Tour de Florida

Floridia / Tour de Florida / Uncategorized

Heading Orff…

well, it seems that only road travel elicits anything like regular blog contributions, hence the plan to see a fair swathe of Florida using that most unconventional of vehicles (in the US at least): the bicycle. at 1000 miles, the proposed route could be called a tad ambitious, and i am reserving the right to tailor the course to prevailing mood and circumstance (likely to be driven by the size an insistence of the saddle sores). but let's just see how we go. i've been fiddling with the bike setup for about a week now, and am well pleased with the Batavus i spotted while in Bali and kept on hold for a rainy day. although it's fairly clear that it hasn't exactly been designed for touring -- a fact underscored by the many raised eyebrows on the part of the fine gents from Orange Cycle in orlando when they fitted the rack. my other essential bit of kit is the all-in-one hammock, which meets the weight criteria but possibly not the security or stability criteria that have been stipulated by the missus. thankfully Florida is the land of the cheap roadside motel, so i should hopefully be able to credit card my way out of any unsavoury or unlikely camping scenarios. It all sounds a bit like folly, but i guess there's only one way to find out. As ever, i'm grateful to the Missus, and to her dad Farouk, for doing the parental bit while i get to go and have 'fun'. I will be on standby, and have promised to be back within two days of any emergency. will also be travelling with the essentials: laptop and broadband stick, so, in a way, it will be like i never left. Hoping to document a fair bit of it here, but will turn off the email notifications so everyone can carry on with their lives in peace. hasta…

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February 28, 2011
Floridia / Tour de Florida / Uncategorized

Day 1 – Daytona to Rockledge

11:15 - Daytona (photo courtesy Dumps) 2:16 PM– Scottsmoor the old boy in the gas station seemed pretty excited about the forest fire. ‘Outta control’ he said, with blue eyes glittering. ‘That’s why I’m stocking up.’ He had a 24 case of Coor’s Light under one arm and asked for a carton of cigarettes when he got to the till. "Good thing you ain't riding north! !" He chuckled as he walked out. "Be careful now!" We had both just finished listening to a rather sizable lady explain to the counter staff that her husband had been complaining that she was getting too thin. ‘He’s told me I look like a crack whore,’ she cackled. The counter staff nodded sympathetically. I couldn’t see her face throughout this exchange, so I held back on passing judgement. ‘an that just ain’t no fair.’ Despite dropping the Southern double negative, she sounded fairly well satisfied with the situation. This being my first stop, there’s already a few lessons to be learned. 1) I really am going to have to do something about my saddle. After two hours, it has started to feel like I was sawing at my perinium with a loop of barbed wire. That, or I have somehow managed to sit on the bike chain. 2) a quart-sized water bottle is inadequate. Mostly because 3) Florida is fucking huge. No matter how much you think of the place as being wall-to-wall crowded with Publix, Walgreens and the like, there are still these huge empty bits in between, containing just the odd trailer (not even trailer park), fishing hole, Church of the Nazarene or closed down marina. There seem to be a shit load of those, leading me to think that 4) the economy here is still on its ass. I have passed many desolate scenes worthy of Stephen Shore. Beautiful and empty in a sort of post-apocalyptic way. Perhaps that’s not far…

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March 2, 2011
Floridia / Tour de Florida / Uncategorized

Day 2- Siwash at Port St. Lucie

After spending a grey and wet day trying to put some miles on without getting soaked, a sizeable nail through the back tire put an end to my 100-mile ambitions at around six pm. it was getting dark, and i hadn't passed a seedy motel in ages. Best Westerns and Holiday Inns there were aplenty, but sadly it looked like I was about to venture beyond the land of the thirty dollar special, with only Albert and Brigette to show for it. After patching my the tire and getting back on the Publix-IHOP-Walgreens-Burger King-Marathon-7/11-CVS conveyor belt, i started to wonder just where i would spend the night. i was loathe to part with 100 bucks to sleep in a sterile box with cable. i did have another option. despite coming under fire from various parties, i've been toting a hammock under the vaguely delusional notion that i might be able to do some camping, save some readies, etc (after all, I am unemployed and with few prospects). ever since a rather soggy conversation in India with Uncle Howard about the merits of a Hennessey Hammock, getting one has felt a little bit like destiny. i mean, the thing weighs 1.1 kilos and you don't need any tent pegs. how cool is that? sadly, it's been looking rather like i wasn't going to get the chance to use it. Most of the trees in Florida seem to have been cut down to make room for RV parks, and most of the RV parks don't seem to have anything else you can tie a hammock to. it's strictly back in, and hook up, open a Busch and say hello to the neighbors. This has been double disappointing, since i vowed to recoup the cost of the damn thing through savings on h/motel rooms. using campgrounds, that would take eighteen nights assuming a cost of $20 per night. with the but only 4…

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March 3, 2011
Floridia / Tour de Florida / Uncategorized

Days of Blunder: 3 & 4

Day 3 - Port St Lucie => Pompano Beach Jupiter – Macdonalds I keep passing the same strange looking dude.  He's wearing floods, carrying a bible in one hand and a jerrycan in the other, and i've seen him three different times at intervals of ten miles or more. He’s always walking slowly on the same side of the road, at least half a foot of bare leg sticking out below his jeans, lurching along, impervious to the roar and stink of the traffic.   How does he keep overtaking me? It's either hitchhiking or armageddon. If it's the former, i have to ask:  who the hell would pick up someone looking as crazy as that? Now I'm eavesdropping on a hilarious conversation between a bunch of old people having their usual MacDonalds chinwag. One old codger, dyed hair, and insistent voice – identified by several around the table as a lawyer, and fairly obviously so – keeps saying to one them ‘You’re interrupting. You’re interrupting. You’re interrupting.’ Until the poor guy he was browbeating (a reverend, from what I can gather) finally subsides into silence. ‘Now let that be the last time you interrupt. Because I’m trying to help you here. I’m trying to help you not make a fool of yourself. Get possession of the facts before you open your mouth. Then you won’t make a fool of yourself. And no one wants to see that, because we all love you Reverend.” Talk about sweetening the poisonous barb! The same asshole has just walked out making a fist and urging everyone to ‘seize the moment.’ Thankfully, nobody seems as perturbed by this display of Sheenishness as me. In fact, they seem kind of inspired by it, since they've now moved on to Charlie himself. ‘One of those girls looks like a porno star!’  ‘She can’t be older than eighteen’. ‘He’s a confirmed dope addict.’  In the absence of the…

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March 8, 2011
Floridia / Tour de Florida

The Ride and Flop : Days 5 & 6

Day 5 - homestead => key west For the record, one spare tube and six patches are not enough to preserve your dignity if you're trying to cover 120 miles on 'vintage' tyres. It took three roadside surgeries where I tried patching two different tubes every which way, in the hopes of getting to the bike shop on Marathon Key. Knowing that the patches were shite i had to use two of them to cover three holes (how the fuck do you get three holes at once anyway?). So I was literally praying out loud as I rolled off the bridge onto Grassy Key, the last one before Marathon. Sadly, my luck was not in, and i felt the familiar bump of rim on tarmac just as i pulled up outside of the Dolphin Research Center. It's very possible that the language which escaped me at that point was not entirely appropriate for the young visitors who were queueing up to pet Flipper. However, whoever is responsible for putting nice people in your way came up trumps, because the two ladies in the Dolphin Research centre called me a cab and found me a bike shop that stocked the requisite 23 x 700c’s. I was picked up within minutes by a sizeable Cuban Lady with a bike rack on her taxi. She told me she had been living in the Keys for 27 years and the furthest afield she’s been in that time was Orlando. Keys living looks like it could be habit forming. Otherwise, it was quite the slog. Don't know how i would have fared over the last 40 miles to Key West if the wind hadn't been behind me. As it stood, I was verging on delirious from arse pain and energy drinks by the time i got there. And the three beers i drank in quick succession did little to help matters....although they did help to…

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March 14, 2011