2012 Florida Photo Essay

Back to work and back to reality. Seven days worth of problems were waiting for me this morning after marinating in their own juices all week. For a minute I considered never taking another vacation but that’s just silly; riding in Florida was really nice.

The weather was perfect. I got a good start on my biker tan.

Continuing on with crazy weather this winter, Michigan was just as warm as Florida last week but Florida has things that Michigan doesn’t, like nuisance alligator trappers,

and nuisance alligators. Yet. It will be interesting to see how this global climate change thing plays out.

Crazy strong South winds created a hard ride as we started down A1A but the return ride felt like riding a moped.

Most people in Florida were super nice but one concerned senior citizen pulled over on the side of the road to force us to stop. He asked why we weren’t riding on the (super crowded) sidewalk. The side of the road was marked for bicycles and it was wonderfully wide and smooth. This scenario seemed odd to me. I asked if he was serious. My question enraged him to the point where he struggled and stammered to verbalize his response. I thought he was going to have a heart attack right there, hanging halfway out of his car in the bike lane. He called me an asshole, gave me the finger, then sped off. There were so many bicyclists using the bicycle lane that he couldn’t possibly stop everyone, or it seemed a silly use of one’s golden years if he did. Sue and I cracked up.

Then I realized what I thought was a bicyclist icon indicating we were on a bike lane was actually an icon of a person in a wheel chair trying to screw a bicyclist and it dawned on me that maybe I was the one mistaken. Maybe he was in fact doing what the icon indicated the lane was for. I felt bad. If you are reading this, bitter driver, I sincerely apologize for questioning your seriousness. Thank you for reminding me that no matter how bad my first day back at work is, I'm not you.