70 miles today, with almost all of it on US Hy 41. We did start out the morning with a river walk type trail to avoid some highway riding, but we discovered some construction going on. That caused us to walk our bikes through a sand & gravel lot to get back to the trail. Here’s one of our riders ready to go after that little adventure .
Hy 41 was mostly 4 or 6 lanes with a nice shoulder, but every mile or two is a stoplight, which if you don’t hit it right causes a delay. As the day got warmer, those delays became uncomfortable. At least when we’re riding there is some wind created by our movement. Everyone made it safely to Naples, and no one is complaining that our 4 days in a row of 70 miles each is over.
I promised in an earlier post to get a picture of Alan our bike mechanic. Here he is working on a bike at a rest stop today.
We are grateful that he is along. He helped me adjust both my shifting & my brakes, and he has helped a bunch of others with various maintenance & repairs. He also drives the van with a big trailer that carries bikes and luggage from one town to another. Thanks Alan!
I mentioned that we have a couple of new riders who joined us in the past few days, and that gives me the opportunity to talk about cadence. Cadence is how fast you pedal, not how fast you go. Depending on what gear you are in determines how fast you go. This comes up because I noticed one of the new riders has a very fast cadence. It caused me to look up what my comfortable cadence is. My bike computer keeps track & my average is between 70 & 75 rpm. This new guy must be about 100 rpm.
Not much to see on the route today, but here’s a nice picture of what I always remember palm trees to look like. This is at our hotel for tonight.
Short day tomorrow, so we plan to sleep in a bit. In answer to a question about how much further we have to go - 257 miles according to the itinerary. And someone wondering if it was humid the day we rode right after the rain. Actually I was surprised how fast the road surface got dry, I think because the sun came out, but it always seems humid down here - rain or not. According to my weather app about 70% relative humidity.