June 17th, 2006
We rode 71 miles today! It’s hard to believe, but we ended up having one of our best days right after one of our hardest.
Wow, was it hard to get out of bed this morning! After a few days running of heat and hills and wind, we were heading out armed with only determination to keep us going. The “bicycle gods” must have heard us, because we had 45 miles of smooth flat sailing with great tailwinds. Yes, we certainly do like tailwinds! The time just flew by, and we had some energy to stop and take some great pictures of housing along the way (check out the photo gallery). In Holt we stopped to assess our situation, and after talking over the upcoming section with several locals, we decided to push on, knowing that we would break our daily mileage record by a lot.
Our decision turned out to be a sound one, as the hills were quite manageable, and the scenery was beautiful, with so little traffic that it was negligible. Stacey and Alex met us and I actually went wading for a few minutes in one of the many rivers that crossed our path. The last 8 miles was on a bike path outside Milton, and seeing as how we were finishing at about 3 in the afternoon, the heat got pretty overwhelming. I was SO glad to get in air conditioning again! And I couldn’t believe how incredibly wonderful it was to take a shower! It felt like being reborn.
We had an especially fun dinner tonight at a very Key West style restaurant. The waitress was a hoot – kept us laughing every time she was near us. The food was wonderful, which was a particular treat, as we have become very used to very mediocre food. We can say some wonderful things about being in the small towns, but if you are a gourmand, you’ll have a tough time. We can hope for the meal being filling, and to taste neutral, and to be cooked to reasonable “done-ness”, but that’s about all. The only choice other than local restaurants is fast food, and we have had to resort to that occasionally – more often than I would like. We are quite looking forward to finally getting our tent as we can then cook our own food.