April 4, 2015
Ft Lauderdale to West Palm Beach
With Happy's injury, we had decided to make this a short day. Plus, after two days of living it up in Ft Lauderdale, we felt we needed to recondition ourselves.
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Happy biked up from The Worthington and met me at Bob's around 9:00 AM. After our goodbyes, we continued up FL-A1A looking for breakfast, which we found at Stinger's Bar in Pompano Beach.
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FL-A1A has good bike lanes throughout this part of Florida, so the biking was pleasant and uneventful. This area has many condos and a large retirement community, so there is much demand for bike facilities in general.
At the first channel crossing, about three miles north of Stinger's near Riverside Drive, there is a very unique drawspan. It's a single-leaf bascule but on a very sharp curve and a significant superelevation. Most of the drawspans seem to be on a schedule, and we were stopped by this one just as we were approaching.
The bike lanes typically drop off at these older spans since they can't be realistically widened to accommodate them, so we gathered at the gate with a number of other cyclists at the head of the queue. Car drivers are pretty considerate, and the cyclists are given plenty of space.
When the drawspan closed and the gate went up, I experienced my first serious chain slippage. I had a very difficult time getting up the slight slope and had to restart several times. Once going, it was smooth sailing; however, this became an increasing problem at startups, especially if there was a slight grade.
As we continued north, the real estate was a mixed bag of well-to-do to nearly well-to-do. Our only "confrontation" (Happy's Devils) was through Deerfield Park, where we encountered a disproportionate number of cars taking the bike lane. Of course, we were passing through on a Saturday, and the beach is right there for drop-off and pickup, so I can see the conflict. I survived. Happy was in a tizzy. I noted to him that most of the offending parties had New Jersey plates, and that seemed to placate him enough.
After a quick ice cream in Lantana, we pushed on to West Palm Beach, where we were to meet our Warmshowers host at 7:00 at the Sports Page Bar and Grill. TIII (pronounced T3) lives in a quirky, somewhat gentrifying neighborhood with lots of food and drink choices. He arrived early and bought us a round as we chatted each other up. TIII works in a bike shop and has 20 bikes in his modest apartment. We made do (I gave Happy the cot and took the floor), and both of us had a good night's sleep.
Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 438 miles (705 km)
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