When planning the trip, I scheduled in this rest day. I like riding during a bike tour, but I also like to stop to smell the roses. When I read about folks riding 80 mile days (ha! – see this post if you don’t understand my ha!), I have a hard time understanding why they’d want to do their trip that way. Won’t they miss all of the cool sights along the way?
Anyway. To each their own on that front, but riding so many miles isn’t my preferred travel style. So even riding ~60 miles for the first three days, if they’d all gone down that way, I wanted a day of rest to putter.
But since Day 3 didn’t go according to plan (see above link), my day of rest looked a little different than I’d originally intended.
Backing up. First thing’s first. I hadn’t eaten well on Day 3, and I pushed hard. I wanted breakfast. I did some Googling, but the closest sit-down places were farther than I wanted to ride. I checked out how much a Lyft would cost. $13 one way. That was too much in my mind. So I went to closer breakfast locations just up the road a bit: McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts. At McDonald’s I got the pancake, egg, and sausage breakfast. I also got a sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffin along with a couple of apple pies. I packed up my goodies from there and then rode across the street to Dunkin Donuts to get better coffee. I sat on their patio, ate my breakfast, and journaled for a bit.
Nearby there was also a Dollar store. I knew I was going to have to clean up Socrates, so I got some supplies: a toilet brush to use as a scrubber, toothbrushes for the nooks and crannies, duct tape for a small rip in one of my panniers, kitchen towels to use as shop rags.
Riding back to the campsite I picked up dinner from Publix (a Florida chain of grocery stores): steak, shrimp, seasoning, bell pepper (that’s still in my fridge), tomato, bread, and beer.
After breakfast and errand-running, I pedaled the three miles back to camp. And, I had chores to do, which would not have been on the agenda if Day 3 had gone … differently. After the previous day’s shit-show, I had to clean up Socrates better. I had a faucet at my camp, so water was plentiful. I removed the fenders. I took the back wheel off. I scrubbed out the brake coils, which still had a lot of grunge in them. I scrubbed the cogs in the back derailleur. They’d already been squeaking, so that was overdue. There wasn’t much gunk in the cassette, which was unexpected but nice. I used my squeezie bottle time and again for pressurized water.
I repeated the scrubbing, rinsing process with the front of the bike. He looked and rode much better after his bath.
Socrates got beat up the previous day, but so did I. Between pushing through the brush and hitting my leg on my pedals as I pushed, my legs took a beating. Pictures really don’t do them justice. For awhile my entire right calf was nothing but bruises, while my left calf took less of a beathing. And of course, bruises only get more colorful before they heal. I also had a decent number of superficial lacerations on both calves as well. I’m sure anyone standing behind me looked at these wounds and thought, “Yowch.”
Oh, and I got saddle sores too. Good times.
I’m sure I took a nap after cleaning up Socrates a bit. Eventually I turned my thoughts to dinner. It had been a day or two since I’d used my camp stove and cook gear, so it felt good to use it for some real cooking.
I cooked the steak and shrimp just right. I decided I just wanted the tomato raw. It wasn’t as ripe as it led me to believe in the grocery store, but it was still a satisfying accompaniment to the rest of dinner. I had one of my McDonald’s apple pies for dessert.
I stayed at Magnolia Park in Apopka. It’s across the street from Apopka Lake. They were doing construction on the boat ramp, so I couldn’t get across to the lake. I tried to get some sunset photos, but they didn’t really come out.
Oh, and there was a weird animal sound I couldn’t place. The first night I was tired anyway, but the sound was loud. I thought it might be a bird, but it made noise all night. Maybe a loud species of frog? The answer appeared to me on my rest day.
Peacocks! And peahens. Basically a flock of them around. Multiple males and females. I’d heard peacocks before, but for some reason the sound didn’t register to me. So take your earplugs if you stay there!
At some point during the day, I posted a cycling fashion selfie to my Instagram channel. When I got home, I was looking for drawing inspiration. So I did a quick self-portrait of my selfie. I think it even actually looks like me, which is not always something that happens when I draw people! It’s a crooked, wonky drawing, but that’s Ok.
The rest day was much needed after such a wild day the day before. But it was also a day of work too. Part of me would have liked to have sight-seen in the area, so this was a different sort of day.
Just read your first 3 days. I am amazed at your fortitude and endurance. I wish I had met or seen you along the trail. Myself and 6 others just completed a different route and version of FL C2C. We started in Homasassa and rode over and back to Titusville in 6 days. Mostly roads on days 1&6, 70 miles. Stayed in hotels. Let’s talk.
Comments are closed.