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Day 3 - April 27 - Playing Catch-up

"Do whatever you want now, and next week, do 150km a day"

Hi, and welcome back to my bike blog.

The Morning and The Night

I had set my alarm for 5:00am today. I woke up, looked up the sunrise time in Florida, and when I saw that I wasn't even expecting any daylight until 6:30, I set my alarm for 6:00 and went back to sleep. I was out of the door by 6:30am. All this was not just in preparation for a long bike ride, but also because the night before, I fell asleep at 8:30pm due to body fatigue.

I should explain. Actually, I really don't know how to explain it. It's a mix of sun, muscle use, and constant road vigilence (mom, did you read that part? I wrote it in for you) that just drains me. I enter a state where I don't want to sit, I don't want to sleep, and I surely don't want to be walking around. My head occasionally nods, and my eyes are hard to open from the mix of sunscreen and constant wind hitting my face. I call Sarah, and it's hard to think - hard to say anything meaningful other than "today I biked this many kilometers, and saw trees, and some grass." Writing the blog becomes a favour to my future self, and not a place to tell stories and spin elevated philosophical musings.

But then, I get to bed, and I just cannot fall asleep. The sunburn itches, the caked-on sweat, which a shower can only half-remove, and the daunting journey haunts me. Every night I fall asleep to the different ways I can digest the 55 days ahead. No, 54. No, 53. No, now only 52. 5500km is 100km/day. Today I biked this many kilometers, yesterday that many, and my average needs to be this much. How can I bring it up? Will I try to burst out 200km tomorrow? Or will I bike every day for 120km to make up? But what if some day there's a flat tire? Or the bike breaks? Or it rains? I should make hay while the sun shines, and push as much as I can. What about the mountains? Google said that the ride is 300 hours. That's almost 6 hours per day, but there's no way I did that yesterday. Does it even make sense to try to average out the hours? What if I go slowly? Today I went slowly, and biked for 7 hours, so should I only count it as 6? Whatever happened to just biking? Wouldn't it be nice to get ahead of schedule now so that I can relax later? Maybe I should try to burst out 200km tomorrow.

Prima Luce

Suburban Sunrise

Today I saw the sun rise. It was nice, and I really enjoyed the sudden warmth. This same sun that had burned me, forced every drop of water I drank out of my pores, and turned all of my food to inedible mush, was, for a few hours, a welcome scene, as my laundry was still wet from last night, and I really wanted it to dry over the course of the ride.

Me, wearing a T-shirt cape to dry it.
Long shadow is long.

The Dike

Google suggested that I ride along the Herbert Hoover Dike, which runs along Lake Okeechobee. The trail had a few access points, which had boaters enjoying the weekend, fishing, or even picnicing. It was nice, though a bit annoying to duck under car barriers. The best part about the dike is that it was paved. And so, I biked many kilometers, saw some grass, but not many trees.

A campground near the dike.

It was around 10:30am when the dike trail ended, and I had to cross an inlet by bridge. By then I had done about 50km. The bridge itself was a bit like the exact opposite of the Thorold Tunnel, in the sense that I had a good amount of space, I was separated from cars, and, instead of going under the water, it went above it, and gave me a really nice view of the lake and the dike.

The dike is hard to see - it's far in the background

GATORAMA

There was nothing too interesting after the dike. Just flat road, and some trees. A farm here and there, maybe a gas station. It reminded me a lot of upstate New York in that respect, and maybe I should get used to it - it seems like the entire US is just that. I thought I'd have another eternity to spend in this flatland, until I hit GATORAMA. I stopped to fill water, and really had a moment to think about how much I wanted to go in. I had done 85km by then, and my goal for the day was 130. It was only 12:30am, so I paid $21, expecing to see a disappointing roadside attraction. I'll let you be the judge of how disappointing it was.

You ready for some more?

I also got a video!

Ducks from Assaf Bar-Natan on Vimeo.

And finally, my favourite alligator joke:

I've got a bunch more alligator jokes, if anyone wants to hear them...

Love-Bugs in the Air

After leaving GATORAMA, not 2km after I started biking, I saw a tamales stand. I've never had tamales before. That's actually a lie, since I've had them today! I bought three - one jalapeno, one chicken, and one pork. It's been so long since I've eaten meat on purpose, but for this authenticity, I felt like I had to try it. In fact, one of my greatest disappointments from GATORAMA was that their food truck was closed - they served alligator ribs! Oh I would have absolutely loved to try them! Anyway, the tamales were amazing. The jalapeno ones were the best, and I decided to get two more.

With full stomache, and better mood, I continued on the 45km trek towards Lake Placid, and let me tell ya, it was the worst 40km I've done this trip. Hell, I didn't even get to Lake Placid in the end. The road was straight, hot, unremarkable, and on occasion bumpy. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was at its hottest. My laundry had long dried, and I had long given up on cleaning my sunglasses from sunscreen residue. In fact, you can see some of this gunk clouding up all of my pictures. Call it an immersive experience.

I should also write a bit about the lovebugs. They were everywhere. I'd never seen them before, and was confused at why so many pairs of mating flies were attaching themselves to literally everything I had. They were on my shirt, my pants, my bags, my shoes, my bike frame, and even sometimes between my sunglasses and my face. Hell, I bet some were even on my tire for a brief circular arc before being squished. I tried brushing them off, but it just didn't do anything. They were everywhere.

Later, I read up on them a bit. It turns out that I'm quite lucky to see them like this! The lovebugs only come out at most three times a year. They mate over the course of three days, during which the male and female are attached to each other. They fly together, they land together, and they get stuck on windshields together. After learning that they are harmless, I actually started liking them. Still, I wish they would avoid my mouth.

A Little Help From My Friends

The sun hurt. My legs hurt. I didn't even notice when a motorcycle pulled over in front of me. I kinda just biked, and suddenly, he was there. I'd be lying if I wasn't a bit scared. In my visions of being mugged, a truck pulls over, kicks me off my bike, takes the whole thing, and drives off. I slowed down, and saw his motorcycle, covered in stickers, bags, camping gear, and a small American flag on the back. He had something like three cell phones held at his dashboard. I pulled a bit ahead, and he followed me, until we were both stopped.

The first words out of Nino's mouth were: "do you want some cold lemonade?" I said no, but asked if he had water. He had ice water in a thermos, and poured me some. I finished my bottle, and he poured me more. Nino's been motocycling all over the place. He told me about his cooling jacket, and we commiserated about cars being ruthless on the roads. He offered me food and snacks, but I had to refuse, though in retrospect, a banana would have been pretty good.

The End of the Day

Lake Placid was only 20km away, but I couldn't do it. I was taking breaks every five minutes, and obsessing over times, kilometrage, and speed.

Orange groves - another box ticked.

I saw the Lake grassy Inn and Suites motel about 5km south of Lake Placid, and immediately knew I wanted to stay there. They had grass, benches, and lake access for swimming. They were also fully booked.

I did something bad. It was 5pm, and Andy, the hotel clerk, told me that since the families who reserved the last two rooms didn't send him any credit card information, he could give me a room. He tried calling them three times, and got no answer. We waited until 6pm, and I leaned my bike on the rocking bench to start writing.

At 6, I stole the rooms. I really hope that this family is ok, because this place is gorgeous. The first thing I did was bring my bike in. The second thing I did was bathe in the lake.

And, if the day started with a sunrise, it ends with a sunset.

The Maps

So today at GATORAMA, my GPS told me that I ran out of space, since I had a bunch of old logs stored in it from the Boston and Montreal bike rides. I naively thought that deleting logs means deleting saved logs, but unfortunately, it means "clear all data", which includes the current day. Thus, the only GPS data I have is from GATORAMA till the motel. Though I have supplemented it with the location data from my phone. A rough estimate shows that I biked 130km today.

The different colours are because Google thought I drove some segments... Must have been driving really slowly...

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