Year 4 - Day 9 - Florida City to Marathon FL

 



Nice and toasty this morning when we left. Got to enjoy my granddaughter and grandson seeing me off this morning. Granddaughter helped me program my GPS and set my navigation.


It was great of them to come down from NC to meet us in Florida City and then again tomorrow in Key West. They also leapfrogged us and passed us twice, beeping and waving, and stopped to great us along the way. It felt great to have a cheering squad along the way.

Once we arrived in Key Largo, we took a rest stop. Sign at the visitor center.



Unfortunately, I fell short of surviving the entire ECG trip without a puncture. I made it over 3,000 miles, 80 miles short of Key West, only to have a wire in my tire break and go internal, thereby puncturing my tube. We found the wire, pulled it out, and put a piece of duct tape over the hole where the former wire exited, just in case additional wires intended to relocate out the same hole. It has survived 2 plus miles so far! Hopefully it will last the final 60 miles to Key West!

We had a tail wind most of the day, cruising down the bike lane along Route 1. We elected to use the “bike trail” some of the day, but the bike trail is nothing more than a paved sidewalk along Route 1. This trail is filled with root bumps, where the pavement rises and causes a major bump due to the root pressure from below. After several miles of the trail, we elected to use the bike lane along Route 1. 

With the tail wind and the nice smooth bike lane, we cruised along at a generous pace. Sometimes our speed, fully loaded, was between 16 and 20 MPH. We literally “flew” down the road today. I looked at our expected arrival time and it read 4:00 p.m. We arrived round 3:30 p.m., that is how fast we were progressing against our normal pace!

We are staying in a private hotel called Rainbow Bend on Marathon Key. It was the only hotel in the area that did not require us to fully pay in advance. It is a very nice property, recently remodeled, clean and comfortable. Immediately along the ocean.



Today’s ride was 71.3 miles with 793 feet of climbing. Total for this year’s ride is 580 miles with 8,510 feet of climbing.

Total for the ECG ride is 3,062 miles with a total elevation gain of 84,141 feet.

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