tomorrow we'll head to Key Largo!