I wrote yesterday's blog before we went to dinner with Kathy's childhood friends--David & Carol. She lives near Gainesville and he lives in South Carolina, By sheer chance he has also been biking a similar route across the country. We've been chasing him the whole way and the only reason we caught him is that he has taken more days off. Carol took us all to a wonderful vegetarian restaurant and amazingly our waiter (who overheard our conversation) told us he biked across the USA--on a more northerly route--last summer. Small world! But Gainesville is full of cyclists. Never seen as many anywhere in the USA.
Our hosts at the B & B fed us quiche and 'southwest potatoes' for breakfast so we left well-fueled, We spent the first 15 miles on a paved bike trail, mostly under a canopy of trees and Spanish moss. It added an easy 20 miles to the trip, but sure was worth it. The rest of the ride was just OK--a bit of cross wind, a lot of sunshine, a kind of busy road with a kind of lousy shoulder
(by our now-elevated standards) that led us to our penultimate stop here in Palatka, FL, where the contents of our panniers have exploded--as they do every evening--on to the spare bed in our room at the Quality Inn on the banks of the St Johns River. The river separates us from much smaller East Palatka, is about 1/2 a mile wide and could easily accommodate some mighty big boats judging by the height of the bridge we'll be riding over in the morning. Palatka itself is noteworthy for having lots of nice murals on walls downtown. It must also have a Wal-Mart somewhere since half the storefronts are empty.
After a relatively easy 60 miles today, we have a paltry 40 miles to St Augustine in the morning, though I'm sure we'll do a few extra looking around, riding up and down the beach, and generally reveling in reaching our goal. Kathy wonders what emotions we'll feel. I just expect a sense of accomplishment. Riding the bike has become my job these last 6 weeks, and I--we--have ridden as well as we know how. I can'r really imagine how we could have done it any faster--unless we got some tailwind. We've only run into one guy who was making better time than we have. Fred did it in half the time, which, as our energy has flagged these last few days, seems even more incredible than before. Lots of people are taking a good bit longer. Today we came across a couple from Missouri who are riding from St Augustine to Oregon. They plan on four months since they are camping and have their 2- and 4-year olds in a trailer behind the bike he pedals. She hauls the camping gear.
Our trip won't be over tomorrow--we still have to get up to the Amtrak station forty miles north in Jacksonville, then it's a two-day train ride home--via Washington DC. Our train leaves Monday afternoon. Frankly I suspect these next few days will drag by pretty slowly for me. Plenty of things to do at home... But we both just hate the way airlines treat people nowadays, so instead we'll have fun Monday morning finding our way to the Amtrak station and I'll cool my heels ( and rest my legs) in a sleeper car for a while.
Dinner choices were limited tonight, but I did find a 50s-style cafe. We ordered some sweet-potato fries for an appetizer, and they were served with cinnamon-margarine! The waitress promised a bowl of fresh fruit, but it looked--and tasted--canned. When we brought this to her attention, she politely told us that is really was fresh fruit, they cut it up every morning, then the cook adds two cups (!) of sugar to it. A similar application also adorned the cole slaw. For dessert, I ordered a 'Buster Brown,' which the menu described as a brownie with ice cream and chocolate syrup. It arrived with about half a can of Dream Whip on top, even hiding the marachino cherry. As I scooped it all off, the waitress admonished me for scraping off 'the best part.' After all this, maybe I'll have to break down and try some seafood--the real local cuisine!!
Our motel is overflowing with bass fishermen. Tomorrow is Saturday and apparently there's a tournament here. The parking lot is choked with lots of fancy big pick-ups and racy looking boats with enormous outboards on the back and trolling motors on the front. Every one of these set-ups has to be worth over $100,000, and their owners, good ol' boys all, hang around in the parking lot and the lobby, smoking cigarettes and no doubt telling fish stories. They're obviously having a great time. So are we. Must be these guys have done better in the stock market than we have, or maybe they figure they're going to die of lung cancer pretty soon anyway. To each his own!!
Doug
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