End of the Road

It was bound to happen.  I feared it every day since the heavy rains that stopped me at Tallahassee and again at Chipley.  It was the talk in every country store.  Which roads are flooded?  Which bridges were damaged and closed?  It’s not something you call a number and learn.  No website lists the closures on the small country roads; your only information is word of mouth.  The county will close a bridge without notifying anybody in the form of detour signs.  You have seen my pictures of flooded roads for three days now, but none of them affected my travel because I either learned of closures from locals or I was lucky.  Today I was not lucky. 

When I came to this road closure and saw the river flowing over it and the bridge in bad shape in the distance, I was twenty miles out and apparently at a dead end.  I was discussing the situation with man who lives nearby and had come to see how high the water was.  “How deep do you think it is,” I asked.  He said about two feet.  “I can wade across then,” I said hopefully.  He said the water’s pretty cold.  I tested it with my hand and it was.  The air was about 45 degrees.

While we stood there at the edge of the known world, a pickup came from the other direction and started into the water.  I watched it inch along as water came up to near the tops of its tires.  I knew I had to try.  And you know that I made it when I say I’m in Pensacola writing about it.  My feet were cold, but I had dry socks to change into. 

Ever since I saw the white sand at Daytona Beach, I have seen it every day across Florida.  Here it is where rainwater moved it.  If you dig six inches into the forest soil, you hit white sand.  I must learn why it has not decomposed into soil over the thousands of years of forestation.

The pine forest extends as far as I can see from this and other high places.  Most of it is tree farms, planted and harvested after some twenty years.  Some is wild forest. 

An appropriately labeled wine at the end of a long day while relaxing in Pensacola.  

Mossy Heads

Even after two days without rain, flooding persists in the lowlands.  Many roads are still closed, but not the ones I needed for progress toward home.

Beaver Pond

Another kind of flooding is controlled by our furry friends the beavers.  They created this picturesque lake reflecting a tall pine tree just to enhance the environment and make it better for their children.  

Moss tries to grow on anything that moves slow enough for it to get started.  Two days ago I tried to convince you that it grows on my bike and that my hair is becoming mossy.  For you who thought that silly, hear is Mossy Head Park where we go to find solace among fellow mossy heads. 

On the ground grow several kinds of moss, much different from mossy headed trees.  Here are two close-ups from a walk in the woods. 

The Answer, My Friends, is Blowing in the Wind

How many miles can I ride in a day over flatland?

How many more with strong wind on my back?

How many less with wind in my face?  

The answers to all three questions are blowing in the wind.  If wind is nil then the speed I travel is my wind speed—about twelve miles per hour.  But if headwind is twelve miles per hour then my wind speed is twenty-four, if I continue at twelve, which I could not possibly maintain.  Since the force of wind varies with the cube of its speed, the force is eight times as great in such a headwind as it is with no wind.  I must gear down as if on a hill and go much slower.  Wind is not the only resistance to travel, but as headwind increases, it rapidly becomes the dominating factor.

Until today, I have seldom felt any headwind, and sometimes I felt no wind at all while traveling at twelve miles per hour—a pleasant tailwind.  Fortunately, the weather forecast for wind has been quite accurate.  It is given hourly about 24 hours in advance.  This morning it said “Wind SSW 19 mph" all day long.  Since I would be traveling west, simple vector geometry says I would receive about 70% of that wind in my face.  This is not the kind of forecast I wanted to see. 

Headwind has a demoralizing effect beyond its simple push in the wrong direction.  It weakens the spirit that slows me more than just its direct thrust.  So it was all day of riding from Chipley to DeFuniak Springs.

Yesterday’s heavy rain has left the lowland flooded with many road closures as pictured above.  It did not affect my travel, but in the café this morning, some regulars were missing as they wait for the water to subside.

Naomi came riding eastward today.  She seems traveling with less stuff than I carry, and she’s going farther.  Having started in New Orleans, she will go to the Atlantic Coast, then turn northward for Canada.  Young and traveling alone—see, I’m not the only one. 

Florida in Slow Motion

I have moved so slowly across Florida that Spanish moss has grown on the bicycle.  It flies out behind as I ride like hair in a convertible.

And the restaurant I’d hoped to enjoy waited for me so long it could wait no longer.

Perhaps that fine old country restaurant was driven to closure by this excellent café /gas station, where the old men of Grand Ridge now meet for coffee and ask a stranger on a bicycle where she started.

The roads today were mostly gentle on the mind, meaning: few cars, pleasant pastoral setting, and perfect weather.  

I met the first cross-country cyclists today, a couple from the Netherlands, retired.  She had a flat, and we set out to fix it.  The trouble was that the tire and tube were slashed about a quarter inch, apparently by glass.  No patch will cover a hole that big in a tube.  They had a spare tube, but it would bulge out the slit in the tire and ruin in no time.  It was I who have seen this kind of trouble before and pulled from my pannier a piece of an old tire, which we placed between tube and tire for reinforcement.  Mama couldn’t teach me to sew, but Daddy showed me some things. 

At the motel in Chipley this evening I noticed a strange reconfiguring of my hair.

Pleasures in Rain

Harrican River

Today was the first day of riding in the rain.  Hard rain at times, but mostly gentle and not cold, not unpleasant.  Not after an hour of learning that riding in rain is wet and wet is normal, the way life is. 

An old pickup was parked at the bridge over the Harrican River and I wondered if someone could be fishing in the rain.  It’s Saturday after all and fisherman are known for tenacity in the drowning of worms.  I stopped and looked down on the muddy water flowing past me at the pace a slow walker.  And there he was on a little island baiting a hook.

“What ya fissin’ for?” I called with an affected southern voice, trying to sound normal.

“C’fish” he said without looking at me.

“What?”

“Catfish.”

“How big do they get?” 

“Pretty big.”  He seemed bored with my query and never looked my way.  As I left him, wiping rain off my glasses with my index finger, I supposed that fishing must be his greatest joy, greater than conversation with one who might also do something for joy, even in the rain.  Perhaps he hopes for the gleam in a special someone’s eye when he lays a big catfish out for inspection.

They look like flowering trees, cherry blossoms in the springtime perhaps.  Even in the rain they are lovely.  But on close view, it’s a kind of moss, like Spanish moss, but more shapely, hanging on bare tree limbs.  

I rode into Chattahoochee, a run-down town where most of the stores on main street are vacant.  Even this cornfield on the edge of town as been left with the ears to rot.  I was happy to get into a motel, unpack and find everything that matters dry.  It’s not like this first rainy day was an experiment; I’ve hit rain many times on other bike trips.  But it’s a good feeling to know it worked again. 

I had cheese grits and baked beans with catfish for dinner and didn’t mind picking out the bones.  A man at the next table wore a shirt imprinted with “FAMU Rattlers” (Florida A&M University).  His shoulders were twice as wide as mine.  Black hair in short thin braids bristled on his dark head.  His weight must be four times mine.  “Local catfish,” he said.

Riding in the rain improves many things in life—the taste of food, the luxury of a hot shower, the comfort of sleep.  I know you all can’t enjoy these pleasures as I have.  I feel braggadocios in telling you what a pleasure this evening is, like a rich person bragging on her money.   I wish that when it rains again you could all enjoy it with me.
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Go to http://goo.gl/maps/e2fS5 for an interactive map showing the places I have slept and intend to sleep.  Thanks to Michael Angerman for preparing and updating this map.  He plans to keep it current, based on information he gleans here on the blog.

Tallahassee, a City of Hills

Lisa attends a local community college and serves coffee at the Waffle House in Tallahassee.  Her goal is to transfer to Florida State University.  (I would have walked there, showed you pictures, but it’s raining, so I’m watching HBO instead.)  She looked skeptically at me as I told of three thousand miles on a bicycle.  Maybe it’s because she saw a nondescript Pasadena person sitting at her counter, having shed spandex for a skirt, a bright yellow shirt for a lightweight and perhaps stylish top.  

Bolands Country Store in Wacissa, Fl

Tallahassee, a city of hills.  Florida is flat, right?  Wrong!  My altimeter has never risen more than 250 feet above sea level, but it drops to 40 feet, then right back up again, over and over.  Yesterday it registered 1,690 feet of vertical rise.  

Tallahassee Budget Inn

I pulled tired into the Budget Inn yesterday evening and did not ride today.  I spent twenty glorious minutes with my back to the shower’s luxurious hot water.  This morning I walked to the Waffle House and had a good, but cheap breakfast to match my good but cheap motel.  It has rained steadily for the past four hours, and I sit watching HBO and reminiscing the trip so far.  I have crossed half of Florida, and will proceed along the panhandle to Alabama.

Way Down Upon Suwannee River

Florida got its European start with Ponce de Leon when he put ashore in 1513.  He was looking for the legendary Fountain of Youth.  He didn’t find it, but found flowers like this one, and since he landed during Spain’s Feast of the Flowers (the Easter season), he named the place Florida, meaning “flowery.” 

Suwannee River

I crossed the Suwannee River well upstream from where it drains into the Gulf of Mexico.  Stephen Foster’s beloved tune is what makes it famous.  But he changed the name to Swannee because he feared people would mispronounce the “u.”  Actually, he never saw the Suwannee River.  He just needed a river with two syllables for the title.  For this he is honored in this part of the country with namesake museums, motels and restaurants.

At just twenty feet above sea level, the shores of Suwannee River reveal the foundation of the “flowery” state—its hollowed out limestone where water sinks and water rises. 

Some Spanish moss lives in pleasant surrounds where its days come and go without desire to leave.  It is particular where it lives, and pleasant surroundings govern its happiness, where it thrives in a long established home.  Other moss likes freedom from crowds and goes where the wind slides it along power lines to new and interesting places.

I am in Tallahassee and will take a day off tomorrow to see the state capital before pedaling on to Mariana, DeFuniak Springs, Milton, and Pensacola.

Florida’s Farming Midsection

I found just one small store today—no café or town—and the store did not even have coffee or a table where old men sit and welcome incoming cyclists.

“I can brew half-a-pot if you want some,” said the proprietor.

Then he surprised me with, “You’re on the Southern Tier.”  Yes I was, and he’s the first to notice.  For most of today, I followed a route mapped by Adventure Cycling Club, and had expected to find other cyclists also on the Southern Tier Route.

“I followed it about halfway from Daytona and haven’t seen a single biker.”

“There used to be more.  Guess they’re getting soft.”

“It’s winter.  Do you see more in summer?”

“Summer’s too hot.  Now’s the time we used to see them.  They all stop here.”

“I can see why.  It’s the best place in town.”

I was his only customer for half an hour, then finished a fifty-mile day in the farming and railroad town of Live Oak.  I found a second-floor room in a cheap, but adequate motel.  I have internet, heat, and a shower for thirty-five dollars.  I need no more.

Florida Underground

Under the fallen leaves, below the murky water of swamp, beneath the pure white sand seen only where plants have been removed, Florida is a block of Swiss cheese, a termite-riddled log.  Limestone bedrock has been so dissolved-away by ground water over millennia that it’s a network of branching, twisting caves and cavities.  That was book knowledge until today.

Santa Fe River

I rode only 26 miles from Gainesville to High Springs today because I wanted time for hiking into River Rise State Park.  The Santa Fe River is wide like the Colorado, big like the Rio Grande, as you see in the picture.  Yet all of its water rises from the earth, if I can believe the story.  I had to see this! 

Swamp Cypress

I hiked through forest of pine, oak, and swamp cypress toward River Rise.  Cypress trees have mysterious looking structures that grow up from their roots, a few feet away from the trunk.  Known as cypress knees, they have rounded tips.  Even after much research, scientists still debate the purpose of cypress knees.  

Where the trail had worn down to bare soil, I walked on sand, fine and white as salt.  After a mile or two, I came to what looks like a lake with a river running away from it.  A very strange sight.  The upwelling of water was so slow that I scarcely noticed it rising upward from below.  I did not go upstream, overland, for three miles to where the river drops underground, but seeing all this water rising from the earth was amazing.  Early settlers in this area were looking for a way to cross the Santa Fe River and after much trekking, found this section of dry land which utterly solved their problem. 

River Rise

Go to http://goo.gl/maps/e2fS5 for an interactive map showing the places I have slept and intend to sleep.  Thanks to Michael Angerman for preparing and updating this map.  He plans to keep it current, based on information he gleans here on the blog.

Bicycle Friendly Florida

My little friends in Gainesville

I knew from five months of research that this part of Florida claims to be bicycle friendly.  Now after two days of riding on mostly wide shoulders, lightly trafficked backroads, and even two dedicated bicycle trails, I believe that it tries very hard to entice ones like me. 

Florahome Bike Trail

In the towns, bike lanes like this one
 make riding safe,
 and drivers tend to give us plenty of room

Florahome, built in 1899, rose on a sandy hill above the swamp.  Today the swamps are drained, a railroad has come and gone, and this wide bike trail provides a safe and scenic ride. 

For the last sixteen miles of riding to Gainesville yesterday, I enjoyed the Gainesville-Hawthorne Bike Path, a Rails-to-Trails project.  With railroad abandonments over the past thirty years, comes a need to allocate those rights-of-way to worthwhile purposes.  Thankfully, many are being converted to bicycle, equestrian, and pedestrian trails, usually a combination of all three.  Here, an old railroad milepost reminds of smoke pouring from the stack of a steam engine pulling passengers and freight.  I waved to a hundred or so Gainesville day-riders out for a Saturday workout or leisurely pedal through forest and swamp. 

The bike trail meanders through pine/oak forest with Spanish moss waving in the wind from high branches.  In some places, remnants of the swamp remain, murky places I would not want to wade into. 

Today, I did not ride, but rest after the first 120 miles since Daytona Beach.  I hope to get into shape over the next few days, but for now it’s time to let the soreness wear off.  Tomorrow, I’ll ride to High Springs, followed by Live Oak, Monticello, and Tallahassee.