Day 8

Back on the road.  After stuffing ourselves at the motel, we hit the road.  After riding for a while, we met up with a crew of 25 or so firefighters biking  to honor 9 members that died in a fire  They had a supported motorcade, and would take up a lane.  It was pretty cool.  I have pictures.  They have a website … what a novel idea.  We traveled with them, with a nice draft, for about 5 miles.  During this, we made friends with the riders, but I did get yelled at by one of the drivers, as I started getting into the pack.  It was pretty funny.

We left them as we were on our way west, and they were going to South Carolina.  It was another day of smooth riding where we put in a lot of miles.  At our lunch stop we bought some watermelon off the back of a truck  It was good, but a little warm.

We traveled much of our day on the rails to trails Withlacoochie trail (pointed out to us by Gary and Carol).  This means its an old railroad track that is no longer in use and turned into a biking/walking path with no vehicle entrance.  It was a nice easy ride and right towards the end we came to a pasta place at a reasonable price  We filled up there, and stepped outside to a beautiful sound.  There was an 18 year old kid playing the saxophone outside of an ice cream shop.  Man he was talented.  We only had a few miles left in the day to travel, so Paul and I relaxed and listened for an hour.  We were both in awe, and a bit jealous of his musical prowess.

We left our tips, wished him luck in his career, and headed to the rv park that we would be staying in that night.  Upon our arrival, we were greeted by the owner, originally from Massachusetts.  She offered us free ice cream for making it the distance we had (over 90 miles)  We were very thankful, showered up, and watched the large screen tv in their clubhouse.  Paul dozed off like a little baby like he does in the clubhouse.  I woke him, and we headed back to the tent.

It was a nice cool night.  There were hardly any mosquitoes, a nice change from the everglades, and we had a good sleep that actually required a sleeping bag!

Life was good.