Tonight is laundry night at the Travel Lodge in Key West. This means that, after days of riding, the tub in my room is filled with water, shampoo, and dirty, really stinky clothes. Especially my socks.
My body is a weird mess of patterns and shapes too. Sunburn has made itself manifest on the tip of my nose, and created pointillist patterns on my arms and forearms, courtesy of the mesh section in my riding body-armor. My hands have not escaped, and the now-traditional brown triangles, where my riding gloves adjust for fit, have appeared on my wrists, at the base of my thumbs. But sunburn is not my only plague. For the first time ever, since I started riding, a blister has now appeared where, as my mother and grandmother used to say, my back looses its chaste name. Well, actually a bit further down, but lets leave it at that, before its all TMI.
The morning started at Hillsborough State Park. Talk about a tropical climate. The humidity was everywhere. Everything that I left outside was moist. Not the type of dew moisture I see in Texas, but rather the warm, penetrating moisture and humidity of the tropics. The kind of stuff I used to see in Guatemala, or the Amazon.
After a quick cup of espresso, prepared on my camping stove, and a granola bar, it was off to the road. I rode for a few miles, enjoying the greenery and the sun. Then, patterns of the previous days started emerging again. Endless urban development, traffic lights, and anonymizing chain stores. I did enjoy some views of the ocean, and continued to marvel at the amazing water way development of the region, but it is clear that here, and probably other places too, coastal riding off the interstate is not paying off.
Things did pick up though, as I finally veered East, south of Naples, and through the Northern part of the Everglades. I had forgotten how much I love mangroves, with their aerial roots, like stilts holding up the trunks in a rich underwater habitats, which is one of the richest in the world.
Bromeliads competed for space on cypress branches, and king fishers, Martin Pescador in Guatemala, watched attentively to water under them. But the price had to go the anhinga, which, with its wings spread wide, sat perfectly still on a tree.
As I was reaching the Eastern edge of the Everglades, I glanced south, only to see the graphite-like clouds, waiting for me to head in their direction. As I did so, I could feel the air temperature change change, and the wind starting to hit me from the right. I tried to think that maybe I would be able to miss this one, and turned my attention to the various road side fruit vendors who advertised treasures from my childhood. Mangos and mamey were enticing offers, but another slap of cold air made me refocus. Soon it was time to get the rain suit out, and shortly there after a steady rain came down.
The rain stayed with me until I reached Homestead, just before I turned south onto Dixie Highway. As I reached the continental coast I realized that I had over 120 miles more to go. These would be drawn over the endless chain of narrow land formations, the Florida Keys. Names like Key Largo, Duck Key, No Name Key, and Long Key (Key Largo in English but not the same one) all flowed by, but at agonizingly slow speed. However, especially important was Isla Morada, as I think this would be the place Sandra would retire too, if she ever get another purple RAV.
After putting behind me over 1,500 miles, combined. I finally made it to my hotel in Key West. It does blow my mind when I think that right now, I am less than 4 hours by air of the upper Amazon turns from its south to north flow in Peru, and starts its eastward flow.
When you are on the road for too long, you think silly stuff, so I leave you with a couple of things that came through my mind today. There is a guy here in Florida that must have been really good, a hero, or very rich. Streets, parks and hospitals are named after him. And so famous is he that they only use his first name. It is Manatee. [ha, ha]
But there were a couple of note worthy billboards too. One that showed a bicycle upside down, and read “To find out how long the wait at the ER is, just text to this #”. Or the stack of businesses at a strip mall that showed “Crematory”, on top of the All State sign. You are in good hands today.