Airport Blogging

Right now I'm sitting in the Key West terminal waiting for my plane to board. I had to pay $100 extra to get my flight moved up but that's a small price to pay considering the cost of the ticket ($250). So, while I've been partaking in the best cuisine, beverages and sights that Key West has to offer I've also been neglecting my blogging duties. Strap on your bike helmets and clip into your pedals for the final 75,000 pedal strokes (give or take 10,000) to the end of the road.

After reaching Meghan's apartment I took a third and final rest day before the last push. Meghan was staying with some friends on Saturday evening so the first night I had the place to myself. The next day we went to Ft. Lauderdale, did some people watching, had some food (fish sandwich), and looked at all the goofy beach t-shirts and jewlery that tourists like to buy. It was a good day of rest. I ate so much food on Saturday and Sunday that it felt really good to be back on the bike for two days to work it off.

On my way out of Ft. Lauderdale I biked through Miami and into Palm Country. Southern FL is full of palm tree plantations the way that Pinetown, SC is full of Southern Pine farms. Which brings me into my next adventure.... No-See-Um Hell!!!!!!

No-See-Um Hell is what happens when a person who puts together a cycling route has a complete disregard for slow moving canals and standing water. Combine this with palm farms, FL humidity, and the fact that there isn't any measurable human population in this area and what you have is two hours of the worst possible cycling conditions that you never want to go through in your life. These little black specks were so thick that I had to drop my head so that I could breathe in my nose, bring it back up again to breathe out my mouth and hopefully get rid of any bugs on my lips, then rewind and repeat. The black specks accumulated on my face, neck, arms, legs so quickly that after a couple minutes of riding the No-See-Ums turned into All-You-Can-See-Is-Um's. Every couple minutes you could wipe them off you arms
and legs just the same as you would wipe mud off a shovel. Gross!!!!!

I was very happy to hit the last town on mainland FL. There were still nasty bugs to ride through, but not even close to the palm plantation areas. I stopped at the first gas station around and drowned my arms, legs and face in soap and water.

I opted out of the Adventure Cycling route and decided to take US 1 into Key Largo. It's always a crapshoot when making these decisions
but the shoulder looked good and the road looked straight so I took the risk. It seemed fitting that I ride onto the first Key via US 1 considering the importance of the road to the area.

Once I hit Key Largo I rode up to the welcome sign and met Robin. He snapped a picture fore and them we started chatting about the area and sites to see. As of turns out, Robin was staying at the same campsite as me. So we got together later on for dinner and a couple beers (ie: he made me some food and gave me some beer). With all the generosity and hospitality I've received over the past thirty days I have my work cut out for me in the coming months. It's been really cool to hear all the stories and meet all the people along the way.

The last night camping was hammock incident free. The campers next to me, two mothers and their teenage daughters, decided to noisily roll into their campsite at 11:30 pm and then noisily leave at 5:00 am. Five hours of sleep is fine if you're just camping and then driving to the next site with your 20 oz coffee in hand but it's a little short when you need to ride a bike for the next 8 hours. Wasn't much of a problem though because the excitment of this being the final day could have pulled me through just about anything.

I learned about a series of cracks in my rear rim from a bike shop just south of Ft. Lauderdale. Because of the cracks the wheel couldn't be trued properly and left my wheel vulnerable to bending. This wasn't good because half of the riding in the Keys was on either bike path or sidewalk (designated as the preferred traffic route by Adventure Cycling). If there is one thing I've learned about bike paths it's that they're usually not maintained very well and thus they eat up rims like Pac-Man eats dots. I made it through though and I'm in need of a new rim when I get back home.

Now that I'm done with the trip I can say a couple things that I didn't want to mention before for fear of jinximg myself. For the whole 2540
miles that made up this trip I didn't have one flat tire on the bike. I did have one on the trailer which ultimately led to me losing a piece of my pump, but the bike was flat free. Once I lost the piece to the pump I was really hoping that my luck held out because even though I may
have been able to blow up the tire with some McGyver tactics, I didn't want to find out.

My bike is a creaky, sore, tired piece of machinery right now but once it's back home a good cleaning, lubing and some minor repair work should bring her back to life. It's going to cost pretty penny to ship both the bike and trailer back home bit in the end it'll be nice to have both pieces of equipment back in the garage to fight another day.

I've been remembering bits and pieces of the trip as I go along here and one of the coolest things I saw was in FL I looked at a low flying hawk, osprey or some other type of bird and saw that in it's claws it held a catfish. The catfish was probably about 16-20 inches long and must have been picked out of a nearby pond by the bird. It was quite the sight to see the fish flying around, being carried by a bird not much bigger then it was (minus the wingspan). Fish are probably one of the species which are not so happy about the whole bird sanctuary idea.

I stopped for breakfast on the Key West arrival day at Mangrove Mikes. This place was a little breakfast joint in a plaza about 70 miles from my destination. Breakfast consisted of eggs, biscuits, sausage gravy, hash browns, home fries, coffee and toast. Fuel for the fire. I had a slight tailwind for the last day which made it easy to carry a 18 mph pace. The last day was no time to crank away as fast as possible, this was the time to avoid heat stroke and plan out the logistics of lodging, food, sightseeing, and how to get my bike and myself back home. I
arrived in Key West about 5 days ahead of schedule even though I had the two day knee incident. A job well done if I do say so myself.
There was the seven mile bridge, a little incident where I rode on the old bridge only to find the middle was blasted out so it didn't make the full connection to the other side, and jackasses in their cars who like to honk like idiots even though you're 5 feet from the white line. A lot of people should retake drivers ed and hopefully learn that if you slow down for 5 seconds then maybe, just maybe you can keep everybody safe. I know that everybody who reads this blog gives plenty of room to cyclist so I'll stop ranting now.

Once I hit Key West I rode straight to the Mile Zero sign and took a couple pictures. Some of you may have seem the farmers tan pic already. Goofy, I know, but that's how it works.

Tuesday night I had Yellowtail Snapper, a Sierre Nevada Pale Ale and the beat Key Lime pie that's ever crossed my lips. Yesterday I had enchilada's for lunch with a Margahrita and you all know about the Cuban restaurant already. I smapled the three beers on tap at Kelly', the southernmost brewery, and found my way to the Mel Fisher museum (treasure hunter who discovered Atocha). Time to get off the plane, more to come.
Alright, I'm back. I'm off the Key West to Atlanta flight and on my way to Albany. At the bar I met Mr. Cruz, an Army soldier who is on leave for 12 days to visit his wife and three boys in Flint, MI. Another great person on the long trip. I enjoyed hearing his stories about Iraq and his travels.

So really, that's about it. I put a lot of time and effort into getting the bike packed up, getting a flight home and figuring out how the post Key West ride is going to work. Interesting how once you enter the real world, everything is a hassle again. It's not just jumping on the bile to ride anymore.
To anybody who wants to listen, I don't recommend ever doing this trip by yourself. If you think that statement is just dumb and I don't have a clue what I'm talking about then you're the type of person who will really enjoy and have a good time cycling from ME to Key West.
Bradley W Howe