We are at last in Hollywood, Florida, ready to start our bicycle tour. The bike is assembled, and the car put in storage. The other riders in our group are starting to gather.

On Saturday morning, we will head down the Boardwalk (actually, concrete and brick walk) toward Miami Beach and Miami on the first leg of our journey to Key West and back.

After we put the bike together, we went on a test ride up the Boardwalk and beyond to the north, about 6 miles round trip, very fast. Of course, we didn’t have the trailer attached, but it is flat. A local told us that the winds in the city can make riding difficult, though.

It seems odd after seven days of dark-to-dark driving to slow down.  In our last article, we were headed for the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, TN.  We arrived well before opening time and spent only 40 minutes or so ogling the displays, which ranged from the first TravelAir that Walter Beech built, the first Staggerwing–with fixed gear–and a number of examples as the model evolved.  Another hanger featured the Twin Beech 18 in various forms, and the modern iconic V-tailed Bonanza, the twin-engined Baron, and the exotic Rutan-designed Beech Starship.

Later that day, we veered east of Atlanta to Athens, to drop off quilts at our great-nephew’s house for his twin boys, that Judy’s sister had designed and pieced and Judy had quilted and bound.

Darkness found us at Macon, but we pressed on to Ashburn to be able to make Fort Lauderdale before dark the next day, which we almost didn’t achieve, since we elected to take Highway 27 and its many stoplights rather than the tollway.  We did get to check out part of the last couple of days’ route on our bike trail before getting back on the freeways.