Day Fifty
Today I rode from Daytona Beach to Melbourne, Florida. I did not take many pictures. In fact, I hardly stopped. What I saw today is pretty much exactly what I've been seeing for may days now. Florida is well made and designed for efficient automobile travel, but while riding over 600 miles of Florida roads, there is a lot of the same thing here. Florida is Florida everywhere in Florida.
79.54 miles today, which weirdly feels like a light day.
I did have a tailwind, but I also had some flagging heat to deal with. All and all, I think, after 3,000 miles, I'm beginning to feel like a strong rider. And what do I do with that? I have to retrain for other demands this summer! I'm already thinking of how bad a runner and climber I will be after becoming optimized for cycling. As soon as I get home, maybe even before I get home, I have to begin cross training...the work never ends.
I am also becoming acclimatized to the heat. Today's heat index was into the mid 90's. By late afternoon, the dried white salt on the outside of my black cycling shorts looked like I was doused in powdered sugar. I'm sweating like crazy and I just kept pounding the fluids and riding. And feeling fine. I now wear a long sleeve pull over when I'm inside buildings with air conditioning. It feels too cold inside! Just before I left for this trip, in Missoula, I was shoveling snow in a t-shirt. Now I'm shivering when the thermostat is set to 68.
I have not been camping nearly as much as I thought I would be, and this is directly attributed to the climate here. I need a colder temperature at night to sleep well. On most nights here, it doesn't get below 75, at the coldest time of night. I believe one of the key reasons why I have been able to perform day after day on this ride is because I am obsessive about recovery and rest each night. I have not felt I ever have had the luxury to experiment with my recovery and rest routine, so I have not been camping. I have jealously defended my right to a good night's sleep. The driving pace of this trip has not permitted me to risk the consequences of sleep experiments. Instead, I have totally blown up my budget with motel stays.
Way back in high school, I had an English teacher named Melba-May McConaughey. Ms. McConaughey was from Texas, a stout woman with jet black hair always impeccably spun up into a perfect beehive. One day we were talking about camping. She said in Texas, they only "camp" in travel trailers and campers on pickups (RVs weren't really a thing yet). Us Scouts in her class were incredulous. Wimps! But now I get it. Nobody tent camps here, at least not this time of year. It's just too hot! And it's getting hotter and stormier. May, 2024 has been Florida's hottest May ever. And these storms I have been dodging since Texas are also unusually powerful for this time of year. They expect a particularly active hurricane season in 2024, because ocean temperatures are higher than ever recorded, and there is more energy and moisture in the atmosphere than usual. In response, the Florida legislature recently created laws requiring agencies to remove language from official communications that make any reference to climate change. But that's a different story. The fact is, it's hot here, getting hotter, I destroyed my trip budget because it's too hot to camp, and I'm getting out of the South before the heat really blows up this summer.
In case one gets lost
I met two through-cyclists this morning. I am south of the Southern Tier route (that's ironic, I suppose), and any east-west cyclists wouldn't be down here. These two cyclists are heading north, up the East Coast. The Eastern Greenway Trail starts in Key West and terminates in Maine. I met Dave, who started in Key West, this morning. I met Lottie, who started in Miami, this afternoon. Both nearly didn't get out of south Florida, where the heat index hit 115 degrees while they were riding. Dave and I spoke for just a moment. He looked a bit discouraged but he seemed to know that he was out of the cooker and things would improve. Lottie and I had a little more time.
Lottie is from Manchester, England, 40 years old, riding alone, taking six months to cycle while making a career change.
Over the last few months she cycled the length of New Zealand, from north to south. She said it's late fall in New Zealand and it was getting quite cold in the south. She came to Miami and that was a thermal shock! She's trying to get north fast, to get ahead of the heat and stay ahead. Lottie is a strong cyclist and really putting down the miles. She did 100 miles yesterday and planned on an 80-mile day today. She said New Zealand was hilly, with few people (more sheep than people, they say) and amazing environmental diversity.
Florida is none of those things. But Lottie, like me, is amazed and really enjoying the quality of Florida's cycling infrastructure. I'm still trying to understand how a people here, a society, with such obvious differences from me in terms of social and political priorities, can nonetheless have done the best job in all of North America at making cycling so safe and comfortable as they have here in Florida. I'm thinking about it.
I'm on the "Space Coast". That's the term communities near Kennedy Space Center and the Space Force Base use to refer to themselves. I know, technically, every coast is in space, like everything else is, but the name works here. I've not let it be a secret that my geeky obsession with space science and technology is why I'm ending the trip here. To me, it's the most interesting place in Florida. After I take my Atlantic plunge to end this ride, I'll shower, get non-cycling clothes on, and go tour the visitor exhibits at Kennedy Space Center. I haven't been here since the space shuttle stopped flying and I'm sure there is a lot of new stuff to see.
Here's my plan for the next few days. I'm currently comfortably bivouacked in Melbourne, FL, about 15 miles from Cape Canaveral Jetty Park. I will ride those last 15 miles, dip my wheel into the surf, then go for a swim. That will be Thursday evening. I've decided to do it Thursday evening instead of today, because Joan flies in Thursday afternoon. Since we are on the east coast, morning photos would be backlit, with my face in shadow. But in evening light, my front will be properly lit. Photos will be better at 6:00 pm than 9:00 am.
Tomorrow, I'll ride 57 miles to rent a car, from a rental location that I can easily return it to on Saturday when we are in Orlando. On Thursday afternoon, I pick up Joan at the Orlando airport and we do our photo thing at the ocean edge at Cape Canaveral Jetty Park. On Friday, we will be space center tourists. I will be geeking out on all things rocketry. On Saturday, we have breakfast with a person Joan has been working with to plan a trip to central China. To look for human remains. But that's a different story. After I return the rental car on Saturday, Joan and I will hop on the Amtrak train up the east coast to visit Frances and Clay in Boston. That's right, I'm ending my bike ride with an overnight train ride. It will be a good contrast in how to enjoy looking at the country. And they serve good meals in the dining car.
I've been asked where this blog writing is going. I've been encouraged to try to organize it into something publishable. Which is terrifying. Since the bike ride's purpose has been to stress test what we teach at the Center for Adventure Leadership (skills, methods and mindsets), I plan to put the Ride Blog next to the Thinking Blog, to interrelate the experiences I have had on the ride with the adventure leader theory and practice we advance with our learners. I've got a lot to process and organize. If you have any thoughts on this project, please share them with me.
Off to bed now. I plan to lighten the bike for tomorrow's ride to Orlando. With two days to go, My rear rack attachment has failed on the left side, with a sheered bolt, and a spoke broke on my rear wheel, so the wheel is getting out of round. I will remove the bags and rack from the back of the bike and hopefully get to Orlando, 57 miles NW of my location, without busting anything else.
I’d love to hear from you. Donate to the ride and send along your words of encouragement and tell me why getting kids outside matters to you.
