Day 21 – Crossing the Void
Monday, November 10th
Titusville, FL to Plant City, FL (without touching Orlando)
(Too tired to write this after our ride, I’m writing it the day after.)
We woke up early Monday morning knowing we had a lot of distance to cover. The (martial arts) seminar had left my body beaten and bruised and my muscles were so stiff that Dad had to help me walk to dinner Sunday night. A night’s rest hadn’t helped much: getting out of bed took time, eating instant oatmeal took concentration, packing up my gear took ages, walking to the front desk to check out took assistance, and getting on the bike took multiple tries since I couldn’t lift my leg high enough to clear the frame. That said, once I was on the bike and ready to go, I could relax. I held onto the grips with all my strength, but the rest of my body just melted into the reclining seat. From there, all I needed to do was pick up my knees one at a time and be careful not to run into anything. The bike would do the rest.
Since we started out early, we only ran into a little morning traffic going through Titusville. We took 50 East and picked up US 1 heading South. Having given up on our Garmin GPS (what a nightmare) we were on our own to catch our turns. We had drawn up a route and printed some maps off Google Maps, but the scale wasn’t printed on the map, so we were guessing on the distances. We missed our turn to get of Hwy 1 by a few seconds and had to circle back around, but eventually we got on SR 524 and took it to SR 520.
520 heads West, then veers Northwest to hit Orlando. Not wanting to get into that mess, the plan was to turn off 520 onto Nova Rd, which heads South then West toward St. Cloud. On our map, the road is just marked as Nova Rd, but it also goes by CR 532 (which we didn’t find out until later). Needless to say, since there was no sign for Nova Rd, we missed our turn and went about 7 miles out of the way before we realized we had definitely gone to far. We pulled out the computer and looked at the original MapSource maps we installed for use with the GPS (though we never actually got the two to sync) and it had the country road number for Nova Rd. So we ate some crackers, walked the bikes over the median and headed back East until we finally found CR 532. Dad likes to call the extra 14 miles we went out of our way bonus miles.
Nova Rd/CR 532 was a fantastic road, and one of the few that crosses central Florida (seriously, check it out on the map: draw an imaginary line from Cocoa, FL to St. Cloud, FL and you’ll cross CR 532). There’s almost no signs of humans along this road: absolutely no businesses, a few driveways, an intersecting road or two, and hardly any cars. It did, however, pass over and around several marshes and attracted countless birds of all different kinds. And helicopters. We saw five helicopters (four flying in formation) following the path of the road. It was weird.
Aside: Just now, while looking up the county road number for Nova Rd, I found this webpage. Go ahead, follow the link. Yeah, that’s an account of a bigfoot sighting. BFRO evidently stands for Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Apparently, while I was watching the roadside, looking out for alligators, I should have been watching the woods, looking out for Bigfoot. Maybe that’s what all the helicopters were looking for…
Nova Rd was a dream ride, peaceful and pleasant, but having had so little for breakfast I began running low on fuel about halfway down this road. I was trying to hold out for civilization, but about five miles from the end of the road I bonked. I waved to Dad and pulled off the road onto the grass. I could barely get off the bike, still sore from the weekend’s seminar, but I stumbled off, parked the bike and sat down, discouraged, desperate and unable to go further. Dad swung back around, figured out what was wrong and got me something to eat and drink (water, tuna fish, Fig Newtons, etc). We relaxed in the grass as I recovered from the 60 miles we had already covered.
Feeling better, I hobbled back on the bike and we rode the rest of the way down SR 532 to 192 where we stopped at a gas station for a bathroom break. I thought long and hard on whether I should blog this, but it’s such a distinct example of the state my muscles were in after this seminar that I have to share it: for the first time in my life, I had to use the handicap bar to help myself off the toilet.
We bought a Dr Pepper and a Reeses to split, then rolled onto US 192 which took us through St. Cloud and into Kissimmee. While Kissimmee always sounded like a nice place to visit, it was barely noon – too early to stop for the day and too late to stop for fun – so we forged on and took US 92/US 17 out of town.
This route took us through Intercession City, Davenport, and Haines City where the next major intersection, US 92/US 17 and SR 17, confused us for a bit (“17 South is this way. No, wait, 17 South is this way. No, wait. What are we looking for?”). Ever the opportunists, we used our befuddlement as an excuse to stop, rest, eat and think. The Chevron station had tables inside, so we bought Fig Newtons and a Dr Pepper and ate some vacuum packed tuna fish we carried with us. The table behind us was occupied by four teenage girls with very dramatic lives, and we were privileged enough to hear all the details as we ate. I’m so thankful that I only have to worry about water to drink, food to eat, cars to dodge and shelter for the night. I am truly blessed with this life.
After a whole morning of relatively flat roads and a half hour of resting, SR 17 was painful on our cold legs. It trundled over one big hill after another. We did have the pleasure of passing a few citrus packing and distribution plants. One even had a huge conveyor belt that carried the oranges out of the factor, through the open air an into giant crates waiting to be shipped out. The falling fruits flushed the air with the uplifting scent of citric acid. SR 17 eventually dropped us into Dundee where we turned West on SR 542. A few blocks down the new road, stopped and starting at a red light, a pop and a hiss commanded our attention as Dad’s front tire deflated. We pulled off just as the light turned green and while Dad patched the tube and tire (both sliced by a piece of glass) I checked our route. We planned to take 570 around Lakeland, but Google Maps hadn’t mentioned 570 was a toll road, so I picked a new route and we got on our way.
After some wandering roads and missed turns, we lost our route while passing through Winter Haven. Stuck on a two lane road leading around a lake, we began to back traffic up. We pedaled as fast as we could, but with no turn offs (short of coming to a complete stop in the lane to jump the curb or to wait for a left turn opportunity) there was little we could do. A guy in a truck who probably saw the traffic and took some back roads trying to beat us around the lake was coming up to a stop sign when we passed. He yelled to us, “Get off the ******* road you ******* ******s!” Dad, much quicker on the draw than I, said in a cheerful voice, “After you!”
We pushed into Lakeland as rush hour traffic was gathering. To avoid the the congestion of the major roads and the disorientation in the smaller ones, we meandered down Main St until it linked up with US 92 on the West side of Lakeland. The turn from Main St to the access for 92 took us through several lanes under construction and when my bike’s handling got slippery, I yelled to Dad, “Is something wrong with my back tire?” Turns out it was going flat. We pulled into the parking lot of the Budget Motel and asked about a room. They didn’t have internet access and we really needed to review our route, so Dad rode down the street to scout for other motels while I called my sister for research support. She told me of a Days Inn about 10 miles away which had free WiFi, so I got directions and began heading in the direction of Dad’s departure. While waiting for Dad to return, a guy with a big truck pulled up and offered me a ride. It took a few repetitions to explain to him that I was waiting on someone and wanted to be near where they left me when they returned. He drove off and seconds later, Dad rode up. So much for a free ride.
The sun had set, but he patched the tube (I had run over thorns somewhere) and we brought out the head and tail lights. Our night ride wasn’t nearly as frightening this time as it had been coming into Mobile. There was plenty of room on the 2-lane, well-maintained road and the air had just a slight chill. Plus, we were easy to see and easy to avoid by the few cars that passed us. The only incident involved a truck pulling a trailer which nearly clipped Dad. Approaching a railroad crossing, we had to pull further into the road as the shoulder disappeared. We had been riding the white line, but needed the extra room to the right when the shoulder was cut off. We both signaled, but either the driver wasn’t paying attention or couldn’t see our arms signaling our change in position.
Anyway, we made it to the Days Inn without further problems and after we checked in, Dad noticed his day’s odometer read 149.6 miles.
“I’m going to have to do something about this,” he said pointing to the reading. “we can take you to the room and then i think I’ll scoot down the road a bit to finish off this 150 miles”. He looked at mine and said, “You only have 3 miles left to 150.” Not wanting to miss out on what might have been my only chance at a century and a half in a day, I asked, “Can I go too?” So we took off down the 2-way access road into the night.
Soon, I heard a hoot as Dad rolled over 150 miles and about a mile from the motel we came to an intersection with a Denny’s, a Burger King a Subway and an Arby’s. For some reason, roast beef sounded really really good.
“Welcome to Arby’s!”, “Welcome to Arby’s”, “Welcome to Arby’s!” (Evidently it’s company policy for any employee with line of sight to greet entering customers.) We downed a “5 for 5″ (five Arby’s Melts for $5), an orange creme shake and two ice teas. Not our healthiest dinner, but so very tasty. The resulting sugar rush, propelled us back and forth along the access road until I gleefully topped 150 miles (using only 8.0 Watt hrs per mile, for those of you who were wondering). Phew! What a long day.
Today’s Quick Stats:
Bike Distance (mi) Average Speed (mph) Trip Odometer
MiniWini 150.42 17.6 1624.7
Sti(ck/g) 153.19 17.6 –
Stampedes: 2
Roadside Pees: 1