It was a great day to be on a bicycle. We pulled out
of Live Oak around 8:00am to a relatively cool morning and a great road. The
scenery has been much the same since leaving Pensacola. The road is lined with
forest, punctuated with an occasional house or ranch.
We rolled in to Lake City
20 miles and an hour and a half later. Susan was waiting at the Panera. Let me
digress. Phoenix, AZ and Lake City, FL are at opposite ends of the country. The
former has a population of 1.6 million, the latter has a population 100 times
less. However, they do have something in common. It has been our experience on
this tour, after visiting several hundred cities, and having been passed by
tens of thousands of cars, those two cities are in competition for having the
rudest, crudest and most aggressive drivers. Some of their actions are subtle,
and some are not so subtle. The cyclists reading this know of what I speak.
After leaving Lake City we traveled mostly south on
sparsely used county roads with a tailwind to help us along. We reached the
town of Alachua for our third and final stop. The little town just north of
Gainesville was hopping in preparation for the football game between the Gators
and Texas A&M. We left Alachua continuing to head south, but I was dreading
the coming left turn into an ENE wind at 12 mph. As it turned out, Millhopper Road heading east was heavily treed on both sides offering us shelter from the
sun AND the wind. Soon we were in Gainesville and a short distance from the
hotel. As we pulled in the parking lot, Susan was just then checking in. We
almost beat her to the hotel.
Tomorrow is our last day of the tour. It is to be an
81-mile day into a 10 mph headwind all the way to St. Augustine. Stay tuned.
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| Leaving Live Oak this morning - two days left! |
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| The beautiful, tree-lined Millhopper Road into Gainesville |
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