8: houses and condos, first rain, lost cat - My Midlife Crisis - CycleBlaze

March 25, 2025

8: houses and condos, first rain, lost cat

Miami Beach to Dania Beach

Today was a lot of the same: enormous houses, miles of condos, enormous houses, miles of condos, repeat. Toss in a small strip mall here and there, and that was just about my day. Consequently, it's going to make for a snoozer entry so I hope you can manage to tough it out.

I stopped by the bank to mortgage our house so I could pay for breakfast, then went to a bakery for a pastry and a coffee.

As opposed to yesterday afternoon and evening when it was bumper to bumper, the roads are mostly deserted this morning.
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as promised: condos
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C. B.Ah, got it. I saw the Ritz-Carlton sign, and assumed this was your dive hotel for the night.
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1 day ago
for the first ten miles or so, there was a road adjacent to the main street which barricaded me from the traffic
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The barricade between the main road and the one I was on was nice. Also, more condos.
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this is pretty much what my day looked like
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I saw several of these along the beach, each one a different combination of pastel colors, and wondered what they were until I got a good look from the other side: public restrooms.
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I have to be honest, I've been pleasantly surprised at how accommodating and friendly the drivers have been. No one has been tailgating, or trying to squeeze past, or honking. Of course, I'm still smelling marijuana from some of the passing cars, so there's that.
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I tried taking some pictures of the houses but none of them turned out. They're just too big.
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Almost all of the houses for sale had a Sotheby's sign on them, which tells you about the cost.
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more of the same
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after I got out of the more populated area, this is what the road looked like
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with an occasional glimpse of the Atlantic
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I was expecting a slight tailwind, but it was a solid sidewind at almost 20 mph. It felt more like a headwind.
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Steve Miller/GrampiesAt least with a headwind you can maintain your line and stay upright. It is just like climbing all day, exhausting! A side wind is worse. It feels like you are being pushed over sideways and if there is a lot of traffic you can get blown over into it.
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1 day ago

 There aren't any campgrounds in this area, and only a single response from all of the Warm Showers hosts I asked. Unfortunately, the brief response was: "Hey. Very sorry. I’m not available. Out of town. Cheers." I checked into a hotel, a small, dark, moist room, then went in search of dinner. By the way, the city I'm staying in, Dania Beach, is pronounced  DANEya Beach.

I saw this on the way to dinner:

FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS... that's a lot of money for a cat. Maybe there's a misplaced decimal.
Heart 5 Comment 3
Halûk OkurFor that amount I could collect a truckload of cats from the streets of Istanbul :)
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1 day ago
Rich FrasierMakes you wonder whether there's a good business model for catnapping.
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1 day ago
Mark BinghamTo Rich FrasierAnd when someone asks what I do for a living I could say, "Oh, not, much. I'm retired.... just a catnap here and there."
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1 day ago
This bird kept picking up this ?nut? then dropping it, picking it up, then dropping it.
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Steve Miller/GrampiesToo.damn.big!!! Awww, nuts.
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1 day ago
It was just starting to sprinkle as I was leaving the restaurant, but only lightly, and I made it to the motel before it started raining heavily.
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Heart 5 Comment 1
Steve Miller/GrampiesBetter to be inside during something like this! Imagine if there had been a campground!
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1 day ago

I was going to stop at the second-tallest statue in the contiguous United States, a 110-foot, 700-ton (30 meters/700,000 kg) statue called Pegasus and Dragon, but somehow I overlooked it when making my route today. At night there's a show with 350 fog nozzles, 116 water nozzles, and special LED lighting. The dragon spews 20 feet of flames during the presentation. I could do without the show, but would've liked to have seen it otherwise.  Unsurprisingly, it sits in front of a casino, and they're the ones who put up the 30 million dollars for it.

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Today's ride: 25 miles (40 km)
Total: 211 miles (340 km)

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