Day 2: Fort Lauderdale: The Icing on the Knees

February 4, 2015

Dodie's knees have felt fine at home in the last few weeks. So we planned some pretty long days for the Florida ride. She could surely do these, the thinking went, and if all went well we would tackle mountains in Europe later in the year.

Th knees, it may turn out, were just lying in wait. On the plane, the right one decided to swell up. Right now she is sitting with ice on both of them. Like an athlete before the big game, she has only hours to heal before being thrown out into the fray.

Dodie reads the inspirational book supplied for her by Violet

Meanwhile, we pulled the bikes from their cases and assembled them down on the lawn. It took a total of three hours, which is par for the course, or maybe even a little on the fast side. That sure is a contrast with the ads for the likes of the Bike Friday Tikit model, where someone folds and unfolds one in ten seconds total. The difference is in the extent of disassembly that is needed to fit the bike into the standard suitcase.

Speaking of the lawn, one of the first things you notice is that the grass here is St Augustine variety, which spreads by rhizomes on the surface. Marilyn says if you lie on it, it will make you itchy. So kids seldom play on it. It is one of the first indications that we really are not in "Kansas" any more. Another indication is the ibis' the egrets, and even the "common" gallinule - casually walking the grass on the edge of the artifical pond.

This pile of parts has to turn into a speedy bike pretty quick.

Ed and Marilyn provide moral support as the bikes go together.

Grass down here is a far different thing from what we are used to in the North.

We are ready to go - except for needing to find stove gaz!

With the bikes under control, we turned our attention to finding camping gaz. My brother and sister-in-law, Harold and Francine, stepped in here to drive us over to the Bass Pro where we had determined that the gaz would be found.

Bass Pro Fort Lauderdale was great to look at. We discovered that the chain is very similar to Cabela's. This extends even to the indoor "mountain", which in this case integrated the customary aquarium. We also found the in terribly bad taste "pistol" mug, though the AK-47 beer stein was sadly missing.

We were very optimistic about the gaz, given the huge store, but our hearts sank as we entered the stove section. There we found a huge stack of the wrong thing, those darned green Coleman cannisters! We started a somewhat frantic search pattern, since we had checked on this from back home. No luck. Finally we tracked down a sales person, who led us to the right section, which somehow we had overlooked. Hooray! Three brands of the right thing, including the "official" MSR product that matches our stove. We bought five. That should do us for Key West and back. Then we'll see.

Harold and Francine continued our tour, taking us out along the famous A1A, which is part of the ACA route. This passed by Fort Lauderdale beach, a strip of nice sand on one side, and various restaurants and shops on the other.

Our destination was a Greek restaurant, that turned out to be far better than what we know of in Montreal. Later, cruising through downtown Fort Lauderdale we passed many other nice looking and authentic seeming places -coal oven Pizza, Crepes, and so forth. It seems that all the money that flows around here has attracted some very high quality restaurants and shops.

Though it was then dark, we also had a peek at the "Venice" of Fort Lauderdale, where high end houses have high end yachts parked directly outside, on a series of water "streets".

Maybe when we come back down A1A we will come and check this out again - see if we can select which yacht and house we would prefer!

Bass Pro turned out to be a huge extravagant store almost identical in concept to Cabela's.

The brothers prepare to enter Bass Pro. Harold got in to a ten minute discussion with the employee at the door stationed to have us deposit our firearms. The employee claimed Americans are safer with everyone packing weapons. Say what?

In a store this size they gotta have what we need!

Could pick up a little pink Mace while we are at it?

The same mug as Cabela's, except Bass Pro branded.

The obligatory in store wildlife mountain features fish, since this is Bass Pro

The gar is one of the most characteristic South Florida species, sharing habitat with the alligator.

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