Back to Day 42

9:30 PM

Just finished a wonderful home-cooked meal at Kathy and Jack Hillson’s house. Kathy is a tennis friend from home who recently relocated to Melbourne, FL.

We got off to a late start today. First we slept in, then we had breakfast at the Peach Valley Cafe in Ormond Beach. On the way to breakfast, I took the promised picture of the Ormond Garage where car racing in Daytona got its start.

This is the statue outside Ormond Beach City Hall. I love it!

So we weren’t really on the road until after 11:00, which is not the best way to start a 60 mile day. But it was a pleasant ride, except that it was SO FREAKIN’ HOT. I was actually getting nauseous from the heat. So we stopped in a Kangaroo Mart and guzzled water and Gatorade. Dana convinced me to allow him to dump ice cold water over my head and down my back. It was a nasty shock, but the after effects were wonderful.

Then we were forced to ride on Rte. 1 for a while, but we turned onto a side road and ended up in New Smyrna Beach. Here are the ruins of an old Civil War hotel that was destroyed by Union cannon fire.

 

It turns out there is an antique car gathering at New Smyrna Beach the second Saturday of every month, so we got lucky. On our way down Main St. looking for ice cream (we are always looking for ice cream), we started seeing one antique car after another. Dana took pictures of some of them:

The road near New Smyrna Beach was wonderful – scenic, waterfront, almost no traffic. But then we had to get back on Rte. 1 again, for about 30 miles. It has a decent shoulder, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic, but it was extremely hot and boring. And we really didn’t know how far we had to go, so we started bickering, which always makes 30 miles of riding on a hot, boring highway more pleasant.

I had told Kathy that I would call her when we were 10 miles out of Titusville, but I started getting worried because, with 30 miles left at 4:00, it was going to be very late when I finally called her, and we didn’t want to mess up her evening. But bless her heart, she called me, and when I told her we were still 20 miles out of Titusville, she offered to come get us.

Yippee.

We kept riding, and by the time Kathy and Jack showed up, we had ridden 50 miles and were quite happy to be done for the day. They came in 2 cars, which was so nice – enough room for the bikes and all of us. And as were were all driving back to their house, the skies opened up and it was pouring rain for the entire drive through Titusville. Kathy was worried that maybe she was cheating us by picking us up before Titusville, but we assured her that we had no need to ride more 10 miles on Rte. 1 in the pouring rain in Titusville.

So we got to Kathy & Jack’s house, and met Piper

They offered us their washer and dryer, so I started the laundry and we went for a swim in their pool and a sit in their hot tub. Hot tub sitting is so much nicer than bicycle seat sitting! After a while I figured I would get out and take a shower, but then I realized that I had absolutely NOTHING to wear – every article of my clothing was being washed. So Jack loaned us some shorts and t-shirts, which explains my sexy outfit in the next picture.

The Hillson’s neighbors, Linda and Tim, joined us for dinner. We had our second home-cooked meal in 44 days – grilled pork loin, apples, rice florentine, salad, corn-on-the-cob, and strawberry shortcake. Kathy has been reading the blog and knew I was craving the corn, but it turns out that was the exact meal I’ve been planning when we get home. It was wonderful.

Tomorrow Kathy and Jack will drop us off in Indialantic – a small cheat – and then we will continue on our way.

On to Day 44

Back to Day 41

11 AM

In a bike shop in St. Augustine. It seems I’ve broken another spoke. That’s 4 rear wheel problems for me, zero for Dana. I think I must be doing something wrong – going too slow, being too wimpy, drinking too much Gatorade – something.

We returned the rental this morning, and rode through St. Augustine to the historic section. We saw the old Spanish Fort

and then followed a tour bus to the fountain of youth. It turns out that the way to the Fountain of Youth is through the parking lot of a Howard Johnson’s – which is somewhat historic in it’s own right.

Here is the historic marker for the fountain – we didn’t go in, because it’s a huge tourist emporium.

But since Dana wouldn’t let me drink from the fountain and fix everything that’s wrong with me, he agreed to take a picture with old Juan here.

And we saw peacocks. We like peacocks.

Also in the parking lot of the HoJo’s is this awesome, famous tree

And here’s everything you need to know about the tree:

So then we tried to find the area in town with all the historic houses, because Dana thought I wanted to see it, and I thought he wanted to see it. So we rode around the brick and cobblestone streets for a while, basically until my spoke broke. We saw some lovely old homes, and the streets are narrow and very European looking, but we never saw the official historic house site.

So here we are at Island Bicycle, and Levi is putting a whole new rear wheel on my bike. Dana was nervous that once I rode on 2 broken spokes, more would happen soon. It seems like overkill, but Levi was very nice, he fixed it in only a half an hour, and we’re about to get back on the road.

8 PM

Check out the cool ocean view from our $90 awesome hotel room at The Royal Floridian.

I forgot to mention the cool Spanish ships in the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Augustine.

And that we got to watch the drawbridge go up.

Otherwise, riding from St. Augustine to Ormond Beach has been pretty much what you would expect. We’ve been on or near the water the entire time. We’ve crossed a few bridges, but they have all been safe, with wide shoulders and polite drivers.

We stopped for lunch at The Matanzas Innlet Restaurant, right over the Matanzas bridge. Everything just to the south of St. Augustine is named Matanzas, which means massacre. Go figure. But lunch was delicious.

Somewhere along the way we saw this house. People are really into pirates around here!

Ormond Beach is actually the sight of the first Daytona car race. Here is the historic marker.

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the garage, so now you have something to look forward to tomorrow.

Our exact distance for the day. Seems appropriate.

On to Day 43

Back to Day 40

8 PM

Sitting down to dinner, in St. Augustine, after our last cheating day. They have corn-on-the-cob as a side dish. I am SO excited! And we are discussing TV trivia with a guy named Juan who’s like 25, but he knows a lot because he watches TVLand.

We started the day with a trolley tour of Savannah. We’d already biked around most of it, but we didn’t necessarily know what we were looking at. So the trolley tour seemed like a good way to make sure we saw the whole city in a limited time. Turns out we really had seen most of the city, including this treat for our Girl Scout friends:

And about the Forrest Gump sighting – the movie was set in Savannah – so today we saw the restaurant where Jenny worked, and the bench he sat on. But sadly, there was not another Forrest sighting. [We found out later that the city hires Forrest Gump and Paula Dean impersonators for tourists to enjoy.]

After the tour, we had ice cream at Leopold’s – a Savannah tradition since 1919 – followed by lunch at the Starland Cafe. We shared an asparagus sandwich and a salad. There’s that sharing thing again.

Then we headed out of town towards the Okefenokee Swamp. It was very hard to navigate there with the GPS, since the swamp doesn’t really have an address. So after we got to Folkston, we got lost, and when we got found again, we had to drive 5 miles on a dirt road.

This was the only time we were worried about banjo music on a river. Dana made me get out of the car to take this picture, and on hindsight, I’m surprised he didn’t just leave me there, since I was the one who messed up the navigation in the first place.

When we finally reached the swamp’s visitor’s center, we changed into our bike shorts and rode the 8 mile Swamp Island Drive.

The swamp is amazing

We saw an alligator

and a baby water moccasin

and some interesting flowers

and huge woodpeckers that refused to pose for pictures.

Quiz:

Did we put on bug spray before riding in the swamp?
Are we suffering now because we are dumb-asses when it comes to bug spray?
How many baby alligators can you see in this picture? (the answer is 5)

But, while the swamp was beautiful, we saw very little wildlife. Then, in the parking lot as we were leaving, we saw a huge diamondback rattlesnake (5-6 feet long)!

Then we drove to St. Augustine. We will return the rental tomorrow morning, tour the historic part of the city on bikes, and then head south. 500 miles to Key West! I promised Dana he can train me to ride fast in Florida. No promises, but after all this cheating, I will try.

On to Day 42