WABASSO!!!!

For some reason that just seems like it's suppossed to be in all caps. It's also the name of the city we're staying in tonight. A smaller town that exists just North of of Hutchinson Island, a beautiful spot with homes for sale " Under Four Million", perched along the Atlantic coast and full of beautiful people and expensive cars. The last two days have shown a true contradiction in lifestyle, as we roll through these surf paradises full of millionaires into the kind of town we're staying in now-smaller places full of the people that work in the homes, stores and kitchens of the people that live by the water. We had a some contact with the "Island" folk today, once when I asked an older lady if there was a place we could find coffee and internet use nearby and she laughed-"oh, we don't do Starbucks on the Island....", and again later in the afternoon, when we stopped in someone's outer yard (it was a gated community), and were promptly kicked out by some poor kid whose boss, another older lady, walked all the way up to tell him to tell us to move on. Kid's gotta find a better job.

As for the riding, it truly was good today, despite some obstacles I'll go into later. The heat is overbearing, and the humidity is turning us into gooey slabs of sweat, but the riding is good. I felt like we all rode well together today, something I'd been hoping and praying for, and also feel like we've broken through on a personal level. We're basically four guys that got together to do this without really knowing each other too much, or not at all, and now we're living together, or rather, living next to each other, for the next month and a half. It really could go any direction, and now that we've had a few days to hash stuff out, I'm happy with the mix. I also decided to come up with names for our bikes.

 

George is riding Toby.

 

I'm with Midnight.

 

Jeff is on White Lightning.

 

And Kevin's steed is now called Long Horn.

 

So, the other details?

I've been lucky enough to be the recipient of our first animal attack, as I completely ignored the warnings of one of our hosts and wandered out to the Ocean at night and had my legs completely devoured by sand fleas, which not only itches horribly all the time but also makes my transformation to complete vagrant almost completely authentic when combined with my lack of shaving and now burned-in tanlines. Anyone seeking a lesson in humility should spend a lot of time out in the sun and cover themselves with flea bites, and then try to act like a normal, civilized human around other, cleaner folk. It ain't easy.

Just to make my leper-status complete, a portion of my arm actually fried today, scaring the piss out of me at first. Tiny little bubbles, like fried pork rinds, formed near my elbow on my right arm, which has been taking the brunt of the early morning sun. Kevin said it looked like sun poisoning, which made it even worse. I'd always considered the sun my friend, and couldn't believe it'd do something like this to me. But it did, and later on all the bubbles popped, giving me a sheath of new skin to destroy tommorrow. By the time this is all over, I'm going to be a mass of skin disease and boils. And we haven't hit the desert yet.

In other, more important news, several developments have come up.

Dirk, our fifth rider, cancelled on us, also leaving us without a place to stay on Saturday.

George hit a wall that he's gotta figure out how to scale. The heat and mileage has taken it's first toll, and he completely lost steam today, disappearing behind us several times as we would wait for him to catch up. Finally, he didn't, and we had to call for a ride into town for recoup. When we made our way to the church, he seemed rested but mentally fatigued, and we're all afraid he's going to get into his own psyche, talk himself out.

So, we came up with a few options, all of which depend on the next few days. We've racked up 360 miles at the end of today, a tenth of our total mileage. Option one depends on how well George thinks he can do on the 80 miles a day we were planning, and basically means staying on route. Option two would be for George to act as support vehicle, carring supplies and scouting ahead in a car. The last option, which seems to be intriguing everyone, would be to switch routes, moving northward and following the Atlantic to it's Northernmost point at Bay Harbor, Maine. It'd cut some mileage off so we could knock the daily total down to around 60, and would exclude the desert, which is in everyone's mind considering how George is reacting to the tropic heat.

It wouldn't be the test we'd originally planned on, but it would still touch two tips of the States, would include George, and we're thinking that if we complete it in time (there'd be around 2,300 miles left to go), we just might be able to head up into Canada and either fly out of Quebec or possibly bike back to Milwaukee.

We'll figure it out in the next two days, before our route takes us Westward towards Alabama. I must admit, it'd be nice to see the southern coast from tip to tip. I'd have to pick up a tent, the bivy sack won't cut it in Georgia or South Carolina.

Then again, San Diego does sound mighty fine.....