Category: Florida

We have found that the amount of work we had to do to finish getting the house packed and ready for new people, and trying to finish off a few computer intensive projects has completely consumed our time since we last posted. As you may notice, we have made a lot of updates to our website. We have been wanting to make these changes for quite some time, but when we were on the road and had only the one laptop and only a few hours of time that it was possible to get things done, we simply weren’t getting anywhere. We also got delayed by the thunder storms that have swept through our area.
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Organizing

We have spent the last two days continuing to solve our organizational needs. We are getting the last things packed around the house, and we have looked carefully at everything we had brought with us – evaluating it for usefulness and weight. As an example, when Chelsea took her tumble we didn’t have any adequate “wound” cleansing materials, like hydrogen peroxide. We therefore went over a first aid kit we had left behind, compared it to what we had brought, and thought carefully about what we would need. We opted for a more robust first aid kit, and we are pleased about it. I think we might still carry a very small bottle of hydrogen peroxide, because it’s really awful having to clean off road rash with an antiseptic wipe! We are also going to try a sample tube of the Brave Soldier gel. Now the next challenge is putting it where we can always access it quickly and easily, even if we don’t need to use it frequently.
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It’s amazing being home for a short bit after living in such another world for the last 10 days. We have been working 18 hour days getting caught up on blogs, uploading our photos and captioning them and getting them on the website, working on our consulting projects, doing laundry, re-thinking our clothing and equipment, finding the things we needed, and getting rid of things we didn’t need. We’ve also had to order some essential supplies and we’ll have them sent to a close friend’s house about a week up the road.
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We really did get up early this morning, despite our squeaky air mattress neighbor. He was finally quiet this morning, so we tiptoed around, not wanting to hear that again! We were actually riding away at 6:45! We made great time as the air was relatively cool, and the miles just floated by. We took Card Sound Road out of the Keys, and it was a great choice. There weren’t any shoulders to ride on, but there was very little traffic, too. We had lots of shade for the first few hours, and we entertained ourselves by watching the hundreds of crabs scuttling about. Last year riding across the US we saw squirrels and armadillos and snakes as road kill – today it was hundreds of crabs.
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We awakened to stifling heat and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that we wouldn’t be riding today. We staggered out of the tent and sat on our picnic bench, watching the only movement in sight, which happened to be a troop of Boy Scouts from Milwaukee WI, on a two week outing in Florida, currently in the campsite right next to ours. We didn’t mean to stare, but we were half dead, and it was really impressive watching their organization. We got to chatting with the leaders of the troop, and heard about their adventures – they go every year to some amazing place for about two weeks, with the high school age boys. They’ve been to the Canadian Rockies and the Florida Keys, among other places, and they were headed out today for Cocoa Beach, up the coast in Florida. They told us that they would be posting our adventure on their website, so we’ll give them time to get back home and get unpacked, and we’ll check it out. They also told us to be sure to check in with them when we pass through their area, and we’ll definitely do that.
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Loooong and hot would just about describe yesterday’s ride. We left a gorgeous campsite at Long Key, right on the Atlantic Ocean, and we really wanted to stay another day. All night we could hear the waves lapping at the rocks only about 20 feet from us, and in the morning, we watched the early shore birds fishing next to the rocks. We reluctantly packed up and left, and headed off to Key Largo, and within 15 minutes we were dripping with sweat. There was nothing to do but just keep going, and it was slooow going. We are still hauling about 70 pounds of gear each, and that means we can reach about 10-11 miles an hour on the straightaway, dropping down to 8-9 mph or lower when there are inclines.

We had a wonderful break at Midway Café in Islamorada – just the kind of place I had been dreaming about seeing. It was a small café that served great coffees, smoothies, sandwiches, and baked goods. The air conditioning was divine, and the staff was so pleasant that they let us walk right behind the counter to fill our Camelbaks. We are drinking two full Camelbaks a day – that’s 200 oz – plus at least 1 of my 24 oz Nalgene bottles. That means we are drinking at least 1.75 gallons a day, just during our rides. We usually drink at least another 16-24 oz at night around the campground and at dinner. Just getting enough water daily is a part-time job!
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Our string of luck is continuing unabated. After an awesome send-off from Lori in Marathon (although very late – we didn’t leave until after 11:30) we headed off up the Keys. It’s so incredibly hot that we can only go about 5 miles before taking a break to let our body temperatures cool down. We were moving right along, but I kept complaining about how hard my trailer was to pull. About 10 miles down the road, Chelsea realized I had a flat tire on the trailer. We discovered much to our dismay that the spare tubes and patch kit hadn’t made it into our gear! We were back on a bike path several miles from nowhere, with scorching heat.

I spotted a pickup truck parked nearby, empty, and decided we needed to keep an eye on whoever was coming back for it. Only about 15 minutes later, Chelsea went running like mad for the truck, waving down the driver. Turns out that he took our tire, drove back to a gas station, which sent him on to Kmart, and within 45 minutes, he was back with us, holding two brand new tubes, a patch kit, and two ice cold bottles of water. He stayed to help us fix the tire and make sure it was working, and when we tried to pay, he backed away, telling us to have lunch with the money instead! He walked away and we never even got his name! Guess who our Hero of the Day is today?
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Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Grilled parmesan-crusted mahi-mahi with grilled Vidalia onions and baked potatoes for dinner, followed by caramel praline ice cream drizzled with chocolate sauce. A chance to work on our projects all afternoon in a quiet air-conditioned room, with access to a second computer. A real bed to sleep in for the night and a private bathroom. That’s just part of what Lori, from Knight’s Key Landing, did for us yesterday.

Taking mercy on us after our tough night the night before (the Cuban families finished their party at 8 a.m.) and seeing us pelted with rain during the storm that finally hit, she took mercy on us and invited us over to her trailer for the afternoon. During a lull in the storm we started packing up to leave our site, but didn’t quite make it before the rain hit again. Lori found us hiding in the tent, and brought her truck over, helping us load the trailers and everything we could grab, and brought us over to her place.
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We have stumbled into a little slice of paradise here. How hard can life be when we can stagger out of our tent at 7 a.m., grab a granola bar, and wander a few hundred feet over to sit on rocks by ourselves at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, watching the fishing boats and sailboats heading out for the day? That’s how our day started today. We quietly discussed our day, made notes about what needed to be done, then wandered over the other way and set up our laptop in the pavilion by the marina. We have an electrical outlet, and Lori – who works on maintenance for the campground – loaned us several lawn chairs.

We have had the incredible opportunity to pay bills, reconcile bank accounts, and work on our beta website projects, all while watching the tarpon playing in the marina, the herons and the great egrets fishing from the docks, and pelicans and frigate birds soaring overhead in the pre-storm winds.

While working hard at the laptop, we met our neighbor Christine, who offered the advice that a restaurant right down the road would let us plug in, and that they had wireless access. She herself is down here for a month with her family in an RV, but is still doing technical support for a point-of-sale software company, so she disappears an hour or so a day to deal with the support emails she needs to handle.
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Rain awakened us at 5 a.m. and that must have been a subconscious signal – we slept right through the alarm. By the time we woke up, it was clearly threatening more rain. Knowing it takes about 2 hours to get out, and that we would be riding in awful heat, and possible thunderstorms, we decided to take a day to write. With only one laptop that takes awhile!

Talk about groggy this morning! We have been getting so much exercise and so much sun, and so little food and so little sleep – I think it all caught up with us. It felt wonderful to just be able to stay in one spot and do things that needed to be done.

However, adventure was unavoidable – we had no food, we hadn’t eaten since the evening before, we only had our bikes, and the nearest place was at least a mile away, with thunderstorms coming. We finally talked to the folks at the office, and one of them graciously dropped us off at Publix downtown. Turns out there was NO place for us to plug in our laptop, and no restaurants! We were going to have to walk at least a mile carrying all our stuff, and we still had to get groceries. We finally opted to get groceries and have a taxi take us to a pizza place we had heard about.
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