I loved my hotel room. The mini kitchen, the bathtub, the back porch with the lakeside beach, and all that for $70. I loved it so much that I slept in, and only got on the road at 8:00am. If I was playing catch-up, this was already a bad sign.
And yet, I was feeling stronger. This morning, I felt the rhythm, I felt the music, the bike, and even the dreadful sun, and just biked. No fuss, no complaining, just biking. In my mind, I knew that there was no way that muscles develop overnight, but I can't explain it - today I flew. Even my GPS agrees, saying that my average speed today was 20km/h, as opposed to the high teens in the last few days. I zoomed through what I was supposed to finish up yesterday, and felt like I could do so much, if it werent that I woke up so late.
About an hour after I started, right by Sebring, I saw a watermelon stand. I was hungry, out of water (in my primay water bottle, I always carry around 1.5L emergency spare), and figured that fruit might be a good breakfast. So I stopped by, and ate as much of a watermelon as I could. The couple who sold it to me were very nice, and I chatted with them for a while about travel, and about different places in the US in general. They both had beautiful central-Floridan accents, at which point I realized that I was no longer in southern Florida.
It was a long time coming, and a slow change that snuck up on me, but there has been a subtle change in the people, environment, food, culture, and even language. The people definitely have accents. Some thicker than others, and some not so much an accent, but a kind of mannerism. This place feels like people work in the day, and then sit on the porch and enjoy the perpetual summer all night long. Okay, maybe my view is biased, since it's a weekend. Still, the heat and sun are like a blanket of lethargy that makes Florida an ideal vacation spot. It's different from southern Florida - there's lakes here, and no big ocean. Yet I feel like it's drier, with fewer irrigation channels. There are a larger variety of trees here, some of them with big mossy tree-wool hanging down
I sat with this couple, eating watermelon, and I could have sat with them eating watermelon for twelve hours if I didn't have to continue. So onwards I went. Onwards for a great length of about 1km, where I saw a flea market. Being stuffed of watermelon, and my bags being stuffed with crap I probably don't even need, I only stopped to look. I also bought and ate four tamales because they were so good. Which brings me to the second change - the food. It's more mexican. The streetside restaurants are mexican food, as opposed to Latin American (especially Cuban) food near Miami. Maybe it's a bias, but I want to believe. Look, the first Tamales stand I saw was on day 3, and I've seen them at almost any store/fruit stand/market since.
At the market, about half of the stall owners and patrons spoke fluent Spanish to each other. This was not the case earlier in the trip.
All in all, central Florida reminds me a lot of Israel. The sun, humidity, and palm trees somehow take me back to some of the wetter areas of Israel. The only difference is the grass. Oh, and the billboard signs...
I'm already preemptively calling this part 1, since at this rate, I'm sure there's gonna be some sequels.
And so, I spent hours dawdling at the watermelon stand and the flea market, and if I wanted to do anything I planned to do today, I had to get going, and even then it would be a long day. And so I biked.
I took some sunscreen breaks.
And some breaks to take pictures of cows.
I passed by lots of cows today. Lots of trucks carrying oranges passed me by, and every time they did, they filled the air with the citrus smell. It made me want some orange juice.
I finally figured out where they were all going to - the orange juice factory, of course!
They even had a visitor's centre, with free orange juice, but it was closed on weekends. And so I biked, and biked, and biked some more.
At some point, I noticed that I was sad in the sunlight, and happy when a cloud came by. This was reflected by my speedometer. I guess it makes sense, that my body doesn't want to work hard when it's already working so hard just to stay cool. So I biked in the sun, and biked a bit faster in the shade, and biked on slight uphills, and on sligh downhills. At some point I hit 100km, and I continued on and on and on, until I got to Legoland.
I mean really, who puts a Legoland in the middle of nowhere in central Florida? Oh well, it broke the monotony, and there was lots of stuff around. I filled up my bottle many times in that area, as it was very hot, and there were lots of gas stations around.
After the tourist trap around Legoland, I was hungry. I continued for a bit, before stopping at a taco truck, called Tacos My Friend.
I was there for at least an hour. By now, it was 4:45pm, and I still had an hour and a bit left for the day before Polk City. I was again at my end. Muscles don't want to move, body is tired, and brain is struggling. I ate quaesadillas, talked to a Korea war veteran, and sat there, talking to my mom for 25 minutes, before finally getting up and moving on. I drank a lot of water, put on some country music, and somehow managed to finish the ride to Polk City.
Polk City is not a city. But it did have some very nice lakeside residences. I decided I wanted to tent tonight. And so, I started knocking on doors, and after a few, I found someone who let me put a tent up. I sat on a bench in his back yard, and wrote this blog with bugs flying all around me. But you know, they were all lovebugs, and lovebugs don't sting or bite. So I let them dance around me as the sun sets behind my back. I look out to the lake, and people are enjoying the last moments of sunlight this weekend. This evening, there will be water-tubing, barbecues, and guests over, to finish off another beautiful day in the Sunshine State.
Yes, that's right, I need help. There are a few things I need help with. The first one, is formatting. I've been told that on mobile, my images are too small, but on desktop, they are just right. I don't want to dive into the rabbit-hole of cross-platform web development (at least not now, maybe around Day 30?), but if someone knows a quick fix for this, I'd love to hear it.
The second thing is spellchecking. Most days, I don't have much time after biking before it gets dark, and frankly, it's hard for me to catch all of my typos. So if you see something, say something, and I'll fix it the next day.
Finally, I know that some of you live in the US, or have friends and family in the US. If anyone has a patch of grass for a night, I'd love to plan my trip around it.
Thanks for reading! See you tomorrow!