Blog

  • Bayou La Batre, AL; Mobile AL, and Biloxi MS

    June 21, 2006

    It was a great joy to sleep in today, although after riding for 6 straight days and then having a whirlwind day yesterday, I still feel like I could sleep for hours. I spent a quick hour working in the motel lobby on my presentation, and then we took off for Mobile Alabama, where I spoke for an hour to the Mobile RIG. What a great treat it was! It was a small group, but a great location and a nice room. The investors appeared to be pretty sophisticated, with some very experienced folks in the group. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to talk, and only wished I could have had more time to talk informally with them. It was an hour lunch, and most of them had to leave immediately after I spoke.

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  • Bayou La Batre AL, 19 miles, and Pensacola FL

    June 20, 2006

    We had such a fun easy ride today, with only one challenge – the bridge right outside the island. It’s a four-mile bridge, and reaches impressive heights, at least to a bicyclist who’s not at all fond of heights. I had to talk myself up this one –you can check out a distance view of it in our picture gallery. I just kept my eyes on the road, and put one foot after the other, and sure enough, Chelsea was soon calling me to stop and take pictures at the top. Alex was quite funny, driving next to me for a short ways, calling out encouragement. 🙂 There’s more evidence of hurricane damage here – it’s clear to see that there used to be roadside businesses here, but all that remains in some cases are just twisted timbers or foundations. You can see a great photo of a waterfront fixer-upper in our gallery.

    Bayou is an extremely small town, despite the fact that it seems to go on for a ways. The kids went out for food last night, and everything was completely closed down by 8:30 at night. The only excitement in town was the local Sonic drive-in, so that’s what we had for dinner at 9:30 pm. When Chelsea and I finished our miles today, we asked a local woman if there was any place to get breakfast, and she looked at us in near total disbelief, and said, “In Bayou?!” We couldn’t help but laugh…and she was right…we had our breakfast at Sonic!

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  • Bayou La Batre AL (actually to Dauphin Island; 30 miles plus a few miles on the ferry)

    June 19th, 2006

    Chelsea and I got a great early start today, and still had tail winds. What a treat! The terrain was as flat as could be and we sailed west right along the Perdido Key, headed up towards Gulf Shores, and then west again on Ft Morgan Parkway. We had beautiful views of ocean for the first part, and shaded roads for much of the way along the Parkway. The area along the Parkway just after Gulf Shores reminds us a lot of the sections of Florida we went through, but it suddenly changed again as we got closer to Fort Morgan. The style of houses changed to the stilt structures we had seen in Orange Beach, and we suddenly realized how close we were to water on both sides. Check out our photo gallery for the houses we saw.

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  • Orange Beach AL; 53 miles

    June 18th, 2006

    We reached a milestone! We are in Alabama! Florida is such a big state, that we had begun to feel like we would never get out of the state. But here we are in Orange Beach AL. The day was much tougher than we expected, especially after our “high” of yesterday. The traffic out of Milton was amazingly heavy, but we had been warned that one of the hurricanes took out a bridge on I-10, and that the traffic was being routed onto Hwy 90. That didn’t seem to account for all of it, however, as traffic was really heavy all day.

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  • Milton FL; 71 miles

    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.

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  • DeFuniak Springs FL; 52.5 miles

    June 16th, 2006

    Today was a much tougher day. We started out from the Winn Dixie early, but the heat started in right away. We’ve noticed that the heat/humidity combination is really a killer. We reached Chipley early, and took a great break at the Chamber of Commerce there – we’ve gotten to where we always look for a place with a bench or a good curb – riding and standing only for 6 hours a day gets tiring quickly. It was fun to sit quietly on a bench under an overhang and watch the activity. That being said, there wasn’t a whole lot of activity at 8:30 in the morning. 🙂 It was hard to tear ourselves away from such a comfortable spot, but it was still early, so we hopped back on the bikes. One nice thing about this section of the trip is that there are small towns every 6-11 miles, so it’s much easier to keep ourselves going “just till the next town”.

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  • Marianna FL; 53.5 miles

    June 15th, 2006

    We made it today to Winn Dixie in Marianna, and with the heat building relentlessly, we decided to quit at 53 miles. We had great luck in finding a great local Mexican restaurant for an immediate lunch, and a few miles farther on, we found a reasonable motel. Chelsea and I spent the afternoon and evening catching up on personal and work related issues, while Stacey and Alex went out exploring. While looking for some dinner, they met a father/son combo who live in Miami, and who are on the last legs of their own cross-country bike ride. This father/son team started from San Diego and took the Southern Tier route, riding a recumbent tandem. Stacey and Alex were quick-thinking enough to get their contact information, and we will certainly be in touch with them to swap stories.

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  • Midway FL

    June 14th, 2006

    We’re back where we left off last Sunday, in Midway – it seems like a year has gone by in only a few days. We spent yesterday doing some much-needed work and making phone calls. Our planned appearances in the Panhandle were canceled because of Alberto, but we have re-scheduled them for the 29th.

    We are getting back into our bike riding mode again, spending time tonight making certain we are totally prepared for tomorrow’s ride. It’s been 3 days off the bike!

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  • Tampa FL

    June 12th, 2006

    Today was a great FREMA meeting (Florida Real Estate Marketing Association). We had a record pre-registration, but the impending tropical storm kept some people away. The meeting was excellent, as usual. Chelsea and I wouldn’t miss these meetings unless we are thousands of miles away! We are seriously happy that the FREMA board voted to give us $500 as trip sponsors. That puts them at the Bronze Brake Pads level. 🙂

    We were all set to go to Tallahassee again tonight, but Alberto is threatening to turn into a hurricane and we would be riding right into it. We opted to stay put here in Tampa, probably tomorrow too, as Alberto isn’t expected to blow through town until Tuesday night.

  • Just Shy of Midway FL

    June 11th, 2008

    We got a great start, but it was already 77 degrees and very high humidity when we left at 6:30 a.m. We got horribly lost in downtown Tallahassee, and ended up going an extra 5 miles in extremely steep terrain, and losing almost an hour. We were so glad to finally be out of town! After that, things went really, really well, and we made astonishing time. We ended up doing 30 miles, even after our early difficulties. We have now hit 334 miles!

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