Tri-Rail and Short Bicycle Road Trips

We are bicycle tourists at heart. We love bicycle road trips. But why wait to do some grand bicycle tour when you can do a short bicycle road trip? Out and back home in 48 hours or less. Why load your bike with panniers and gear when a small backpack or a big rear seat bag will be enough for a quick overnight trip?

We do credit card bicycle touring. That simply means we roll our bikes into a motel and check in. You carry only what you absolutely need to have. (For heaven's sake, in Florida you can get away with beach clothes and a toothbrush.) It's an easy and comfortable way to do bicycle travel. The secret to doing bicycle road trips when you live in a city is leapfrogging out of the city using available transit systems. After all, the city is where you ride all the time. Why spend part of your fun bicycle tour riding one of your regular routes?

Tri-Rail is a commuter railroad that runs between West Palm Beach and Miami. It connects to Miami-Dade's MetroRail rapid transit system. Bicycles are welcome. Just bring a bungee cord to secure your bike in the bicycle area of the passenger car while you ride nearby in air-conditioned comfort.

We use Miami-Dade's MetroRail all the time. But Tri-Rail was new to us. We decided to change that. Recently we took the MetroRail green line up to Tri-Rail station. This, if you can't guess from its name, is the station that's the transfer point from the MetroRail system to the Tri-Rail system. At the ticket office there we purchased Tri-Rail cards. These cost just $2, are the size of a credit card, and are emblazoned with your picture. (And, yes, like driver's license pictures these photos are always humiliatingly ugly.) You can just buy paper tickets to ride Tri-Rail, of course, but we're big believers in the convenience of using little plastic cards. No worrying about having the right money on you. Just load the money amount you'll need onto the cards with a phone call a few days before your trip, and you're set to travel. Then you simply go to the little machine on the platform of your starting point and tap your card on it. When you get off the train you tap your card again on the machine on that platform. What could be easier? Need more money on the card for another trip? Just call and add put more money on the card.

We've used the Tri-Rail once now with our bikes. It was great. Points north of West Palm Beach are now in reach for a short overnight bike tour!

Excellent.

After all, tomorrow is another day. (Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind)

If you live an average life, it is a statistical reality that some weeks will be bad. Things go wrong. Problems come up that you can't solve. Things happen that you can't control.

You need a way to cope. Us? We ride our bikes.

First, there is the calming ritual of getting ready for a long ride. Decide on a destination. Check the tires. Fill water bottles. Pack snacks. Apply sunscreen. Put on riding clothes. Grab your helmet. Roll the bikes to the street. Warm up at a gentle pace for a mile or so.

Then you up the speed and get into the ride.

In the beginning your mind slides to the problems of the day. You ride a while. The routine of scanning traffic, checking your mirror, shifting gears, and monitoring your exertion slowly consumes your attention. Problems and worries are pushed into a back corner of the mind. Soon you find yourself lost in the rhythm of riding. Muscles tight from unproductive tension begin to move smoothly. You shift your weight as you corner, again as you accelerate. You feel your muscles work, your heart rate increase, your breathing become deeper. You feel sweat on your skin and wind in your face.

Somewhere miles into the ride, you feel as if your bicycle is simply an extension of you. Your body and mind shift into overdrive. You cruise along at a pace you can sustain for miles and miles, hours and hours. Your mind is fully occupied with the wondrous exertion of the ride.

Arriving home, there are the post-ride rituals. Showering. Enjoying the post-ride glass of milk and bit of dark chocolate. Cleaning bikes and gear. Washing ride clothes. Taking a nap.

And your problems? No worries now.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Listen to the sound of silence. (Paul Simon)

A while back my smartphone went insane.

It was an android phone that I got because it was cheap and waterproof. (Waterproof is really a handy feature when you ride a bike in Miami during the summer rainy season.) It was just a basic smartphone. No bling. Nothing special.

Until it started talking.

This wasn't like Siri or that kind of talking. This was Smartphone For The Blind. It read aloud my messages and emails.  If I touched the clock icon, it told me the time. (Inexplicably, it was western mountain time rather than Miami's eastern time.) It made constant announcements about battery status. If I touched any icon, it named the icon out loud. It spoke every action it was taking ("dialing", "shutting down", "keyboard open", "sending message"). Using apps was a whole new experience.

And there was no way to make it stop. (Believe me, we tried everything.)

I knew I had to replace the phone. But I didn't for a good while. I realized I had become secretly attached to its craziness. The phone was embarrassing at times, to be sure. I frequently had to switch it off or plug in my headset. (Just for fun, try to imagine the most embarrassing thing your phone could say out loud in public.)

This week I got a new phone. It doesn't talk except when it should. It does what it should in its boring but efficient smartphone way. Life is not so noisy or so exciting.

I'm missing that crazy phone already.

Team EBC

A funny thing happened this spring. I first thought about it when Al and I started wearing matching Everglades Bicycle Club jerseys on club rides. (In a gazillion years of married life, we had never worn matching outfits before.  Never.) Then we wore the jerseys on some event rides, happily wheeling down the road in a double paceline with a lot of other people in EBC jerseys. All eras of EBC jerseys, too. After all, the club has been around since 1976. Then last Sunday on a charity ride, it hit me. We were riding with Team EBC. Everglades Bicycle Club was a club and a team.

There had been times before on rides with fellow Everglades Bicycle Club members that we acted like a team. But those times were very different from feeling like a team. Al and I joined EBC because of its rides program. We wanted to learn to ride with other people. Pacelines and all that. What sold us on the club was the support we got. They had our back. They didn't leave people on the side of the road alone with a mechanical. If you got dropped during a ride, somebody was sure to come looking for you to make sure you didn't get lost. Week by week, ride by ride, helpful gesture by helpful gesture, we slowly moved from strangers riding about in a big city to friends out pedaling and having a lot of sweaty fun.

And then there was the orange retro jersey. One Saturday the idea of our ride group having orange retro EBC jerseys caught on. It took a while to work out the kinks, but they got ordered and a lot of us bought them. Even people who weren't big on orange as a fashion statement. Seeing all the team jerseys on a group wheeling down the road did it. We looked like a team. We acted like a team. We were finally there. We felt like a team.

Everglades Bicycle Club. It's a club. It's a team. Who knew?

It's going to be fun going to big events with Team EBC.

Photo by Javier Lejardi

Biking on the SW Florida Gulf Coast

An Everglades Bicycle Club friend had told us about riding on Florida's Gulf coast. She asked if we wanted to join her for a couple days of riding there. We did. The weather was changing from the warmth of spring to the soft, humid heat of summer. Winter residents had returned to their homes in the North. Roads had less traffic. Restaurants were manageable again.

Our friend was familiar with the area. She had created two routes for us to ride. This was the real treat for us. The area is rich with bike lanes and paths. But it has numerous large gated communities which can make route planning difficult. She knew which roads to follow. Excellent.

Our first ride (about 77 miles) took us to Sanibel and Captiva Islands. Beaches were busy with people, many stooped searching for the seashells for which the islands are famous. Birders prowled the area with binoculars and cameras. We visited an access point for the Great Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail, a must do on another trip to this area. The islands are a treasure.

On our second ride (about 46 miles) we meandered to Fifth Avenue in downtown Naples for a bite at a sidewalk cafe. It was an exceptional ride with lovely intown and beach parks, lushly landscaped residential neighborhoods, wonderful quiet parkways, and glimpses of canals lined with large power boats and sailboats. Beautiful homes were everywhere.

We must not fail to mention that we spotted a rider in a bright orange Everglades Bicycle Club retro jersey in Naples.

Life is a long lesson in humility. (James M. Barrie)

The qualities you strive to achieve in life shift suddenly in unexpected ways as you grow older.

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.

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.

I intend to live forever. So far, so good. (Steven Wright)

It's April. Month four of our cycling project. If we were taking an imaginary cross country journey by bicycle, we would have arrived in San Diego, turned around, and be pedaling through west Texas on our way back to Miami.

The good news. Our project is working. The constant long bike rides and time in the gym are having an effect. Core muscles are getting stronger. Legs are feeling better. We've got more energy left at the end of rides.

But, of course, there is a disclosure statement. We're still not fast guys, nor does anything like that appear likely in the future. Riding a lot does not roll back the odometer or grant you any additional athletic talents. (Anybody surprised? I didn't think so.)

During the past few weeks I've visited the doctors, been tested for everything but rabies, and had x-rays taken of various moving parts. The verdict seems to be that things are going fine, and the cycling project can continue.

Happy dance time.