January 16, 2020
Day 1 Turns into Local Biking
Venice Trails, Manasota Key, Casey Key are nice substitutes for roads to Arcadia
Chris decided that his gluteus maximus wasn't up to any ridus maximus, so instead of day 1 being the planned 65 mile ride from Venice to Arcadia FL, across Day -1, Day 0 and Day 1 we did a series of local 20 - 30 mile rides around Venice, which has a a great mix of off-road paved trails, signed bike lanes, sharrows and big shoulders. Carole rode with us as we circled Venice Island on the Venice Island loop, Chris and I did a 23 miler up to Casey Key and back, and I did a 34 mile loop out to Manasota Key and back. The 7 mile stretch of Canopy Road between Stump Pass (say that fast) and Manasota Key is awesome.
On actual Day 1, Chris had pedicab volunteer duty at a community center right off the Venice Legacy trail, so I met him there at the end of his shift.
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We then headed north on the Legacy Trail where a couple of biker/pedestrian bridges had been built to cross busy roads and gave me the most elevation of just about any ride in Florida.
At the northern end of the trail, we headed east on surface roads until we reached the "wilderness" - on the map below, you can see where the background changes from populated light background to rural green. I'd be biking through a lot of that in the next few days.
Today's ride: 79 miles (127 km)
Total: 79 miles (127 km)
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