A Sunday Ride to the Beach (Peacock Included)

My mountain bike won't be used again until we tour.

I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of the beach. We get enough sun time while we're out on the bikes.

But Miami is the first place we've lived where the beach is a possible bike ride destination. You can ride there, have a snack or a picnic, then ride home. We have a wide selection of beaches, too. Today we picked Crandon Park out the Rickenbacker on Key Biscayne. At 880 acres, Crandon is a fair size city park, and the park is mostly one very long beach. The nice part for us is that Crandon lets us do our regular daily ride to the Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park lighthouse, wander around Key Biscayne, then take the Key Biscayne bike path into Crandon.

Today we had an obstacle on the bike path that was a first for us. A peacock. He owned his spot on the path, and he had no intention of moving. Joggers and other bikers wove around him. I decided I wanted to see what he would do if I just very, very slowly edged toward him on the bike. OK, what this bird did was squawk, turn his back to me, and do the tail display thing. Move? No. Now that is a peacock with attitude.

It's his spot on the path, and he's not going to move.

He didn't move when we got right next to him, he just showed tail and attitude.

This is our last ride on the mountain bikes for a couple of weeks. Al has been eager to start regular club rides with an Everglades Bicycle Club group. We're thinking of one of the Saturday morning rides beginning next Saturday. We haven't done club rides in a decade. We'll be on our road bikes, of course. Some people can move back and forth between their bikes at will. Me? I need a day or two to adjust. Each bike uses the body a bit differently, and I need a ride or two to get comfy.

Al spent the late morning doing maintenance on the road bikes. I reattached the gear bags. Tomorrow I'll give the mountain bikes a good wash. We'll break them out again in a few weeks when we take our first short tour.

Postscript: We diverted our routes on our next two rides to check out a hunch about the bike lane peacock. Sure enough, on both subsequent rides, the same peacock was in the same spot with the same attitude. We even did a quick run-by of several of the other peacocks to check if, perhaps, it was another of the peacocks. Nope, it was the same one, a funny feather in the tail was a dead give away. I love this bird!

The Tour de Puddles

We drank our pre-dawn coffee on our balcony watching rain and flashing lighting. The cat was annoyed because the rain had wet the edge of the balcony where she likes to sit, sticking her head through spaces in the guardrails to check out the balconies above and below. By the time we finished breakfast the rain had stopped. By the time it was fully light, the sky was clearing.

We rolled our bikes to the elevator around 7:45 for our daily ride. It was going to be a Lazy Loop day. We seldom eat fried foods, so yesterday's conch fritters were still with us. (Burp.) A long hard ride in today's high humidity following the morning thunderstorm...well, that was just not going to happen...

Even a lazy ride felt good. We did do the bridge at our usual pace. Climbing is just too much fun to pass up, even when you're belching fritters and fries.

Most of the ride I was laughing at Al's hand gestures, warning me at the approach to every significant puddle and splash zone. When we come back from rides on days like this, his bike is shiny and clean. Mine? Well, it needs a serious wash up. He has great expectations that I may, just may, improve and be neater given enough coaching...

At the park, an immature brown pelican shared our cozy fishing dock, eyeing us speculatively as we munched our bananas.

Alabama Jack's

We'd done a week of daily rides. We got to our target mileage. It was time to take a rest day.

Our car gathering dust in our building's parking garage.

Last month the car was only used to visit doctors and medical facilities. This month it has sat idle so far, just gathering dust in the garage. We were drooling for a nice lunch out. A lunch of conch fitters with a squeeze of fresh lime slice and red cocktail sauce. For that there is only one place to go. The best conch fritters in the upper Keys are at Alabama Jack's, a fish joint on Card Sound Road just north of Key Largo. We decided to drive down there for lunch. While we were near Key Largo, we could visit two hotels and decide which we wanted to use as our Key Largo overnight stop for bike trips.

Key Largo is about a metric century (62 miles) from our Miami home. To get there, we roll our bikes out of our building and get on the East Coast Greenway route heading south. This is one of the really neat things about our home: it is actually right on the East Coast Greenway route through Miami. I wanted to go there by bike for an overnight this week or next, but Jiminy Cricket (AKA Al) says no touring (not even one this short) until at least a full 10 weeks have passed since the Incredibly Stupid Bike Crash Incident. That means it'll be a couple of weeks more.

Today I'll settle for a car ride and conch fritters at Alabama Jack's...

Alabama Jack's is part biker bar, part old school fish house.

The restaurant and bar are on the covered deck next to the water. No screening or glass. The birds fly right through the place. You can throw crumbs from your plate to the fish in the water below, then watch them snap them up.

If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.

I'm certain there are couples who face unpleasant tasks with calm, charm, and a cooperative spirit. Al and I are not like that. We bicker and snarl, glare and mutter, and swear and sputter. This morning we rolled the bikes down to the elevators earlier than usual. It was a glorious morning, and we were both busy talking about where we wanted to ride, how many times over the bridge, and how many miles. We were at the street when we noticed. My rear tire was flat.

Al began practicing colorful language. Al hates fixing flats, and since the flat was on my bike, I was obviously at fault. We've been a couple for a good many decades. When adversity confronts, when tempers are short, there is only one sensible tactic: silence. After all, there isn't anything to discuss. After the first few years of living together you realize that there is just no high road, no right way to handle things. Handle what needs to be handled and move on. As quickly as possible.

In no time we were all fixed and back on the road.  We're doing about 3/4 of our normal daily mileage this week. We're working on setting up a basic 40 mile route for our daily ride. The Rickenbacker with the bridge to Virginia Key and the loop through Key Biscayne is where we're laying it out. The only real question now is how many bridge repeats we want included with the miles. I'm voting for four.

Today we were mellowed out by the time we got to the lighthouse. The houses of Stiltsville seemed closer than usual. We ate a couple of bananas while watching the houses off on the horizon. The flat tire was forgotten. We were in good spirits again. The day was glorious. The exertion of the ride felt wonderful.

It was time for a chocolate chunk cookie and espresso. That's something we can agree on and both be right.

A Saturday Tour de Rickenbacker-Key Biscayne (Come One Come All)

You've got to love the Rickenbacker on weekends. If you're alive in Miami and own a bike, the Rickenbacker seems to be where you go on weekends. The sheer number of cyclists of all ages and abilities is amazing. Has anyone ever done a head count of their numbers?

We got up and did chores early, eager to be done with work and out on the bikes. By 8 o'clock we were out the door, rolling the bikes to the elevator. It was a fabulous morning. Warm and humid, but breezy. It's a surprise how much less sweaty bike riding is here than at our old Florida home. There is always an ocean breeze here, and the ocean keeps temperatures a bit cooler than those we were used to in Florida's interior.

There were lots of groups of brightly patterned lycra clad riders on skinny tired road bikes. Unlike weekday mornings, all levels and types of riders were in evidence. We were amused at the ones that drove their cars over the bridge to Virginia Key before parking and unpacking their bikes.

We rode to Key Biscayne and into Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. We looped the state park's perimeter on the unpaved path beside the seawall. Lots of fishermen. Families were staking out picnic tables for gatherings, and parents were shepherding their flocks of kids on bikes around the park's quiet trails. The state park is a pocket of quiet in urban Miami. Birds twitter. Waves lap the shore. Palm fronds flutter and whisper.

We left the park, looping a route through the back streets of Key Biscayne before heading back to the Rickenbacker. Mansion building is alive and well here. Some are boring and pretentious, but there are some beauties, too. We did a lot of meandering, finally arriving home about three hours after we had left.

Our ride mileage is inching upward, but (more importantly) we're moving along at a more normal touring speed. Which for us means fast enough for us to do touring mileage, but with no worries if there are lots of stops or slow-downs to take in sights, enjoy the day, and savor the ambiance of the area.

A family group on their bikes in the state park pass a group of fishermen.

Pelicans fly in formation behind a boat. Stiltsville is in the distance.

Riders stopping for coffee at one of Key Biscayne's cafes. Riders give the local coffee spots a lot of business. 

Once Again Over the Hill

The day started out refreshingly cool but with lots of sunshine. Sunshine! It's been raining a lot here, and sunshine is definitely better. We headed to the Rickenbacker.

Our rides are moving up a notch in intensity and length. Still no chasing roadies. Which was a good thing early on Friday morning on the Rickenbacker. These roadies are all young, fit, and fast. (Couldn't catch them on my mountain bike without extreme stealth and cunning even if I wanted to!)

At any rate, the point of today's ride was to do the bridge to Virginia Key with something that approached our old level of intensity. Which we did, and it was immense fun. (Next we will add loops of the bridge to our total route. I'm looking forward to that.)

We rode to the end of Key Biscayne and into the state park. We rambled down the perimeter's unpaved path which had small ponds of water at regular intervals thanks to the recent rains. We shared the dry strips with the early morning joggers.

It was a great ride. In a week more of rides like this one, we will notch things up to prepare for metric centuries and touring. I'm getting a yen to ride in the Keys again.

The lighthouse at the end of Key Biscayne.

Less is More: April Car Use

We put 161 miles on the car this month. This is in contrast to our old place in the boonies where we used to put on more than that for one round-trip to a doctor visit or shopping. This city living is sweet.

Starting this month we plan to do a couple of one-day out-of-town bike trips. We'll use the car for those, but it looks like the car will sit in the garage most days. Change has come fast. We no longer use it at all for shopping or most local errands.