I wanted to do one more serious training ride on the Seiran recumbent bike. There was always this idea of riding coast to coast in South Florida, and this Tuesday and Wednesday (Apr 28-29) would be good weather, albeit with a strong Easterly wind. The first day would be a lot of fun – I love long tailwind rides – but how about coming back into the wind the next day?
Google Map of route across Florida
As expected, day 1 was great, with average speed over 30 km/h and a total of almost 9 hrs on the bike. Crossing the bridge to Sanibel Island in the late afternoon was a real highlight.
Toll Bridge across to Sanibel Island
I stayed at a hotel in Ft. Myers, where I shared my room with my recumbent 🙂 Next morning at sunrise I was on the road again starting to battle the wind. First I took a wrong turn – Hwy 82 East instead of Hwy 80 East – so I had to cut North through Lehigh Acres to get back to the correct route. All along, my wife and friends were following my progress on my SPOT tracking page…
Day 2 was harder; one central section between Labelle and Clewiston was a bit dangerous as there is no shoulder and there was increased traffic due to a temporary closure of I75 (Alligator Alley) because of smoke caused by some brush fires. Once I chose to run off the road into the grass because the trucks from behind – good thing I have my rear-view helmet mirror – wouldn’t slow down and there were other trucks coming the opposite way – not the place you want to be with the bike…
Coming back on the levee at lake Okeechobee
The last 40km I rode the Palm Tran bus as I did many times before. Still, I had ridden 175 km into the wind for 8 hrs! After a total of 425 km and 17 hrs on the bike in 2 days I now feel ready for the long stretches of the Alaska Highway!
With my new Flip Mino HD mini digital video recorder I captured some HD footage and did some editing on the iMac at home. Here is a 4 min HD video of Day 1 of the trip:
I was told that bringing some brochure or business cards as giveaway would be a good thing, especially with officials in South America. A brochure hand-out about the project would convey instant credibility if not some air of authority (?) – but in any event always serve as conversation starter 🙂
This is a draft of this brochure. (Click on the image to download the pdf format.) The final piece will be in English (front) and Spanish (backside) before this is going to print.
t – 14 days: With another 180km ride yesterday I achieved 50% of my goal of putting 1000km on the recumbent pre-departure. (Check out a series of videos here.) Things are coming together nicely with the bike now. I’m getting used to the under-seat steering, the super-comfortable seating position and the slow riding uphill. Actually I had wanted to do at least one ride in rainy weather, but there aren’t that many such days in South Florida this time of the year!
Soon this bike will see the waters of the Arctic Ocean and then the Pacific for most of next year!
In between rides I’m browsing other websites’ equipment lists and finalizing my own through various small additions. Soon the packing will begin, working on the impossible job of squeezing everything into two big bags and the bike box…
Also spending time on various logistics, like communication strategy and details. Contacting various magazines to see whether they are interested in this story…
This morning dawned clear and relatively cool (60F) with only moderate wind (9mph N), almost ideal conditions for a long bike ride. And I need to put more training miles on the recumbent to figure out all its kinks before flying off to Canada/Alaska in just 3 weeks…
After dropping off my son Philip at school in Wellington I park my car near the bus station and take the Palm Tran 40 line out to Belle Glade near Lake Okeechobee. This gives me the option of either riding all the way back or hopping on the bus again on the way back.
The bus ride takes about 50min, during which I call my parents back in Austria for a quick chat. Then the ride starts in refreshingly cool morning air. I will only ride a short section on the levee due to the headwind up there and also some fortification work which closes sections off. I take a short video clip with my little Olympus Stylus 790 SW digital camera.
On the East side of the lake I arrive at the tall bridge at Port Mayaca at 9:45am. From here you have a good view of the lake, the canal and surrounding sugar cane fields.
Seiran at Port Mayaca, Lake Okeechobee
After about 2 more hours of riding and enjoying the scenery I reach the town of Okeechobee on the Northern tip of the lake. There I search for wireless Internet access points using my iPhone. I locate one Gourmet Coffee shop and ride there, only to find that this shop doesn’t seem to exist anymore. However there is a McDonald’s with Wifi. I can also use the Super-sized drinks they offer – with free refills 🙂 – and so I treat myself to a BigMac meal and write this Blog post.
There will still be a long ride (3-4 hrs) ahead of me on the way back, but this time with tailwind. Looking forward to that; but now I need to apply some more sunscreen not to get burned this afternoon…
I decided to bring one more piece of electronic equipment: The SPOT Satellite Personal Tracker. Like other GPS systems it receives location information. Unlike conventional GPS, however, it also sends that information or distress calls to satellites, thus actively broadcasting its location even beyond cell-phone coverage.
You buy the device and then purchase an annual locator / tracking service. This can be used as emergency locator service and hence potentially safe lives. That said, the more regular use-case is to track progress automatically: When in tracking mode, the system will attempt to send out its location every 10 minutes and the backend service will update a map with received signals. In the meantime family and friends can follow along in a web browser.
I tested this on my ride yesterday and it allowed my wife to know where I am several times during the ride. It didn’t work perfectly, the signals aren’t received in exactly the same time intervals, sometimes there are gaps. But it can be expected to give a few dozen points of progress each day on the trip.
Sample screen shot of shared SPOT tracker website
My current public tracking page for training rides is here. (For information how to customize, see the Help bar on the left side.) I’ll set up a dedicated tracking site for the Panamerican Peaks project prior to leaving on May 7.
