Category: Uncategorized

Whoa! I’m remembering what “Old Blue Eyes” once said. Big time.

“Riding high in April. Shot down in … (April?)”

So, today, Wednesday, April 11, started out great. This is the first full day on the bike!

I left the airbnb in Plantation, FL and headed south on almost a straight line for 30 miles. An early disappointment was the roads which were busy and randomly friendly to bikes, Some had dedicated lanes, some not even a shoulder. Some speedy, some pleasurably slow. Then the best part was the southern Miami area where there was a nice well kept bike trail for about 10 miles called the Old Cutler Road.

The shit part started right after that ended and I, thinking the omniscient Google would always pick the best routes, decided to follow their suggest route which looked out-of-the-way and peaceful. That may be true but there’s more to pay for that.

Looking at the Google map to get to Key Largo takes a coastal route without any highway but it does not tell you that it’s a long 30 mile dusty trail in the middle of no man’s land, Biscayne National Park  and miles and miles of mangroves following a canal. Presumably, this is the Everglades or something like it.

I’ll totally blame Google for this day’s woes. Once I got on the trail I suddenly realized that I need more of a pickup truck or fat bike to ride this stuff. My Ex Pat is designed to tow and take some weight and bounce but this was ridiculous, Rocks, millions of pebbles, ditches, all took its toll on the bike until I broke a bolt holding the rear rack to the frame. Then finally near the end of this torture I flatted after hitting some severe rocks.

The final straw as the flat was very difficult to fix as the tire was too tight to get on the rim. After an hour of trying I finally got it on only to have the new tube blow out. I was 1000 feet from hitting the road again but it was not to be.

Its getting near 5 pm and I still have another 25 miles to go so I did what any sane person would do these days and call a Uber. Pedro arrive in about 15 minutes and delivered me to Key Largo my destination (almost, since I was so beat my plan to camp was replaced with a room, somewhere, anywhere). That place was the Key West Inn (in Key Largo). I will not go into rating this right now because I’m not sure how you can rate this place. Maybe more on this later.

Anyway, I’m in Key Largo. I have a broken bike. But its nothing that can’t be fixed. 🙂 However, I’ve got to get that done before I can do anything and this will set my schedule back. I’m going to sleep on what are my next steps. The trip goes on. Meanwhile, here’s where I had dinner and caught a little of the Keys mojo at Sharkey’s. More on that tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a new day and hopefully a better one. No one said this would be easy. In a perverse way, I like the new challenge of improvising solutions and remembering that even the best plans of men oft go awry. I’m totally in my McGiver role right now.

 

 

 

 

 

Okay. Made it through my first night on a train in a sleeper car, top bunk. Hard to beleive that it’s really pretty cozy sleeping in tight quarters. The top bunk is on rails and slides down a couple feet. You climb over the compact and hidden toilet and sink. Mattress is a few inches but very comfortable and good air circulation. You hear the hum of the train moving steady and quietly through the Carolinas. Its dark and little to see but some street lights here and there.

By all rights I should have been rocked to sleep quickly but sleep was hard to come by. Rest, however, was easy. We woke to some movement in the train around 6:30 a.m. and went out for breakfast. I had the quesadilla breakfast special which was a tasty quesadilla with minced eggs, peppers, sausage and salsa. Nice and tasty.

Tom reminded me of his personal complaint about food just not arriving hot. Yes, presentation is not bad but it seems the timing of the food us such that its delivered about 5 minutes later than it should be. And for eggs, thats 5 minutes too late. Still, not bad and we had our choice of the menu, plenty of coffee and a nice serving staff.

It looks like the rest of the day (Tues) we will be riding thru Florida (about 500 miles?) to our final train destination in Fort Lauderdale. Light rain out there. Better now than later on our bikes.

It was a hectic day/week/month getting ready for this bike trip. The key point of failure at this early stage was anything that could go wrong with the train, our chosen means of getting to our starting point in Florida.

Tom, who has ridden trains on other bike adventures, led us to taking the Amtrak as the best way to move the bikes and advertised it as a unique adventure. Having some love for trains since I was a kid and a commuter as an adult bit the bait. We soon discovered that there was a decent priced package to Miami/Ft Lauderdale that included a sleeper car room for 2 and all meals for about $250 each for a one-way. Maybe the only catch was the 27 hours. But hey, I’m retired now so time takes on a new meaning.

The bikes went on at Newark surprisingly easy just hooking them up to the baggage car wall which we witnessed. The awkward part was lugging 5 smallish bags back to the sleeping car, then finding a place for them. My weight of baggage was about 50 lbs or 10 more than planned for. Amtrak tickets say 2 bags not totaling more than 50 lbs. but they clearly are not as anal as the airlines.

There’s this clear difference in train people where sometimes it seems they are too abrupt and expect you to know tbe routine, sometimes extremely friendly and personal and sometimes just a feeling that they don’t like working here, or maybe anywhere. Maybe that’s just what we all feel like sometimes but just don’t express it because for us it would get us fired. I’ll reserve my final opinions for later.

We adjusted to the micro-space of the sleeper car and had dinner in the dining car. We soon met our neighbor cabin across the asile. Paul and Eleanor from Fairfield, CT were a normal looking young senior couple who were very friendly and enjoying the train ride to Ft Lauderdale where they were going to catch a cruise to the Panama Canal.  They joined us at dinner and we soon learned that Paul was an expert clock repairman and Eleanor an Exec Assistant in her day. Right now they were considering retirement and enjoying life and they liked train riding. Less hassle.