Day 20: Ichetucknee to Lake City: Into the ice wind, again

January 24, 2014

The predicted hard freeze maybe did not quite materialize again, but it was plenty cold. I went out in the late evening for a technical inspection of a tree, and came back seriously shivering. On the floor of our bar (an accustomed position for some) it was a little chilly, but we were basically ok. By the time we left in the morning, the temperature on the bike computer was 1.5 C.

Well, we didn't go in the water or even get the tee shirt, but we got this photo!

Since we are on the ACA route, we have the benefit of the ACA map for guidance. Only thing, right off the bat there are a bunch of dipsy doodles, and the street names are either impossibly small to read, or do not quite correspond to signage actually on the road. So after a while, looking at her compass, Dodie decided we must have missed a turn. She turned on the GPS, which of course warmed my heart as a GPS fan. So she said, tell it to take us to Wellborn. We searched Wellborn and got a cycle route for it. Dodie followed this for a while, and then decided she did not trust it. So we backtracked, over to the Ichetucknee Family Cabins. There, some clearly locals were loading a truck with canoes. We asked the way to Wellborn. Surprisingly they had no idea. Well, it was 40 km away. A world away, I guess, for these local folks.

A man came along who was clearly more with it. "Wellborn?", he said, "Clearly you are headed for San Diego". After that, he recited the necessary twists and turns.

In the post mortem analysis of why we needed to ask the man, I volunteered that we should have thrown up the ACA track on the GPS, rather than ask for a new route. Dodie said she assumed that that was what I was doing. I asserted she had asked for a route, not a track. Fortunately, no one was hurt during this exchange!

There are many pine plantations of various ages in this area

Our typical road for the day. It's a spacious landscape, but devoid of crops, except hay.

Almost every property here is marked No trespassing. These people, though, are a bit confused.

At 1.5 degrees and now with a stiff headwind, we needed all our layers. This actually amounts to six garments for the upper body, and three for the legs. These layers are fairly thin, so we are still quite chilly. The weak spot for me is the hands. First it's making a fist inside the glove. Then it's take off the glove and putting the hand against some skin inside the jackets. Meanwhile, of course, the hand steering the bike is chilling.

Dodie's weak spot is pedalling against the stiff breeze. So we were not making very effective forward progress, and stuck out on the road, were getting colder and colder. The surroundings were pleasant though. A broad landscape of hay fields, pine plantations, and live oak, with a fair sprinkling of horses.

This is where the Grampies match their weaknesses against their strengths. Actually, they have only one strength - pure dogged dumb determination and patience. Well, that is not quite true. There are the complementary strengths of hallucination and mental wandering. This time, our minds wandered to the beer cans, thoughtfully placed by the roadside by careless and potentially drunk drivers.

Our survey showed that there are about 30 cans per km per side. By far the most popular is Bud Light. Now we have no idea what Light means, but surmised it could be light taste, or less alcohol, or less calories. No matter which, we were glad at the prospect that the drunk drivers were drinking "Light". Even better was the #2 brand, Natural Light, which is made by Busch. This sounded really healthful, or at least "natural".

We recognized the limitations of our study. We could not tell if the thrown cans were just an unbiased representation of general preferences in this areaor if they revealed something special about drivers, or drivers so uncouth as to chuck their cans out the window. Anyway, really rational science suffers when your hands are freezing off.

Clearly the number one brand among drinking drivers

We snapped out of our reveries when we did finally hit Hwy 90, at Wellborn. At this point we could have headed for the next accommodation, which was camping at Spirit of Suwannee Park, 30 km distant. The thought of doing that, in order to camp at the predicted -6C had us turn a sharp right, and flee 15 km off route to the nearest motel. Overall, not a really commendable result for the day!

We don't care, though, because not only are we warm, but we found Gilligan's Island again on the TV!

We will soon cross the Suwannee River, made famous by the songs of Stephen Foster

Stephen Foster is still a big deal here. More on him tomorrow.

Everyone has access to grapefruit even in Canada, but these local fruits are really super quality

Gilligan's Island, more than enough reason to find a motel.

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN

Our friend Michel Fleurance in Nantes France is keeping track of where we have been, If you click on the link below, you will be taken to an entry that he made in our Guestbook, that shows an updated track. Give it a try:

CLICK HERE

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,137 km (706 miles)

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