I know, I know! We’re veggies and Jon loves beans – of course we’ve got wind! But it’s not that type of wind! The wind has changed! At last weve had a couple of days where we’ve not been cycling into the wind and it’s heaven! Our average speed has gone up from 12 to 19 and we’ve been flying through the countryside really enjoying it all.
As we are out in the sticks though the local roads are all gravel and unless you want to look like a ghost from Scooby Doo after every truck passes you they’re best avoided so we’ve been stuck on the main roads and, to make matters worse we’re in a dry county! Dry? Isn’t that supposed to be those weird Islamic countries you ask? Well no, perhaps it’s own of the unifying things of evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Muslims! Actually it’s just hard liquor that they ban here, no Geneva for me tonight then! And to make matters worse there’s hardly anywhere to buy beer – the restaurants in the town we are staying don’t sell it. No wonder they are all closed by 9pm!
As many of you know, I’m not a big beer fan, but we drink endless amounts of water all day, the fizzy drinks in shops contain so much sugar we may as well take insulin with them so a beer at the end of the day is a welcome change! We’ve even tried Bud Light which we foolishly thought was alcohol free, but is just low calorie. But even in this dry county alcohol free beer doesn’t exist. And outside dry counties, given that many bars are in the middle of nowhere it’s safe to assume that drink driving does, which is worrying.
The driving standards have declined as well, but are still not too bad though but we have been blown off the road twice by slipstreams from huge lorries going way too fast ( those Aligators are getting excited!) and hooted off the road once by a lorry that just wanted us out of the way – blow your horn and keep driving seemed to be that drivers motto. But these are fortunately exceptions and we are now nearly at the top of florida and once we get to Alabama will mainly be on back roads, hopefully away from all the trucks.
With the absence of the headwind we’ve managed to put some better distances on the clock, falling 1.4km short of 100km on one day and Linda flatly refusing to ‘go around the block a couple of times’ to push us over the 100! The lure of a hot shower was simply too much – that and our legs asking for a divorce from our bodies.
At the end of the nearly 100km we checked into our first motel. An old fashioned single story motel that looked just like you’d see in a 1950’s film. It was clean, quiet and comfy and had Aircon and hot water so we were happy.
We’re now on our way to our first city – the Florida capital Talahassee where we plan to have 4 days off cycling!
Enjoy your time in Leon County. You could go to the Flying High Circus BTW … according to Tourist information. What about the famous Tallahasse Bridge immortalised in song, that’s famous?
Leon..we need you here as our tour guide ??