Day Fifty-One
The big daily miles I’ve been doing recently put me a day ahead of schedule. And in the original schedule, I had a lot crammed into one, final super day. Being ahead has allowed me to spread the workload over two days. A much more civilized way to end the ride.
Today I rode 78 miles, first into Orlando to rent a car, then some of the final miles from US 1, which is well away from the ocean beaches, to get a sense of what my last few miles would be like.
These last few days in Florida require a car. Joan is flying down, I have to get supplies to pack and ship my bike back home. Our route home is by way of Boston, via Amtrak, from Orlando. Too much to do on a bike. So today was devoted to this trip housekeeping, so the final day would not be too full and rushed.
South of Daytona Beach, the highway continues straight south as the coastline swells east. The land on which Kennedy Space Center lies is Merritt Island, which is really a peninsula, not an island, or at least was until a few waterways were sliced through it so boat traffic and travel within the Intercoastal Waterway and not have to venture out into the open ocean.
The Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) stretches 3,000 miles from Massachusetts down the eastern seaboard, all the way around Florida, and along the Gulf Coast to Brownsville Texas, near the Mexican border. Merritt Island is on the ocean side of the ICW. In addition to Kennedy, Merritt Island has a massive wildlife refuge, the US Space Force base at what used to belong to the US Air Force at Cape Canaveral (The Cape) and the cities of Merritt Island and Cocoa Beach. Merritt Island was on my left for most of my ride from Daytona to Melbourne.
Most notable on May 22nd, I met Gus over dinner at a local barbecue joint. Gus is an interesting guy, a classic example of how Florida is more connected with New Jersey New York than the rest of the south. Imagine "Colorful New Jersey character" right out of Central Casting and you may just picture Gus. Gus is the first person I have met on this ride who understands just what it is that I have done. We had a fantastic conversation, and he was filled with affirmation, which I really appreciated.
Gus said he's met a lot of people, but never somebody who bicycled all the way across the country. My being a few years older than him added to his astonishment. He knows that road and he thought 55 hours to cover the distance was a long time. Gus shook my hand, bought me a beer, and we talked. I wanted Gus to talk, mostly. I just tried to keep him going. Maybe the most interesting guy I've met on the ride. Incredibly smart, thoughtful, resourceful and a little bent. A survivor.
Gus is a retired long-haul trucker, part of a 2-driver team. For years, his run, his bread and butter, his career, was the 55-hour drive from Miami to Los Angeles.
On a Sunday, he would leave Miami with a trailer load of asparagus bound for mostly Chinese restaurants in LA. Then he'd pick up a load of dry goods and make the 55-hour drive back to Miami, arriving home on Thursday. Gus would trade off driving across the country and always handle the deliveries in LA because he knew the city better. His (usually younger) co-driver would share the cross-country driving and handle the Miami deliveries at the end of the trip.
We talked about the whole route, which he knew intimately. He said he loves New Orleans, and that most people don't know that in his heyday, the Sicilian Mafia owned New Orleans and even his mafioso friends in New Jersey didn't mess with them. Gus was a member of a certain motorcycle "club" because knowing these guys while on the road as a trucker could be helpful.
He talked about his weekly few-hours break in El Paso, his truck run tradition, where he would walk across the bridge to Juarez, Mexico to visit his favorite brothel. Gus said that's gotten too dangerous to cross the border lately. He said that'll change when Trump is elected.
We talked about how hot the roads were in New Mexico, blowing up retread tires all the time.
He described how he lost his brakes on a fully loaded semi in the Western mountains, and how coming down a long, steep grade, he kept the truck speed down by scraping the whole right side of the rig along the guardrails that lined the highway.
Once he had a hot-headed driving partner who had a phone fight with his girlfriend back in Miami while they were heading back east. Soon the kid had the rig up to 90 mph to get home sooner. Gus told his partner to cool it, that there's no way he can drive fast enough go catch that guy in his girlfriend's bed. But the kid wouldn't listen and wouldn't slow down, so from the sleeper area behind the truck cab, Gus called the local highway patrol to say his partner was driving like ape-shit and could they please pull him over, cuff him, read him the riot act, then let Gus get the kid home at a reasonable speed.
The kid didn't know Gus had made the call and was shocked and angry as the whole act played out, him cuffed and lying face down on the highway, being threatened with everything the lawman could throw at him. Gus stepped in as the "good cop", the trooper relented and the kid spent the rest of the return trip to Miami in the sleeper, banned from the driver's seat. Gus said, "kids these days, no self-control, no patience".
We talked about "small moves, keeping your head, just keep going". His own kids have graduate degrees, which he paid for by driving. He's in Florida visiting his wife, who suffered a stroke and is in nearby convalescent home. He makes the trip down from New Jersey for free, because he knows so many drivers that he just hops in a rig going his way. And there's always another truck going his way.
