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. Steve was a great sport, though.  A rea

 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 another ride we want to do, the River to Sea Loop.  The

This was written several days ago, but I just discovered on 3/23/24 that my email program wasnt notifying my friends and family and fans!  What a bummer!   If you rely on the emails, and you want to know what has been going on since December, go to the archives at www.susanstraley.com and look up January and February posts.  I have been having some good times! But this is about a few days ago when we were about to depart on a bicycle tour... *** 3/20/2024 Greetings from Inverness, Florida I am up early.  I can't sleep.  I wanted to write a short note to you and some other important stuff. We will see if I can keep it short, LOL. Today, a friend is driving my truck and Steve and I and our bicycles to Titusville, Florida over on the East Coast (east of Orlando). Bruce (our triking friend) will drop us off and Steve and I will start riding back toward my Weeroll in Inverness via (mostly) the Coast to Coast Trail.  The Coast to Coast Trail isn't completed yet, so we will be riding

Greetings from Inverness, Florida. We went to St Croix!  It was my first time staying on an island in the Caribbean.    I will tell you all about it in a bit, but first... If you have been reading this blog a few years, you may remember that just before I published my first book I had to choose a cover.  I had two designs created and then I could not decide between the two designs. The sunset picture ... (The sunset picture was taken by my friend Dennis N.) And the cover design that I call the "Joy of Travel" picture (The photo is a purchased stock photo. That isn't George and I in a convertible.) I remind you now because Dennis N., who took the sunset picture and let me use it for the cover, sent me a picture he took years ago at a party at my house.  I had him, his wife Frankie, and our friends Debra, Glen,  and Joan, and a Warm Shower's guest over for dinner.  We moved the furniture and put on some line dance music.  And had some laughs.  It is funny, but I don