The Last Few Days

Day 8, September 13, 2008: We started the day at Spanish Forks, Alabama. Lawrence Bestmann fed us a great meal, provide a NetFlick movie and good sleeping conditions. Today greeted us with fairly strong winds out of the southeast. The first twenty miles or so were a real struggle due to the high winds, however, it wasn’t as hot as previous days, even though the humidity was quite high. Once we turned to the east, we had a crosswind and it was fairly nice riding. I thought a big white dog was going to take a hunk out of Jeremy’s leg. George and Dave spend a few hours at the Navy Aircraft Museum in Pensacola. Jeremy and I crossed into Florida around 3:00 p.m. Eastern time. Not sure when we will be in the Eastern time zone. Anyone doing Christmas shopping for Dave or George might consider a GPS as an appropriate gift as they have serious problem following road maps. It is estimated that we have drive over 470 extra miles looking for the right road. George and Dave have seem some interesting country and met some interesting looking for correct roads and getting directions. It was overcast most of the day and the winds never died down. The good news was no rain. We made it to Milton. Our goal for tomorrow will be ten to twenty miles past DeFuniak Springs. We are 180 miles from the home of the Florida State University.

Day Nine, September 14th: This was one of the best riding days of the entire trip, except for the heat. There was a cross wind from the gulf. For the most part the roads were smooth with great shoulders and the terrain was flat with an occasion hill or two. We made it to Chipley which was a 98 miles day. This was kind of a boring day in that nothing exciting happened or there were not any great features to observe. I did see the biggest rattlesnake I have ever seen along the road. Jeremy road right by it and didn’t even see it. Finding gas is becoming a problem. Many stations are out of gas and some only have premium gas. One station limited a purchase to just $40.

Day 10, Monday, September 15th: We left Chipley about 8:10 in the morning. The roads were good, the wind was out of the gulf again, and it was another hot day. We didn’t see George or Dave all day. A friend from Tallahassee drove out to Gretna to meet Jeremy and I. When we crossed the Apalachicola River we entered the Eastern Time zone. The hill up to Chattahoochee was the most difficult one since Texas. The love bugs are still with us, but they did disappear when we got close to Tallahassee. Fox News met Jeremy and I just outside of Tallahassee and took some video and did an interview. We missed seeing it on the news. We arrived in Tallahassee about 4:30 p.m. Coming into Tallahassee we saw signs to Jacksonville that stated it was just 170 miles to Jacksonville. The bike route map has us still going another 265 miles. We will look at making some route changes starting tomorrow.

Day 11, Tuesday, September 16, 2008: We decided to go off route today and took highway 90 right into Live Oak. It was a total distance of about 75 miles. My CatEye broke three days ago so I don’t know exactly how far we ride any more. About ten miles out of Tallahassee the love bugs were back in groves. There were also thousands of very small frogs crossing the highway at various times. The Spanish moss is still in trees along the way. Some of the trees are really beautiful. We made our goal of Live Oak today. We will take highway 90 out of Live Oak to Lake City and then catch highway 100 to Starke.