After a tough night, I awoke at 8:00am, marking the beginning of a bad habit of late starts. After a shower and a think about repacking, I was on my way, and on the road in the late morning. The air was already warm and humid, and the sun was out in full force. Tomorrow I'll be up earlier.
I get on my bike, and the soreness of yesterday gets drowned out by the pain of today. This is what the first days of any bike trip are like. On the first day, you go as far as you can. You go util you, your bike, or the sunlight runs out. And it's still not enough. On the next day, you do it again, and it's still not enough. Every day, at the end of the day, I look outside, and think "I could have squeezed in another 20km today." Every excuse to stop seems like a cop-out in retrospect.
The transition between ecstatic love for the bicycle, and the feeling of hopeless drudgery is very quick. On this sunny morning, the road was flat, well-maintained, and I had a dedicated bike lane. All of my commitments have been put on hold for two months, and all of the money I've saved up will ensure that I'm going to ride as long as it's fun. There's strip malls everywhere, and a pharmacy, water, or food are at the tips of my fingers, whenever I need them. I'm cruising at 25km/h, when the radio playlist plays that perfect song. The shivers start from the lower spine, reaching my neck, and down to my arms which flip up the gear shifter to move to a higher gear, and whoosh! I start flying ahead on the straight road. This is the best a ride can get. I can do 200km a day like this! I'll be in Portland by May! The bicycle is the greatest machine invented!
I reached Parkland, FL. This was the last stop before the slight left-turn into The Experiment. The Experiment is a stretch of 64km with nothing on it. No restaurants, no gas stations, not even houses. It stretches through the Arthur R. Marshll Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, between Parkland, and Belle Glade. I called this stretch The Experiment, because it's the first time I will be so far away from potable water. It will also be the first time I will be so far away from potable water in 32 degree weather with a strong sun. However, it won't be the last. Hence, I need to learn how to cross such stretches, and how much water is sufficient.
Right before Parkland, I stopped to restock on sunscreen, and to buy three more bottles of water. The lady at the front gave me the water for free. Thus, I got to Parkland with 3.25L of water, where I bought some groceries, and headed out into The Experiment.
I'm betting that a lot of you want to hear more about Parkland, and frankly, I, too, considered biking around it a bit. But thinking about it more, I realized that they probably get enough tourists as it is, and I didn't think it was polite. The one thing I will say, however, is that the Parkland grocery store is the only place I've been to in the US where the cashiers know their customers by name, and send greetings to their parents.
The only pictures from the Parkland area that I took were of the nearby field, and some quaint houses near it. This was the first field I saw this bike trip.
I left Parkland, and turned into The Experiment.
The Experiment runs along a river/irrigation channel, which, if I am to succumb to my stereotypes about Florida, is probably infested with crocodiles.
About 5km into The Experiment, I stopped to eat lunch - bread with hummus, tomatoes, cucumbers, swiss cheese, apples, and a banana. I also got some M&M's but I didn't eat them. I think I'm leaving them for some more difficult times. 5km after lunch, the road became a gravel road, and I saw the sign:
Righ beyond the sign, there were cars parked and there were people fishing, walking around, and taking airboat tours
By this point, the road had become a gravel road, and if you've tuned in to the Boston Bike Ride, you'll know how much I hate gravel roads. Still, it would be unscientific to stop the experiment now, so I continued. I ducked under a large yellow barrier to access the path through the refuge, and not 100m later, I saw this guy
The path within the refuge was probably once a railway bed, which has long since been removed. Even the classic railway smell is gone. It might also have been a road through the swamp, since the path was flanked on both sides by what I immediately assumed were crocodile-infested waters.
Startled by the large turtle at the start of the refuge, I kept my eyes out for any interesting wildlife, and I didn't see anything more interesting than the occasional big bird. The monotony of the path was broken up by three bridges over waterways connecting the channel on the left with the larger swamp on the right. Some of these had fishers on them, but farther out into the refuge, there were none. The only thing around was me. There was no shade, and nowhere to go but forwards or backwards. My cell reception was low. The Experiment was a good one.
The transition between ecstatic love for the bicycle, and the feeling of hopeless drudgery is very quick. The brain needs something to do, and the body sometimes needs to do nothing. I spent almost two hours in that swamp, and when an hour in, my music stopped for some reason, I couldn't take a break to fix it. You see, there was no shade, nothing to lean the bike against, nowhere to sit down, and I was riding in the midst of a battle field. The war was between the giant blood-sucking bugs trying to drink me, the dragonflies trying to eat the giant blood-sucking bugs while avoiding my wheels, and me, trying to bike beyond the point of fatigue. I was way past the fun limit, and my legs were not working as well as they could earlier in the day. I had to keep going, even though the sun hurt, and the gravel. The fucking gravel. You can feel youself fighting the ground when you're on a gravel road. You bike slow - every second is just a fruitless fight. And occasionally, the tire flings a piece of rock at you, as if it's trying to punish you, the rider, for bringing it on such a miserable surface.
For 20km, my only goal was to get to the end of the swamp. I finished the water in my bottle, and didn't stop to fill it up until the end. I'm looking forward to the desert.At the end of the refuge, there was a fork in the road. Truly, a welcome sight - I felt like the place was bursting with civilization just from the fact that I had an option of where to go. There was also some big building there, and three men who came in a truck to mow the lawn. I stopped by the intersection to refill water bottles, and to take a break. That's when I saw them. In the ditch I had biked along for about 30km, I saw two rocks!
Wait, you only see one rock? That's because the other one dove under water. Check out the rock that stayed:
Look, my photography abilities were trash, and this one also ran away very soon after I snapped this picture.
After leaving the wildlife refuge, and saying goodbye to my new friends, the road became paved again. At first, there were no cars on it, but as I continued biking, I saw more and more cars driving by. At some point, a large truck carrying corn drove past, and until I got to Belle Glade, I saw ears of corn on the side of the road every 100m or so. I guess this is corn country. By this point, the sky had become a bit cloudy, which made for good biking weather, but the gravel road really wore me out, and I was not as happy as I was when I started. I'm still weak.
Still, I saw no houses. I saw farms, and even some tractors, but the first human I saw also explained to me the reason for the ditch on the left-hand side:
About 15km from the end of The Experiment, and with 1.5L of water left, I saw a beige complex of connected houses on my left. There were no cars around, but I estimated about 10 rooms of some kind were there. The whole area smelled of wet garbage from the two large garbage bins at the front of the property. Both were alomst full, with flies circling them. I saw some faucets with sinks nearby, and turned the tap on. Water gushed out, but something made me suspicious. It smelled strange. So I started walking into the complex. Behind some broken concrete steps, I saw an old pile of shoes, and noticed a single open door, with Spanish music coming out. I walked up the steps, and called out into the house, without any response. Shrugging, I turned around back to the bike and the garbage bins. Suddenly, I saw a man, about my height, wearing a blue jersey, walking towards me. He smiled, and showed his teeth full of braces.
Keeping my distance, I asked him if the water in the sinks was drinkable. He told me it wasn't, and offered to give me water. I followed him to the opened music room, and waited outside, as he pulled two bottles of sealed water from his fridge. He refused money, so I took the bottles, filled up my own, and threw them into the stinking garbage bins. I walked my bike back up to the road, and continued moving.
Today, I made a new enemy. Almost as big of an enemy as gravel. Headwind. The last 15km of The Experiment took me at least an hour. I biked on the shoulder of a busy highway, and every time a large truck drove by, the turbulence would throw me off balance. The wind was strong, the turbulence was unpredictable, and the worst of it was when the road narrowed to a 1-lane road with lights indicating which direction is allowed to go. I waited my turn, but being on a bike with a strong headwind meant that the opposing cars had a green light before I could pass. Let me tell you - riding on the shoulder against traffic is not fun.
The only interesting thing was that the quiet swamp on the right of the road now turned into a heavy-flowing river. I guess it meant that I was now going uphill.
By now, I had passed the mileage of yesterday, but was still far from the average of 110km/day that I needed to do to get to Portland in time. Still, the wind, the gravel, and the drizzling rain started getting to me. Fixed to my GPS, I counted kilometers until Belle Glade, where I could at least find some rest.
I arrived at Belle Glade, knowing full well that I was going to spend the night here. I hoped for a pharmacy or gas station where I could buy a chord to connect my GPS, and luckily, I found a cell-repair shop on my way to the area with motels.
And so, Day 2 came to a close. I'm again sleeping in a hotel, but I'm not alone, since this one has some small cockaroaches. Today I biked around 85km, and tomorrow I hope to finally get back on schedule.