Year 4 - Day 10 - Marathon to Key West FL

 

Toady is the last day of riding for our ECG journey! We spent the night at a quaint little “fishing resort” called Rainbow End Resort. This was the only lodging that I could find in or around Marathon Key that did not require full payment in advance. We made our reservations in March for this trip, so anything could happen between booking and the trip. It was clean and recently renovated. The buildings were only about 50 feet from the ocean and not much space for tide changes. I was amazed to discover that the tide in this area is only about +/- 1 foot! 

The resort has a restaurant called the Hideaway Cafe Restaurant. We made the assumption that it would be open and the perfect place to eat dinner when we arrived, only a short walk, couple steps up to the second level! Gary discovered that it was closed on Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately it was Tuesday! So after we showered, we got back on our unloaded bikes and rode back up the road about a mile to eat. 

The resort offers breakfast, but not until 8 a.m.! We normally like to be departing about then, but seeing that the breakfast was included and there was virtually no other eating establishments in the area, we readied ourselves for the day and went to breakfast, prepared to ride as soon as it was over. 

As I was loading my pannier bag onto my bike, I discovered that my rear tire was flat again. Once the tube was out, we had a difficult time locating the leak. Good thing we had the benefit of a sink close by! Yup, a very tiny hole in the same spot as yesterday! It seems one layer of duct tape does not prevent broken tire wires from poking through to the tube. 

We patched the tube with a self-stick patch. I believed that this would provide one layer of additional protection from the wire, if I could get the tube in correctly to match the protruding wire location. Then we applied another piece of duct tape with a piece of heavy rim liner under it over the wire. Then, just to provide one more layer of protection, I applied another layer of duct tape. I attempted to insert the tube and making sure to align the tube patch to the exact location where I thought the protruding wire was located. This worked because we made it the remaining 60 mile without another incident! So we put on a belt (the patch), suspenders (the duct tape with the rim liner), and then tied a rope round it (the extra layer of duct tape) just to be sure!

Fixing my flat delayed us a little, but with the huge tailwind we surely could make up for the lost time.

We arrived quickly to the 7 mile bridge where we met another through rider. Gary already knew that we should not take the “old” bridge as it had breaks in it at several places. We advised this rider and possibly saved him some time! Below are photos of the “old bridge”. It was originally a railroad bridge, damaged by a hurricane, turned into a road, then abandoned in favor of the new bridge. The old 7 mile bridge is the only way to get to Pigeon Key, so that part is still intact. In fact, we watched a person “driving” a man lift across the bridge to Pigeon Key at a very slow rate of speed, probably about 3 or 4 miles per hour! He may have gotten there by the time we reached Key West!

Here are photos of the plaques describing the bridge story.

I stopped several times along the bridge to photo Pigeon Key and the old bridge breaks.

And one of me riding to a stop to take a photo!

 

The ride off of the 7 mile bridge was one of the fastest rides I have taken in a long time. The downhill from the bridge coupled with a very strong tailwind had us riding along well into the 20 MPH plus range and for long time!  The last two days are the only rides I have ever taken where the expected arrival time on RWGPS has decreased instead of increasing! 

Dan decided that he was going to rent a bike and ride the last several miles into Key West with us. We met him at the Fairfield Inn and proceeded to finish our ride together. We wound around the streets of Key West and eventually arrived to a large welcoming crew. What a great moment it was! Feeling great to have completed such an epic journey and also to have my entire family present to share this wonderful experience. 

My welcoming crew! 

Today’s ride was 59.4 miles with 751 feet of climbing. Year 4 totals are 639.4 miles with 9,261 feet of climbing.

The total ECG trip took us 3,121.4 miles and a total elevation gain of 84,892 feet.

Thanks for sharing the trip with us. I hope you have enjoyed our journey as much as we have!