September 11, 2016
In Google we trust
Day 103 - Team A - 79 miles.
Team A started making their way back to South Florida. Our first destination was our friend Pam's house in Clearwater. Clearwater is in the Tampa St Petersburg metro area, so we were expecting some heavy traffic and urban roads. We didn't have a meticulously planned route from Jeanna, we just stuck our target address into Google maps and let it pick a route. At least it was a Sunday, so even a bad route should be manageable.
We left Crystal River by 7:00 and soon ran into some dense fog.
We were pleased when our Google route took us onto the Suncoast trail. The trail had lots of cyclists on it, mostly triathletes and road bike hammerheads. It may be popular with this crowd because it has smooth pavement and long stretches without road crossings, so bikers can cruise along at high speeds.
About 7 miles from the end of the Suncoast trail our route took us onto another bike trail through the Jay B Starkey wilderness park. I have ridden the Suncoast trail before, but the park trail was a new and unexpected treat. There were even more cyclists on the park trail, this time much more casual riders on mountain bikes.
My favorite part of the Starkey park trail was a set of signs along the trail. The first sign said "Pluto" and had a bunch of information about the planet (I still think Pluto is a real planet, Pluto haters please don't tell me it's just a dwarf planet). About half a mile later was a sign for Neptune. The sign for Uranus was slightly closer, and I realized the signs were spaced according to the planets distance from the Sun. By the time we got to the 4 inner planets the signs were only a few feet apart from each other. It was a great way to appreciate the scale of the solar system.
By the time we exited Starkey park, we had covered 60 miles, almost all of it on bike trails and lightly traveled roads. We then had a few miles of more urban riding to deal with, and by then it was getting hot. But fairly soon our route took us onto a third trail, the Pinellas trail, which is heavily used by cyclists and pedestrians. All in all Google maps did a great job picking a bike friendly route for us.
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By the time we got to Pam's house it was in the 90s. Luckily, she knew of a place where we could cool off.
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