Day 0

May 15, 2021

Daughter adopted a new rescue kitten; Kath and I nearly don’t get our rental car; and we’re gouged on the fallout from the colonial pipeline ransomware attack

Over dinner at restaurant at California pizza kitchen, Kath and I discussed our day. What was filled with a 10+ hour drive from Alpharetta, GA to St Augustine (to pick up the rental) and then to Tampa to drop off the rental had a lot of topics to cover.

During the trip my daughters let us know through text they adopted a new rescue kitten, tentative name “Pippin”. The little kitty joins an older 12-year old domestic short hair, Max, at their apartment

Kitty with my younger daughter. Kitty still looking for a name. Updates as the naming becomes formal

On the way down, the rental car company phones and says they have my rental at an off-airport location and I have to pick it up from there. Fine, it’s not too far away away. 11:55 they phone me again and ask my ETA as they close at 12:00. This is the part where I start getting my ire up as I specifically booked it at the airport since they had 24-hr coverage. They state they’ll stay until we arrive at 12:20.

We arrive at the hotel and given a ground room. We go to the room to offload the van before I return to the airport. Upon using the Bathroom we find it’s infested with fleas. Back to the front desk to get another room. I won’t tell you which hotel but there was a “Residence” Inn-volved. In the new room we exploded our bikes a travel goodies and then headed off to dinner.

Leaning the bike, ensuring that nothing greasy touches those white linens

Ok, it looks like a mess now, but wait until you see this “pannier explosion” on successive days of the tour!

So after returning the van at the Tampa airport, riding my bike out of the airport (that gave me bike courier visions) I made it back to the hotel. Happily I was in the non-flea-infested room at this point. Kath and I then decided to immediately go out in search of fuel, this time for ourselves.

Happily, as we finished our Caesar salad, our margherita pizza arrived and was so amazingly hot I mentioned, “I do believe this pizza was cooked recently” to which Kathy responsed, “are you kidding? This JUST came out of the oven!”

Here’s my touring buddy at the fueling station (California Pizza Kitchen) ready for launch tomorrow.

So that’s it - we are “go for launch” tomorrow on Sunday morning with a ~57 mile ride to Lakeland, FL. Traffic probably won’t be too bad riding through th center of Tampa, but I’ll post it all for you here and on my YouTube channel.

Cheers, all!

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