Most of our neighbors in our Miami highrise are considerably younger than Al and I. We like that. They are interesting and upbeat, attractive and active. Best of all, seeing ourselves through their eyes can be instructive and amusing.
This week we decided to do a century ride all by ourselves. Well, mostly by ourselves. We used our regular Sunday group ride to Hollywood to do a quarter of the miles with a group. Then we headed north by ourselves, following A1A. Wandering through John Lloyd State Park. Gawking at the cruise ships docked at Port Everglades. Eventually we hit the road construction obstacle course that is the Fort Lauderdale airport area. Our plan had been to head north up the coast along the beaches. We spotted route 818, Griffin Road. Hmmm. Why fight the crowds and traffic along the beaches when we could head west into the quiet and quaint suburbs of Broward? It would be a lovely ride out to Southwest Ranches. Off we pedaled west. We stayed in the bike lane of 818, leaving the bike path and sleepy Orange Road to the family bike groups. When we turned around at our halfway point, we had a pleasant tailwind all the way home.
As we rode the last miles we were feeling fabulous. We'd ridden over a hundred miles, and we felt like we could go farther. We wheeled toward the entrance to our building. One of our neighbors was there. She spotted us, gave us a huge smile, and asked us where we'd ridden. We told her. "Wow. That's awesome," she chirped.
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| Photo by Brian Coomes |
And then it came. The unexpected signal that we'd somehow slipped into fresh territory. We were wearing our Everglades Bicycle Club retro cycling jerseys. "Just look at you. You guys are just so cute!"
Cute. So much for feeling awesome. Matching jerseys on a couple our age does scream cute.
Humbled, we laughed and rolled the bikes to the elevator.
