A Monday morning in Florida

Riding 54 miles on a flat straight highway

     Today we bicycled 54 miles east, towards St. Augustine. I left the Inn at 8 a.m. with Carla and we biked steadily along, covering the miles along Highway 98 which runs through the middle of Florida's swampland, where somewhere out there are alligators and turtles and fish and other swamp animals.
     We saw one turtle resting along the highway, undecided about which way to go and a later visitor moved him on to the grassy bank off the bike path. We saw a large dead animal on the road, which a ranger with flashing lights on his truck realized was too big for him to lift on the truck so I'm not sure what happened to it. And we saw birds flitting around, and lots of swampy water, trees and bushes.
The highway was designed by someone who likes straight lines, and that's what I rode today with a couple of low bridges along the way over the Wakulla River and the Aucilla River. One part of the road was being fixed and they had left us a rattling metal bridge to ride over which was quite scary. But the rest of the time it was just pedalingpedaliingpedaling to rack up the miles so that we could get to the Sag Stops at 20 miles, and the town of Perry at 54 miles.
     Everyone did it today at their own speed, which was good. The Hampton Inn is excellent and has a pool with warm water in it because it's so much warmer here. Carla found a small scorpion like insect/animal in the water trying to bite here so he had to be dealt with using screams and shoes. And then I sat and read and basked in the sun.. 
      Today was an orgy of superb Italian food at Mamma Mia's, an Italian restaurant that could have been transplanted from Fort Lee, New Jersey, where I used to go to an identical Italian restaurant where the music was Frank Sinatra ("Do it my way") and "La Donna e Mobile" sung by an Italian tenor with great emotion. At lunchtime I had a shrimp salad and almost focaccia bread.  For dinner I had grouper piccata, with the wine and lemon sauce over fresh fish, which was delicious. And wine in glasses - not plastic ones which we always have on our picnics. We filled the place up and the maître d' greeted us rapturously and was most impressed with our trip. There is something about old-fashioned Italian restaurants rooted in the 1960s that is really amazing with booths and small tables and good food and Frank Sinatra, the impeccable.
      The Hampton Inn also provided Happy Hour at 5 p.m. with large wine glasses of white or red wine, chocolate melted to cover strawberries, and cookies to keep us going at 5:30 p.m. That was distinctly a great way to start the evening. Then we walked the five minutes to the Italian restaurant. More wine, and great food, and lots of interesting conversations made it a lovely evening
     Tomorrow we have 74 miles, a longer day, and start at 7:30 a.m. I hope the rain that came down this evening means the storms will blow over for tomorrow - no fun riding in a thunderstorm at all.
So another perfect day - breakfast, ride a bike, arrive a hotel, swim, drink, eat and bed. Sounds great to me..