Trippin' with Susan Straley

Greetings from the shade of my kitchen in Inverness, Florida, In two weeks Steve and I are flying to NY to watch the solar eclipse and visit his family.  This weekend they got seven inches of snow!   I can't remember if I purged my winter boots when I was cleaning out my storage or if they are stored up in Steve's attic.  I guess I will have to do some searching before I buy a pair.  We might even do some skiing or snow showing in the Adirondacs while we are there! As you can tell from the title of this post, we made it home from our bicycle ride.  I apologize to Steve, as I did not spend a lot of time planning this trip, I guess. And our motels turned out to be a lot further apart than I had expected.  We didn't always follow the Google path.  So we had three days in a row of higher than planned days.  50-ish.  And me on a new-to-me bike seat.  Let's just say, the pain made me wonder at times why I ever thought this would be fun. S...

Greetings from Booksville/Ridge Manor, Florida, Sometimes when you travel you come upon something that delights you and reminds you why you travel. We had that happen a few times in the last 48 hours. Last night after I wrote to you and showered, we followed the directions of the owner of The Orange Motel and walked up the road to a strip mall tofind a place to eat. Steve noticed this tall tower and wo ndered outloud if there was an airport nearby.  It kind of looked like one of those Lookout towers only taller.  As we wondered looking for a place to eat, we ended up at a bunch of food trucks and vendors, like it was supposed to be some kind of festival but it was raining and not .any people were there.  We ordered a small pizza from one truck and then went into a kind of coffee shop to order a beverage. The lady at the cash register said they were offering free rides up the tower today.  The elevator to the top was right in the coffee shop! First we ate the pizza. T...

Greetings from Minneola, Florida, Wow, am I tired and my ass is sore and my sciatic isn't happy either. But we didn't quit!  And that is something with the weather report showing a high probability of rain all day and two friends offering to come rescue us. We left the lovely LA Quinta Inn at 9:00. If we would have waited another 45 minutes we wouldn't have ridden in the rain at all! I had planned on cutting over on Lake Mary Rd but when we got there, we saw the road was very busy with no shoulder or sidewalk.  We were only about 1/4 mile from where we needed to be at the start of the Seminole Wekiva Trail, but we had to detour. We went back to the Cross Seminole Trail where we rode yesterday.  We retraced our steps and headed north to a trail that goes over Interstate 4.  The whole detour was about seven miles. There we saw some places where I might have been able to get a room, if only I had known that Lake Mary Rd was not at all bike or pedestrian friendly. So sev...

 Greeting from Lake Mary, Florida, Last night after I wrote to you, Steve and I walked the side walk and trail to the Honeysuckle.  There we ate dinner.  Bruce will be glad to know we broke our streak of bad luck picking places to dine.  This was yummy.  With spicey green beans, cornbread, black-eyed peas, steamed cabbage, and sweet potato tots for me and catfish and cheezy grits for Steve,   home style southern cooking. When we arrived back at the B&B it was all lit up.  Nice! I use Google maps with the bicycle level turned on to map our rides.  Most the time the routing is spot on.  But I had a hunch when we got to the end of the Spring To Spring Trail, that it was putting us on the road when it didn't need to.  But that was later in the day, let me start from the beginning.  We departed shortly after sunrise. It was a cold morning but by 9 am we were starting to peel off a layer. We encountered a group of cyclists doing ...