Marathon to Key West

March 27, 2015

Seven Mile Bridge. Sounds intimidating. Not really. It's actually only 6-1/2 miles long. Happy says so. That led to an interesting discussion, which will not be repeated here. I'm a bridge engineer, after all.

Today's ride to Key West

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So this crossing excited me on many levels.

Second, it parallels much of the original Flagler railroad bridge, now converted into a pedestrian and bicycle path. And you can see the former channel where there must have been a movable span of some sort at one time. Of maybe not, and they just opened it up for today's vessels.

And there is this mysterious island.

Mystery Island. Of course, I could have chosen that bridge instead and mystery resolved, but I didn't.

Like, who would want to live there? That's a hellacious commute. And then there was the wind. Lots of wind. This is something we experienced all day. I mean ALL DAY. It was relentless and worse at the channel crossings.

I took this picture not because I am patriotic but to demonstrate the amount of wind we were dealing with. All right in our face.

We finally arrived on the other side of Little Duck Key and took a break!

Little Duck Key. Would have been nice to get further out of traffic but after seven miles (OK, 6-1/2), I was used to it.

I had to jump the guardrail to go back and look at the plaque (only on the south approach that I could tell).

That was the climax of the day. Not that the remainder isn't beautiful and inspiring, but for me, that was drama!

And just fun vistas. That red shirt means it was a hot day. That is my lightest jersey.

But the wind was really tiring, and the entry into Key West was not very inspiring. You really need to ride through a lot of crap (strip malls and bad development) to get to the nicer parts of town. I almost didn't but then decided that I had to go to the zero mile marker. Especially given that the turn to my guesthouse was a little past the one-mile marker.

Afterward I slowly made my way to the Heron House Court, our lodging for the next two nights/days.

And where I met Roman. More on that tomorrow.

Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km)
Total: 218 miles (351 km)

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