January 21, 2014
Day 17: Wildwood to Silver Springs
We set the alarm for the insanely late hour of 8 a.m.Even though we were not particularly all that hungry, the impact of last night's illuminated sign had us crossing the street for breakfast at IHOP. What we got was reminiscent of the truckers' breakfasts we had often indulged in when we first cycled from home to Montreal. In the photo, the pancakes are just the first two of the "all you can eat" included in the $8.99 cost of breakfast. In practice, though, two was actually all I could eat.
It is quite obvious to say that a breakfast like this will not be seen in Europe, though in Germany you can certainly take in as many calories, if you work at it, at a buffet. What you will never find though, is virtually unlimited coffee, represented here by the giant carafe.
50 cents also brought us the local paper, the Villages Daily Sun. One of the main stories concerned local traffic, and the thrust was that the number of billions of vehicle miles had managed to rise slightly, based on the price of gas managing to stay stable. A photo was included of three lanes of traffic and no shoulder on hwy 27, which is part of our route north. Great!
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Well, news report or not, and fuelled by lots of bacon and eggs, we sallied out into traffic. We had been on the road only a short time when an RV bigger than a city bus and towing an SUV, turned and cut Dodie off. Dodie took off to run the guy down, with me in the back chirping "Save your breath, you're not going to change the world". Dodie caught the RV in a parking lot, drove up to the front (itself a bit of a trip) and said to the guy "Didn't you see me?" "Well yes", was the reply, "but there were no cars coming and I wanted to turn. I didn't think it would matter to you." "I had the right of way" replied Dodie, "would you have turned had I been a car?". "OK, you have my apology" said the man, and slammed his window shut. So was it worth it to chase him? Dunno, but clearly all the large traffic here is getting on our nerves.
This little area seems to feature a few markets specializing in citrus, The honey bell oranges are big, and they are good. Here is a sign from one shop, also featuring gators, in a gross exploitation of baby gators.
From this point onward, we traversed several roads, all featuring truck traffic and more or less acceptable shoulders. By the roadsides was an unending array of small business operations, in every category imaginable (except for a camping store with our correct fuel, a T-Mobile office, a bike shop, or any campgrounds or motels). Still, it was fun reading all the signs.
The landscape included no farms, no farm markets, no industry, in fact really little of note. One exception was many minor churches. Some had reasonably sized grounds and buildings, while many occupied a slot in a strip mall, beside the hairdressers and tax consultants. There are obviously no official rules about what makes a holy place, but you've got to think it's an uphill battle out of a strip mall!
Mid afternoon some fairly heavy rain gave us a chance to test out our new Patagonia rain parkas. As we have seen with other new parkas, the water at first beads and runs off, but given enough soaking, it begins to saturate the outer fabric. We think this is normal, but beading allows the garment to dry better, reducing the chance of dragging moisture into your tent.
As it happens, dragging stuff into the tent is on hold for a while here, since we are finding the locating of motels enough of a challenge, let alone a camping spot or wild camp.
This time we headed for a Days Inn for which we had picked up a coupon. When we got there (after just 53 km but the next possibility was a lot further) the people found a way to dishonour the amount shown on the coupon and to provide less in terms of what was in the room and to back out on any free breakfast. Without going into the details, let me say that you would not want to be the manager, who is scheduled to show up for duty tomorrow at 7. We will be wielding the Days Inn "A Promise as Sure as the Sun" service guarantee, and it could get ugly. Just ask that RV driver!
Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 925 km (574 miles)
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