What I Did On My Winter Vacation.

Me & My Bike
Photo: P. Blanarik

On Thanksgiving Day I had turkey and all the fixings, excellently prepared by my husband (he always says I help, but really I push microwave buttons.) Then I put my bicycle in a truck and drove 22 hours to Key Largo, Florida. I spent 8 days riding to Key West and back (with a little South Beach Miami thrown in) with two awesome dudes.

We crossed 40 bridges (including the famous Seven Mile Bridge), rode at least 300 miles, had two flat tires, stayed in four campgrounds and two hotels, visited Ernest Hemingway’s house, the Southernmost Point of the United States, and the historic Key West Cemetery, drank gallons of water and coffee (and adult beverages), watched the sun rise and set every day in a most spectacular fashion, and formed a serious love/hate relationship with mile markers (at least I did.)

What a good librarian I am!

The Good (besides all of it)

• I’m a good camper! My tent came out of the box for the first time on this trip. Now I can put up a tent in heavy wind in the dark on gravel while fighting off fire ants.
• I learned exactly how much stuff I need. And it’s not a lot. Next trip: less clothes and toiletries, more fluffy stuff to sleep on top of.
• Getting to know my two traveling buddies. We were together (more or less) 24/7 for 10 days. This included over 40 hours of sitting in a truck cab and riding 5 to 6 hours a day together, plus every meal. We really got to know each other and it was a fantastic experience.
• The ADVENTURE. For most of the trip, we had only a vague idea of where we were going to stay each night. We saw giant lizards, endangered Key Deer, all variety of sea birds, and miles of open water. We rode on beautiful fresh pavement and gravel and sand. We met people who offered us camping space in their yard (“If I’m not home, just throw your sh*t in my yard and go have a beer.”) and lots of fellow travelers. In case there was ever any doubt, Pittsburghers are everywhere.

The Bad (as bad as being in paradise can be)

• Did you know you can get sunburn on your elbows? How about the crook of your arm? Behind your ears? I assure you, you can and it is exquisitely painful. Use sunscreen, lots of it, and make sure you get ALL THE PARTS.
• It’s winter. Things close early and you end up eating dinner at Walgreen’s. Due to poor planning, several times we missed the dinner boat. We did learn, however, that you can get Chinese food delivered to a state park. And to always have snacks on hand.
• You’re going to have a day you don’t want to ride. And you’ll have to do it anyway. And every single mile marker will be a punch in your teeth. And you’ll have a headwind. And you’ll be happy that you did it.
• Coming home to the cold was traumatic. I hate fixing my hair and wearing grown-up clothes again.

Read about far more epic trips than mine!

The Lost Cyclist, David V. Herlihy

Pittsburgh dude! In 1892, Pittsburgh accountant Frank Lenz quit his job to cycle around the world, ostensibly as a correspondent for Outing magazine. After two years and nearly 20,000 miles, he disappeared in eastern Turkey. In what seems like a supremely stupid move, Outing magazine sends another correspondent (William Sachtleben) to find out what happened to the first one.  Luckily, he doesn’t disappear and actually finds the people responsible. Herlihy documents not only the investigation, but (more interesting) Lenz’s epic bike ride around the world.

Off the Map: Bicycling Across Siberia, Mark Jenkins

Despite my love of all things Russian, this is NOT a trip I will be taking. Seven people (three Americans and four Soviets) rode 7,000 miles from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad in Soviet Russia, much of it through swamps on dirt roads.  They encountered angry KGB agents and extraordinary Russians and lived on a diet of potatoes, bread and milk with nary a Walgreen’s in sight. Bag of nopes.

Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die, Chris Santella

We are already talking about 2014’s trip to Key West. This time we want to be there for the full moon. But this book has inspired me to think bigger! Why not RAGBRAI or the Tour de Tuli? Although I’ll pass on the Washington State Challenge (320 miles in 24 hours, with 32 miles up hill!).

Miles From Nowhere, Barbara Savage

For two years, Barbara and Larry Savage traveled around the world on their bikes. Covering 25 countries and 23,000 miles, it was the trip of a lifetime, planned on a whim over dinner. And they did it on bikes way less fancy than mine. The book is a little dated (1983) and their description of riding in the Florida Keys is the polar opposite of mine: the Seven Mile Bridge was described as a “nightmare.” In my case, it was one of the most beautiful, exhilarating parts of the ride! SPOILER ALERT: Barbara Savage died in a bicycle wreck right before this book was published!

Tons more pictures if you’re so inclined!

happy trails-
suzy

What Your Dad Used to Read

“I am tall, and I gangle. I look like a loose-jointed, clumsy hundred and eighty. The man who takes a better look at the size of my wrists can make a more accurate guess. When I get up to two twelve I get nervous and hack it back on down to two oh five. As far as clumsiness and reflexes go, I have never had to use a flyswatter in my life.”  – Travis McGee

We are all products of our upbringing.  Many things we embrace, others we reject – sometimes very deliberately.  If it can be said that I discovered reading, it was because of my parents, my dad in particular.  Both of my parents had night tables next to their sides of the bed, and they were both piled with reading materials – mom’s with books, magazines and sections of newspaper. Dad’s was almost entirely books; paperbacks and hardcovers haphazardly stacked, double-stacked and all delicately balanced.  If they’d fallen, I’m sure the floor would have collapsed.  The top layer of books always changed, whether purchased or borrowed from the Great Neck Library – history, biographies, mathematics, fiction; he read everything.  But it was the bottom six levels of books that intrigued me, the ones that always stayed there, like the previous civilization’s layer at an archaeological site.

There were three distinct bodies of content in the subterranean collection. The first was about 5 years of Science Digest, a Reader’s Digest sized monthly (and a similar format) with articles about general science and the history of science.  I think I first learned about “Killer” Bees and Brown Recluse spiders by reading through it – and this would have been the late 60s, early 70s.  But that was just the appetizer. Digging further I found the mother lode of books for guys (no, not what you think, get your minds out of the gutter).  Better than smut, real pulp – Mickey Spillane, and even better than Spillane, John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee.  If you don’t know McGee (and unless you’re a guy over 50,) you probably don’t, Here’s what you need to know. He features in 21 novels written by John D. McDonald between 1964 and 1984, and all the titles are color coded.

Travis McGee

I wanted to be Travis McGee.  I think many of you, once you’ve read 3 or 4 of the series, will want to be McGee too, especially the guys.  Maybe we want to see a little of him in ourselves.  Travis McGee lives in Fort Lauderdale on a custom-made houseboat  named The Busted Flush that he won in a poker game.  McGee’s address as it were, is Slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar Marina.  McGee isn’t a cop or a P.I., and he’s not a wise-guy.  He’s a “Salvage Consultant.”  He finds things (or fixes them) because his clients can’t do it themselves.  They can’t go to the law, or they already have and the system gave up, or came to the wrong conclusion and left honest people hanging. He takes on new cases when the cash runs low, or when the victimized person is an old friend or a damsel in distress.

                        

McGee is honorable in a way most of us would want to be, and honor and integrity – individual and national – is a significant theme throughout the series.  He’s a philosopher; expounding on the despoliation of Florida, the social ills facing the US, the inability of the unfortunate to get a break, and the honor and ingenuity of the every-man. It’s inferred that he served in Korea, that he played college (and maybe some pro) football, and he’s terminally single but not on the make.  There’s sex, but it’s alluded to, not described.  McGee is matter-of-fact worldly and cautious, but he’s not cynical in the vein of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robichaux – though both characters share a disdain of politicians and corporatism. Florida and Louisiana may share more than the Gulf of Mexico.

McGee is grounded by his nature, but he’s an action guy, a doer.  His impulse check is his friend Meyer, an Economist with an international reputation who also lives at Bahia Mar, on his houseboat the John Meynard Keynes. When it’s blown up (in a failed attempt to kill him,) he replaces it with the Thorstein Veblen. Meyer is cosmopolitan worldly, sometimes filling in the big picture for Travis, other times connecting the banking and legal dots, or finding related bits of information that McGee couldn’t do as easily.

                        

All this of course with landlines, AM/FM radios and televisions with CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes.)  Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet, and computers look like double-wide refrigerators with reel-to-reel tapes on them. In short Travis McGee is (in my mind) the anti chick-lit hero; he solves problems, he doesn’t revel in them.  At the end of the day he kicks back with a Boodles over ice, not shaken – not stirred or any of that other fru fru stuff.

McGee also owns a Electric Blue, custom modified Rolls-Royce that’s been converted into a pickup truck.  He calls it Miss Agnes.

– Richard