I have some pretty vivid memories of our first bike rides in the Naples and Marco Island area. It was years ago, and the biking was truly awful. Through roads were rare to nonexistent. Roads all seemed to lead you into high-speed highways with absolutely no shoulders. On a 1-to-10 scale where 1 was a "road" where your bike constantly sinks to its drivetrain in loose sand (definitely not the "hardpack" promised by the map), the roads in the Naples area back then might (might) get a 2.5 rating from me. Like I said: awful.
Things have changed. There are nice paved shoulders. Many of these are wide enough to be clearly marked as bike lanes. There's a multi-path that goes east, too. It has gaps, but then there's that bike lane to move to. In fact, as long as you are comfortable with riding in a bike lane next to fast-moving traffic, you can easily ride from Naples or Marco Island to Chokoloskee. OK, so we could definitely think about a short road trip to Naples sometime. You can ride a bike here without feeling like a kamikaze.
Our new car's many safety features did their thing on the drive home. Cameras turned on and off, warning chimes softly warned you periodically to pay attention, and a couple of times the car automatically braked when someone cut in front of us too closely.
I want a device on my bike that sounds an air horn at cars that pass too close to me on the road. Actually, in the perfect world of my dreams, I'd rather have a lot of cops out there ticketing guys who don't respect cyclists!
