Tour Diaries: Remember the … you know, that place in Texas…

The Alamo, of course, two hours before opening time

This morning, we discover why motels are so expensive: the breakfast room is full of oil workers in their orange coveralls. We are reminded this is Texas and Texas is big because the waffle machine makes waffles in the shape of Texas. Off we go, into the pre-dawn light. It is overcast today. The GPS shows 1000Km to New Mexico.

We do the obligatory drive-by of The Alamo (actually, a walk-by), then take a quick peek at the famous Riverwalk when we stop at the Marriott Starbucks for morning coffee.

San Antonio's finest patrol the Riverwalk in style.

The 500-mile city sprawled along I-10 ends in the hills west of San Antonio and the speed limit edges up to 130KPH. The live oak gives way to sagebrush, mesquite, and yucca as the highway climbs to the western desert. We stop for lunch in a land where restaurants are few and grocery stores are non-existent, a food desert all too common in the American West. It seems 80MPH speed limits are necessary to get shopping done in one day. The wind picks up, too, and the gas mileage drops by 5MPG, necessitating an extra fuel stop approaching El Paso, just after crossing into the Mountain Time Zone. We arrive earlier than we thought we would, but sunset comes early this time of year.

Picacho Peak: sunset in Las Cruces

We have a couple of days to visit family here before moving on to family in California.

Tour Diaries: Bound for Texas

As the sun peeked over the horizon, we headed out of Mobile, first stopping at Starbucks, then topping off the tank, so we could make the 75-mile transit of Gulf Coast Mississippi without stopping.  After the “Yankee Go Home” episode back in 1979, we make a point not to set foot in Mississippi.  Seems the Unix Curmudgeon has a long history of having people confuse “troubleshooter” with “troublemaker,” probably because of his habit of kicking people’s trash cans down the stairwell to get their attention.

Anyway, we soon arrived in Louisiana, but it was closed.  The visitor’s center, that is.  But, it opened shortly and we got an updated map and guide for our short stay.  We searched unsuccessfully for beignets in Covington (once again, the maps in the GPS proved to represent a slightly-altered parallel universe) but did stop in Baton Rouge for Cafe au Laits.

Then, on to Texas, facing all 880 miles of I-10 ahead of us to the New Mexico border.  We discovered everything is big in Texas, especially the price of motel rooms.  We experienced afternoon rush hour through Houston, in a steady parade of traffic that thinned little into the dark, reaching Sequin well after dark, for the night, 625 miles today.

Tour Diaries: Escape from Florida

After we left the Cape on Wednesday, we meandered through the backroads to Orlando, trying to avoid toll roads.  The Google Maps bicycle route (we were in the car) insisted on taking us through the Cocoa watershed, which, of course, was gated and locked.  So, we angled south through the “lakes” on the GPS, most of which turned out to be sloughs and swamps.

Despite our efforts, after wandering through endless neighborhoods, we found ourselves confronted with a toll booth, which extracted $1.75 from us to use a chunk of freeway for about a mile before we turned off and drove several more miles through neighborhoods to our niece’s house. There didn’t seem to be an alternative.  Our niece in Orlando and her husband both work for The Mouse, on busy schedules, so we more or less got to visit with them separately.

On Thursday morning, we explored a few more neighborhoods, got gas, made an appointment for an oil change (5000 miles since leaving home), and resigned ourselves to the tollroad, reaching the Jeep dealer in Lake City at lunch time.  We ate our brown bag lunch in the waiting area while the car was on the lift, then got on I-10 and headed west toward its terminus in Los Angeles.

We crossed over the Florida-Alabama line at sunset, relieved to be out of Florida after two weeks of unrelenting heat.  This was the Nice Person’s first visit to Alabama.  It was the Curmudgeon’s third visit: the first consisted of a quick drive from the Mobile airport into Mississippi, where he was easily exposed as a Yankee and run out of town.  The second was a quick transit without stopping. We spent the night in Mobile, and will steel ourselves for the short dash across Mississippi in early morning, hoping to make central Texas by day’s end.

Tour Diaries: After the Party is Over — Heading Home

After the big ride, some caught early flights, and some had to pack their bikes for later flights. We joined Bill and Karen on the boardwalk for a last Atlantic Ocean sunrise and breakfast.

Sunrise, Hollywood, FL, 15 November 2011

Last-minute contacts with friends and family before we went our separate ways:

Bill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, at last, the party is over, time to clean up and go home.

City power-washers start in front of the only cafe open on the boardwalk. We waited with hands over coffee cups while our server held our orders in the kitchen.

After breakfast, we found we had an appointment to tour the Air Force museum and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, so we zoomed up the turnpike to visit our niece and her husband, an Air Force Officer at the Cape.

The start of the trip home -- visiting relatives on the way.

Tour Diaries: Day 10 — South Bay to Hollywood

The last day of the tour started early as those who chose to complete the ride down the Claude Pepper Highway (route 27) prepared for what promised to be another long and busy road followed by a confusing thread through the urban milieu to the beach. The group splintered into several factions to meet schedules and different end-of-ride destinations.

Dawn on the last day of the tour, South Bay, FL

As with last night’s supper, the group commandeered the well-lit camp laundry for breakfast.

Our tour barista, CJ, fires the boiler for the morning French press coffee one last time
John and Roger prepare the morning breakfast buffet -- all leftovers, as South Bay is a "food desert" with only convenience stores.

By ones and twos, the remaining riders departed for Hollywood: Shaun first, then Chris and Lorrie, Sam, John and CJ, Bill and Karen, and, lastly, Jack. The rest of us broke camp at daybreak and went our separate ways, after making arrangements for pickup or checking routes.

Computers have become essential touring equipment, as the stragglers check on alternate arrangements.

The Bike Friday gets torn down once more and into its cases, and we head east in the car toward West Palm Beach and Highway A1A. This route is 100 miles, more than a one-day bike tour, but much more pleasant. The first 50 miles is much like the Claude Pepper Highway, but with some services in Belle Glade, then into the maze of north-south freeways and over Lake Worth to the beach. The next 50 miles along A1A was much like the first day’s ride through Miami Beach, with many high-end residences, beachfront parks, and the occasional community with restaurants and services. Through the downtown Fort Lauderdale district and past the airport, US1 was the choice for car travel, rejoining the bike route at Dania Beach.

Meanwhile, the group of riders spread out along the Florida Connector route.  CJ and John arrived at the starting point before we did in the car, having traveled only 30 miles less than we did.  Very impressive.

End of the Trail, packing the bikes for shipment.

The rest of the riders trickled in over the next couple of hours, some having been drenched by the brief but heavy afternoon downpour. Some got confused and spent a harrowing few miles on I-75 instead of the surface streets. The group further splintered as some moved on to hotels closer to the airport for early flights; one group adjourned early to dinner at the taco stand next to the hostel, and the rest of us headed for the Turkish restaurant a few blocks north on the Boardwalk.

All agreed the maps needed more detail and some route revision, in part due to poor or ineffective signage in Florida, but we all survived, though all did not complete the entire ride. All in all, for a rough ride, there were few serious problems: a series of flats, some on the keys and some on debris-strewn route 27/80; a crash on the 7-mile bridge that resulted in some road rash and a new helmet for John; heat exhaustion that dropped the tandem team; difficult food logistics, resolved in part by gaining a support vehicle; upper respiratory issues that nearly dropped Lorrie, who persevered and completed the entire ride; strong winds that sapped rider strength on long stages, effectively ending the ride a day early for some.

There were good times, tempered by inconveniences: some of the campgrounds were unsuitable for tent camping, with only hard gravel pads, but the camping hostel and church retreat grounds were great for tenting. Pushing to arrive before the heat of the day meant waiting for check-in times at both camps and hostels. Some interesting attractions were bypassed to make the requisite mileage for the day, though the layover days offering tours of the Everglades and Key West were great.

The route would be a great two-week tour with shorter ride days and more time for exploring, which would require some rerouting. Having an ad hoc support vehicle was a big plus to carry gear on long days and go the distance for food supplies. Hard-shell storage for food was important in raccoon-infested camps.

For us personally, we found the bike trails too rough to maintain a safe speed with our two-wheel trailer and long tandem, driving ourselves and our machine to the verge of breakdown. We had trained for a fully-supported ride in cooler climate, switching due to an unavoidable cancellation, and weren’t conditioned for hot weather and harsh sun.