Day 18 – In The Trenches

Friday, November 7th

Titusville, FL

We took it easy this morning.  We went for a ride around 8:30 to scope out the venue for my seminar.  The ride down 405 to the Police Hall of Fame was stressful, but it was good that we found out the distance was too far and too dangerous to attempt alone or in the dark.  From there, we rode North on Hwy 1 through Titusville.  We didn’t find anything interesting, so we decided to head back to the motel over the little neighborhood roads.  Here are pictures of our favorite findings:

Though we were trying to avoid it, we accidentally ended up on 405 again and the cars harassed us all the way.  At one point, we tried to ride on a nice, wide bike path that appeared next to the road, but soon it narrowed and made two tight turns without warning, leading us away from the road. Since there was readily available exit from the path except to walk the bikes over the wide stretch of grass (and who knows what else) to the road, we slowed and continued on.  Then the path got worse.  We gave up and walked the bikes back to the road, then about a block down, the path went back to being a nicely paved, wide bike path.  We were a little flustered with the inconsistency, but jumped back on the path at the next entrance, only to see it disappear entirely two lights down.  We should have stayed on the road. 405 took us to a Target near the motel, where I went in to get food and supplies while Dad watched the bikes.  We talked to a young guy interested in the ebike for a bit, then had to hustle back to the hotel to reserve our room for the next few nights before checkout time.

With time to kill before my 3-day seminar started, we sat out by the pool. (We tried swimming, but the water was freezing and the wind was too brisk).  Lunch of sandwiches, pickles, peaches, mandarin oranges, and fig newtons followed, then we spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV and working on the computer until I had to leave for the seminar.

Since Titusville is such a rough place to ride.  It looks like we won’t be doing any riding the next few days.