Day 25: Arcadia to Bartow

February 27, 2015

The predicted head wind put in its predicted appearance. It was too bad, because the road is flat and straight and otherwise would have made for quick, if boring, riding. So we have spent the morning instead with slow and boring riding. I am "parked" just now in front of the Dollar General in Zolfo Springs. Dodie had gone in to buy some more hot chocolate powder. oops, she just came out, more later...

We passed the bones of some sort of largish road kill, and this reminded me of an old joke. I began by calling to Dodie "Did you see those bones?". "No", she replied, "I'm not genetically programmed to look for phones". "Not phones - BONES, I shouted, over the traffic noise". "Ok, I have no idea what you are talking about", she concluded. So this made it hard to move on to recalling the old joke. The joke is best as a cartoon. Here it would show a smug, lycra clad cyclist addressing this comment to the pile of bones: "This headwind being blowing long?" Ok, maybe Dodie was lucky to have missed it.

There is not really much further to report. We cycled open road with heavy traffic, and passed through the nondescript towns of Wauchula, Bowling Green, and Fort Meade. In all cases, the paved shoulder we used between towns would disappear in the town, putting us on the sidewalk as soon as one appeared. Of all the towns, Bartow was the slowest to produce a sidewalk, offering only a "Cyclist Share the Road" sign. Yeah, sure.

Bartow, however did have one zippy thing to show. That was a citrus processing plant where you could see truckloads of oranges and grapefruits being dumped into some sort of vertical sorting apparatus. This was about as much citrus in one place as we have ever seen.

After three very long days, we are looking forward to reaching the Teco-Auburndale and Van Fleet trails tomorrow. We will look for a wild camp on the Van Fleet, which could mean that we will be able to stop closer to when we are actually tired, as opposed to trying to make it to a certain motel or campground. We have also had enough of heavy truck traffic for a while. So, yeah!

p.s. Live Long, and Prosper

To Leonard Nimoy, from the Space Station

Almost our typical road for today. To be more typical you would have to add in crazy fast traffic riding down that white line.

There is not much wildlife to be seen in this region, but here was a lone woodstork. We noticed that he kicked up the bottom with his foot while probing with his bill.

A quite constant companion over the past three days has been the heady scent of orange blossoms. It confused us, because the trees are full of mature fruit. Still, the photo shows that blossoms and mature fruit coexist on the same tree.

Here is our first live armadillo of this trip. He was standing still when we found him, but he took of at a rate that we did not know armadillos could do! Strangely, he also paused before disappearing into the bushes to rollin the grass, tummy in the air.

Historic downtown Fort Meade - but we could not figure out what makes it special.

Clearly the trucks did not throw all the grapefruit to us by the roadside.

The citrus sorting/processing plant in Bartow

Dodie is contemplating exactly what part of this road is supposed to be shareable.

Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 1,300 km (807 miles)

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