Indian Pass → Ochlockonee River → Perry → High Springs → Crystal River → Bayonet Point
One of the neat things about traveling by bike is that you can hear the world around you. Cycling over the causeway from Apalachicola to Eastpoint, i heard a puff and then a splash, looked over and there was a dolphin coming up for air. It reminded me that i forgot to mention i went out for a sunset paddle in the ocean at Topsail Hill, and i saw a little manta ray swimming around just a few feet away. Maybe not a manta, but some kind of ray. I was so enthralled i forgot to be scared, i don't know if those little guys can sting.
I was scared of the squirrels at last night's campsite, though. The fuck. They were brazen. The rangers were giving out warning leaflets that they have ripped through tents and chewed through plastic bins to get to food, like fucking rats! They supplied me with a plastic bin because my Ursack can protect against large bear claws and teeth, but rodents have smaller, sharper teeth that can eat through pretty much anything short of chainmail. But even with my food boxed overnight, it was no fun to eat with the damn things getting closer and closer to my food. They didn't even flinch or respond to loud noises or aggressive posturing. Probably some jackass campers fed them and now they learned to steal from humans instead of forage for themselves like proper wild animals.
But that's jumping ahead. I crossed the bridge from Apalachicola and continued up the forgotten coast to Carrabelle. Carrabelle was a similarly quaint town, but it felt a bit less old fisherman-y and a bit more old marina-y, if that makes sense. Less beards, more sunglasses.
I stopped in at a bar. I should talk about the bars on the forgotten coast because they are misleading. There are many little places called "raw bars", which sound like the kind of spot you can go to get energy balls and fruit smoothies, but also booze. Instead they are basically snack bars that also sell oysters.
Like, fuck oysters. Oysters have got to be one of the worst price to calorie/nutrition ratios in the world. Like all seafood (molluscs/crustaceans), they are horrendously expensive. Like all seafood, you have to do a lot of work to get a tiny morsel of sustenance. And, like all seafood, they don't have much flavor in themselves so effectively you're just eating sauce. It is baffling to me that people will sit down and order a half dozen oysters for 20 bucks or whatever. That's like paying 3 bucks for a single strawberry. It feels like the ultimate performative food, the sort of thing that only exists to show off how rich you are. "Look at me, spending as much as the plebs do for an entire dinner, on this amuse-bouche. Haha, now watch as the peon bleeds, attempting to shuck it for me!" And, of course, in places where oysters are harvested, they're always presented as some kind of rustic, down-homey, poor fisherman's thing, despite the fact they are just as expensive there as at any high class restaurant in the big city. What a scam.
Anyway, so "raw bars" serve oysters, hotdogs, burgers, and occasionally beer. I walked in and back out of two of them because they were so disappointing. Fortunately the one in Carrabelle had fruity cocktails so it was worth staying. I got a fruity cocktail. And a fish sandwich. It was one of the best fish sandwiches i have ever eaten.
I really think i could've made a bit more of a day of it along that strip. Apalachicola looked like a nice place to get lunch and Carrabelle looked like a fun place to get drunk and party into the night with the cigar smokin', Hawaiian shirt wearin', fruity drink drinkin' marina bums. But, the timing didn't work out, so i left the coast and headed into the swamp and my campsite at Ochlockonee River.
Aside from the squirrels, it was a nice state park. The campground was a whimsical loop between the trees, and the road was sand. The river was vast and marshy. Deer jumping about. Lots of birds. Bears too, apparently, though i didn't see one.
The forecast said it'd rain at 7am, so when i woke up at 7 and it wasn't raining i packed up my tent quicksmart. I left by 8, rushing my breakfast too, thanks to those squirrels. The air is thick and foggy, the kind of sweltering humidity i experienced that one day in the Big Thicket in Texas. It's real jungle weather. Glasses steaming up. Moisture on everything.
And then i popped a spoke. Not going over a bump, not with a heavily loaded food bag, it just popped. And, of course, i'm two days from a bike shop. I mean, i suppose i could make a beeline for Tallahassee and find one open tomorrow morning (today is Veteran's Day holiday), but that's in the wrong direction and i don't really want to get into the big city. Gainesville is the other option, a college town more or less in the right direction, and two days away. That's where i'm headed now. It's only one spoke, so far, so i should be alright. Well, and my rear shifter, which busted immediately after that.
Right now i am sitting in a café in St Marks where i got a disappointing fruit cup and avocado toast. They weren't awful, but my expectations were high and they were not met. I just wanted nice fresh food, but it wasn't. I mean avocado toast literally has both ingredients in the name, why you gotta heap a bunch of other non-avocado, non-toast, non-vegan shit on it? Also, St Marks is in a swamp and i am sitting outside, where everything smells like swamp muck. I don't know why people live out here, man. Deepest darkest Florida. Take me back to the coast already.
Guess i better get on the bike again, though. Won't be seeing the coast for a few days now.
-o-
Shortly after leaving St Marks, i came to a turnoff where there was a guy with a smoker just hanging out on the side of the road. No sign or anything, but i figured who would be smoking meat on the side of the road if they weren't selling it? So i asked, and he said he'd sell me a sandwich for 5 bucks.
Friends, i had the first pulled pork of my life that wasn't disappointing.
Dude had about 27 different BBQ sauces in the back of his pickup, both mass market and artisanal/boutique. I took his recommendation to add a bit of a sweet habanero boutique sauce with some mainstream brown sauce, but i didn't put too much so i could taste his own rub (or marinate, or whatever you call it). His own spice was kinda salt and pepper-y, subtle like the kalua pig i had in Fort Walton Beach, and not overwhelming the taste of the pork. The meat itself was far and away more interesting than any pulled pork i have ever had before. There were chunks of gelatinous fat in there. There were larger, "unpulled" bits of textured meat that needed a bit chewing to get through. Plus the usual stringy pork floss style filler that most other pulled porks are. Some of it was blackened, some of it was still red/pink, and some cooked white. It was just so much better than any American BBQ i had before i barely even want to refer to it as BBQ. I think i shall call it "roast pig" instead.
And all from some random old dude on the side of the road in the middle of the swamp. He offered one of his chairs to sit down and eat, so i did, and we talked bike touring. He said he used to motorcycle tour when he was younger and stealth camp along the side of the road. He said i wouldn't have anything to worry about round these parts if i did the same. He said he never met a Canadian before. He also had some advice of where to travel around his hometown in middle of nowhere swamp ass Florida on my way south, so as to avoid the interstate and big cities like Tampa and Orlando.
I often wonder how these exchanges might be different if people read me as a woman, or even as trans. Or if i wasn't white. There is a certain type of outdoorsy huntin', fishin' outlaw rebel that gets the appeal of solo bike touring, who sees it as a kind of adventurous, brave, manly pursuit. Those guys are far more easy to get along with - as a white "man", at least - than the dually-drivin', diesel smoke spewin', Trump flag wavin' performatively country dillweed.
After the BBQ break i headed back on the road through something like 60km of non-stop wilderness management areas to a town called Perry. The only people i saw were logging trucks, quarry trucks and hunters. Heard the gunshots too. I stopped at a gas station right out in middle of nowhere, just to check it out. They fix airboats. They make BBQ. They sell fishing supplies. That's it. Gator head on the counter. Country as fuck. I got a sweet tea.
Once i got to Perry i checked into the KOA, then settled into bed to watch a couple shows.
This morning everything was wet, i guess it rained a bit overnight, but it was clear by the morning. I packed up and started booking it to High Springs, where there is a bike shop. On the way i stopped at a café in Mayo, where i got one of the best coffees i have had in America. I also got a "Hawaiian" sandwich on fresh baked bread - ham, cream cheese, pineapple, mustard and pickle. And just now in Branford (the next town over), a fantastic fish and chips and pumpkin cake, all with a homemade feeling and simple, balanced flavors.
Swampy inland Florida might be less vegan-friendly than the coasts, but they still got a bit of pride in serving delicious local food, for the most part. Definitely the most diverse meals i've had on this trip, and always satisfying.
Florida peoples also continue to be the most talkative. With this one barista i got in some conversation about native Canadians and why "Eskimo" is considered an offensive term in Canada, although perhaps not in the US. A gift store clerk talked craft beer and primitive camping and "old Florida". Some dude in the coffee shop just gone warned me against cycling Alligator Alley, between Fort Myers and Miami. But he also said it was worse back in the 80s. I got a ground floor look at the inflation domino effect too, as one guy explained the local bakery is putting up the price of biscuits, chicken supplier is putting up the price of chicken, and those prices are going to hit the end consumers in the café too. Who kicked over the first domino? Probably climate change, and the continuing refusal of businesses to switch to producing more sustainable food. But that's an opinion i keep to myself for the most part.
Anyway, i better stop typing and get moving. I need to get to the bike shop by 5.
-o-
Man, the High Springs bicycle mechanic is a boss. Fixed all my stuff on the spot, didn't try to upsell, and taught me a bit about what he was doing while he was at it. Dude had a very prominent militia tattoo, so is probably at bare minimum a gun nut, but hey if you're not an asshole that's cool with me.
He fixed everything so fast i probably could've cycled to the city campground, but after two days of kinda desperation cycling (when something is broken you don't really enjoy the ride) i figured i deserved a motel. On the recommendation of the mechanic, i checked into the divey place downtown. It's a total Supernatural motel. They had to rip open a plastic sheet that was covering the door because they're renovating. Still looks oldskool as hell inside, but that's the charm.
Then i went next door to a fantastic diner that is basically the diner of my dreams. The decor in the front is typical American 50s neon and chrome, and in the back there is a beach shack styled beer garden. There is a band playing here later tonight. I can order fruity drinks. And - get this - almost half the menu items are vegan. Beyond burgers, Beyond bratwursts, sure, but this is how you get vegan food out to the ordinary person. Don't ghettoize it. Just put it right there next to the regular burgers, and people will give it a shot. Even if they only switch to vegan one or two days a week, that makes an impact on carbon footprint. Ten guys eating vegan one day a week is better than one guy eating vegan every day.
So, fruity drinks, vegan food, neon lights, even though i'm in the swampy bit of Florida, i can pretend like i'm still on the beach. This state already wins everything. Florida is the best state i visited on this trip, and it's even coming up on Nevada and Cali as one of my faves.
-o-
Okay. Of course the band is playing jazzy rock'n'roll with their guitars reverbed like we're back in the days before distortion pedals were a thing. Covers of everything but as if it was Dick Dale doing them. When i am old i shall buy a Hawaiian shirt and a Panama hat and this shall be my life.
-o-
It's a party in the motel parking lot too, with the neighbors playing their funky p funk allstars groovy tunes, and the Cuban (?) owner coming out to chat. What a wild and wonderful town.
-o-
I got quite drunk last night. All the formal campgrounds for a hundred miles around are fully booked, so i booked a spot on a private lakefront property. Florida smells like a fucking toilet when it rains. I hate the swamp.
-o-
Today was a miserable ride. It was overcast and spitting rain most of the time, the swampy parts reeked, and the non-swampy parts were hilly. Yes. I know. Florida is the flattest state in the union. Flatter than Kansas. But this one section is hilly. The hills are all very low, like only about 20m high, but the road just goes up and down and my legs are tired.
And then, the worst part, fucking Marion county, the road doesn't have a shoulder any more, but there are miles and miles of weird "estates" that according to Google Maps don't have any shops or restaurants inside them, but they take up so much land there must be tens of thousands of people living there. I assume they're private retirement communities, but if they are then fuck them for having so many people living there and still not paying enough tax to make the roads safe for passing cyclists. The gas prices here are the cheapest i've seen in the US too, barely a few cents over $3 a gallon. I assume this all means it's a tax boon for the developers who built the communities, but it feels like they're shirking their responsibility to society by owning massive amounts of land and housing entire cities worth of people without funding any services or decent roads outside the estate. Roads without shoulders should not be as busy as this one was.
Anyway, before i turned into that hellhole, i ate at Williston. I passed several other towns along the way and was about to take back my opinion that inland Florida restaurants were good, because everything looked as tedious as middle America all over again. Eventually i took the plunge with small-town Japanese... And it turned out to be pretty great. I got some sushi and tempura and tofu, all veg, and really enjoyed it.
Now i'm at a self-proclaimed tiki bar in Dunnellon that isn't very tiki. It has fruity drinks and a wooden deck, but no pastel colors or neon or flamingos or island themes. Like, you know, tikis. They're playing country music too. Sigh. It's my last stop before the campsite, and was intended to be a moment to try reset my brain after that stressful ride, but it sucks. Hopefully the last stretch to the lake will be okay. I am not a fan of this part of Florida at all. I can't wait to get back to the beach. Or, fuck, the swamp even. This is the worst.
-o-
I have been defeated.
Last night, i cycled out to the house of the host whose property i would be staying on. I used a website called Hipcamp, which is basically Airbnb for hipster vanlifers and cashed-up tent campers. It was an acre or so of lakefront property with a mobile home and a few sheds/cabins in various states of disrepair. He gave me a beer and had a fire going when i arrived, i set up my tent, and had a very relaxing and peaceful night. Hipcamp ain't cheap, but given how expensive campsites are anyway in Florida, it might be an okay option for emergencies like last night where i couldn't find anything else.
Tonight i also couldn't find anything else. There was one municipal campsite that i might've been able to stay at for free, although recently they changed their policies so that you can't do a same-day booking. It didn't matter, because during the first hour or two cycling today i just fucking gave up on this part of Florida. It's so fucking depressing. There is just miles upon miles of private estates, golf courses and gated communities. It's as if somebody gathered up all the suburbs from a large city, then just dropped them in the middle of nowhere. There are no shops. There are no restaurants. There is nothing except for a vast labyrinth of residential streets, with only one or two entrances onto the main road, where there are no services, so it's like cycling through a wasteland, except the wasteland is housing estates. It's just horrifying.
One of the places on my Florida bucket list was Coral Gables, which i wanted to visit because i played a great historical computer game that was set there - you are a sleazy real estate broker trying to make money during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s. I also kinda wanted to visit The Villages, after watching the documentary Some Kind of Heaven that was made about it. But now i don't want to visit either of those places, because i have just spent two fucking days cycling past planned communities, and judging by the maps this is just one small section of the vast fucking black hole of misery that these have carved across the state of Florida. It's disgusting. It's as if real estate never moved past the 1960s. Like there was never the realization that it's important to have walkable communities, to have mixed-use properties, to actually link your town to the next fucking town over in a way that makes both towns better. But this... it's like they've just plonked down one isolated prison camp after the next. It almost makes me want to cry, it's so utterly against everything i believe in. It's like China, but even fucking worse than China because it just goes on and on and on. Even in China they understand you at least need to put a metro station in here and there.
What's also like China is the poor people trying to sell shit on the side of the roads. Or going into the rich areas and trying to fish as much as they can from the canals before the police get called. Some of these roadside vendors sell homemade boiled peanuts, which i have seen since Louisiana. Today i saw a fruit stand - the first and only one i have seen in America's supposed capital of citrus fruits - so i bought some tangerines, a tomato and a large cup of boiled peanuts. I ate them tonight in tortillas. They remind me a lot of Chinese roadside snacks, where people just boil whatever the fuck and try to sell it - corn, dumplings, tofu, hotdogs, eggs and so on. Boiled peanuts are fiddly because you still have to shell them yourself, but after they're shelled they're soft and taste a bit like beans. I like them.
I am in a motel tonight. At the point in the road where i could choose to cycle through another 40km or so of fucking miserable gated communities on the way to a protected forest (which most of it has recently been un-protected and converted into more gated communities), i just said fuck it and turned toward the coast. I rode right out to the water, to a tiny little community at the end of the marshes called Pine Island (not to be confused with the much bigger Pine Island that lies further south). There are about 20 houses there and a public beach and a burger shack. I wanted to get fish and chips, but that's not a beach thing in America, so i got crab cakes instead. I don't think i've ever eaten them before, but they're basically potato croquettes with crab in them, i think? Doesn't matter, this was just an overpriced junk food place so i probably didn't get the authentic version, but it was just enough to make me feel slightly less miserable.
Not entirely less miserable, though. Fuck. I just gave up. Florida defeated me like Missouri defeated me. It's just so deflating to cycle through this shit. I got a motel. I downloaded the AEW Full Gear wrestling pay-per-view. I am going to watch it while i eat all the rest of the food that is in my Ursack because this fucking motel is on a billion-lane road with no restaurants or shops within walking distance and the vending machine doesn't work. My neighbor's wife cheated on him and i am getting half the screaming match over the phone. God this is so depressing.
I have booked my next two nights in advance in Florida state parks that are right in the heart of the Tampa suburbs and exurbs. It's the only way down. I hate creating an itinerary, i hate knowing where i am going to be two nights from now. It barely even feels like traveling any more with this kind of structure, it just feels like work. But i know if i don't book ahead in Florida then i won't get a spot. Ugh. Fuck everything. I hate this shit. I want to go back to the beach. The real beach, with sand on it, not these endless miles of marshland and private housing estates all round it. Fucking, fuck. I want to cry.
I was scared of the squirrels at last night's campsite, though. The fuck. They were brazen. The rangers were giving out warning leaflets that they have ripped through tents and chewed through plastic bins to get to food, like fucking rats! They supplied me with a plastic bin because my Ursack can protect against large bear claws and teeth, but rodents have smaller, sharper teeth that can eat through pretty much anything short of chainmail. But even with my food boxed overnight, it was no fun to eat with the damn things getting closer and closer to my food. They didn't even flinch or respond to loud noises or aggressive posturing. Probably some jackass campers fed them and now they learned to steal from humans instead of forage for themselves like proper wild animals.
But that's jumping ahead. I crossed the bridge from Apalachicola and continued up the forgotten coast to Carrabelle. Carrabelle was a similarly quaint town, but it felt a bit less old fisherman-y and a bit more old marina-y, if that makes sense. Less beards, more sunglasses.
I stopped in at a bar. I should talk about the bars on the forgotten coast because they are misleading. There are many little places called "raw bars", which sound like the kind of spot you can go to get energy balls and fruit smoothies, but also booze. Instead they are basically snack bars that also sell oysters.
Like, fuck oysters. Oysters have got to be one of the worst price to calorie/nutrition ratios in the world. Like all seafood (molluscs/crustaceans), they are horrendously expensive. Like all seafood, you have to do a lot of work to get a tiny morsel of sustenance. And, like all seafood, they don't have much flavor in themselves so effectively you're just eating sauce. It is baffling to me that people will sit down and order a half dozen oysters for 20 bucks or whatever. That's like paying 3 bucks for a single strawberry. It feels like the ultimate performative food, the sort of thing that only exists to show off how rich you are. "Look at me, spending as much as the plebs do for an entire dinner, on this amuse-bouche. Haha, now watch as the peon bleeds, attempting to shuck it for me!" And, of course, in places where oysters are harvested, they're always presented as some kind of rustic, down-homey, poor fisherman's thing, despite the fact they are just as expensive there as at any high class restaurant in the big city. What a scam.
Anyway, so "raw bars" serve oysters, hotdogs, burgers, and occasionally beer. I walked in and back out of two of them because they were so disappointing. Fortunately the one in Carrabelle had fruity cocktails so it was worth staying. I got a fruity cocktail. And a fish sandwich. It was one of the best fish sandwiches i have ever eaten.
I really think i could've made a bit more of a day of it along that strip. Apalachicola looked like a nice place to get lunch and Carrabelle looked like a fun place to get drunk and party into the night with the cigar smokin', Hawaiian shirt wearin', fruity drink drinkin' marina bums. But, the timing didn't work out, so i left the coast and headed into the swamp and my campsite at Ochlockonee River.
Aside from the squirrels, it was a nice state park. The campground was a whimsical loop between the trees, and the road was sand. The river was vast and marshy. Deer jumping about. Lots of birds. Bears too, apparently, though i didn't see one.
The forecast said it'd rain at 7am, so when i woke up at 7 and it wasn't raining i packed up my tent quicksmart. I left by 8, rushing my breakfast too, thanks to those squirrels. The air is thick and foggy, the kind of sweltering humidity i experienced that one day in the Big Thicket in Texas. It's real jungle weather. Glasses steaming up. Moisture on everything.
And then i popped a spoke. Not going over a bump, not with a heavily loaded food bag, it just popped. And, of course, i'm two days from a bike shop. I mean, i suppose i could make a beeline for Tallahassee and find one open tomorrow morning (today is Veteran's Day holiday), but that's in the wrong direction and i don't really want to get into the big city. Gainesville is the other option, a college town more or less in the right direction, and two days away. That's where i'm headed now. It's only one spoke, so far, so i should be alright. Well, and my rear shifter, which busted immediately after that.
Right now i am sitting in a café in St Marks where i got a disappointing fruit cup and avocado toast. They weren't awful, but my expectations were high and they were not met. I just wanted nice fresh food, but it wasn't. I mean avocado toast literally has both ingredients in the name, why you gotta heap a bunch of other non-avocado, non-toast, non-vegan shit on it? Also, St Marks is in a swamp and i am sitting outside, where everything smells like swamp muck. I don't know why people live out here, man. Deepest darkest Florida. Take me back to the coast already.
Guess i better get on the bike again, though. Won't be seeing the coast for a few days now.
-o-
Shortly after leaving St Marks, i came to a turnoff where there was a guy with a smoker just hanging out on the side of the road. No sign or anything, but i figured who would be smoking meat on the side of the road if they weren't selling it? So i asked, and he said he'd sell me a sandwich for 5 bucks.
Friends, i had the first pulled pork of my life that wasn't disappointing.
Dude had about 27 different BBQ sauces in the back of his pickup, both mass market and artisanal/boutique. I took his recommendation to add a bit of a sweet habanero boutique sauce with some mainstream brown sauce, but i didn't put too much so i could taste his own rub (or marinate, or whatever you call it). His own spice was kinda salt and pepper-y, subtle like the kalua pig i had in Fort Walton Beach, and not overwhelming the taste of the pork. The meat itself was far and away more interesting than any pulled pork i have ever had before. There were chunks of gelatinous fat in there. There were larger, "unpulled" bits of textured meat that needed a bit chewing to get through. Plus the usual stringy pork floss style filler that most other pulled porks are. Some of it was blackened, some of it was still red/pink, and some cooked white. It was just so much better than any American BBQ i had before i barely even want to refer to it as BBQ. I think i shall call it "roast pig" instead.
And all from some random old dude on the side of the road in the middle of the swamp. He offered one of his chairs to sit down and eat, so i did, and we talked bike touring. He said he used to motorcycle tour when he was younger and stealth camp along the side of the road. He said i wouldn't have anything to worry about round these parts if i did the same. He said he never met a Canadian before. He also had some advice of where to travel around his hometown in middle of nowhere swamp ass Florida on my way south, so as to avoid the interstate and big cities like Tampa and Orlando.
I often wonder how these exchanges might be different if people read me as a woman, or even as trans. Or if i wasn't white. There is a certain type of outdoorsy huntin', fishin' outlaw rebel that gets the appeal of solo bike touring, who sees it as a kind of adventurous, brave, manly pursuit. Those guys are far more easy to get along with - as a white "man", at least - than the dually-drivin', diesel smoke spewin', Trump flag wavin' performatively country dillweed.
After the BBQ break i headed back on the road through something like 60km of non-stop wilderness management areas to a town called Perry. The only people i saw were logging trucks, quarry trucks and hunters. Heard the gunshots too. I stopped at a gas station right out in middle of nowhere, just to check it out. They fix airboats. They make BBQ. They sell fishing supplies. That's it. Gator head on the counter. Country as fuck. I got a sweet tea.
Once i got to Perry i checked into the KOA, then settled into bed to watch a couple shows.
This morning everything was wet, i guess it rained a bit overnight, but it was clear by the morning. I packed up and started booking it to High Springs, where there is a bike shop. On the way i stopped at a café in Mayo, where i got one of the best coffees i have had in America. I also got a "Hawaiian" sandwich on fresh baked bread - ham, cream cheese, pineapple, mustard and pickle. And just now in Branford (the next town over), a fantastic fish and chips and pumpkin cake, all with a homemade feeling and simple, balanced flavors.
Swampy inland Florida might be less vegan-friendly than the coasts, but they still got a bit of pride in serving delicious local food, for the most part. Definitely the most diverse meals i've had on this trip, and always satisfying.
Florida peoples also continue to be the most talkative. With this one barista i got in some conversation about native Canadians and why "Eskimo" is considered an offensive term in Canada, although perhaps not in the US. A gift store clerk talked craft beer and primitive camping and "old Florida". Some dude in the coffee shop just gone warned me against cycling Alligator Alley, between Fort Myers and Miami. But he also said it was worse back in the 80s. I got a ground floor look at the inflation domino effect too, as one guy explained the local bakery is putting up the price of biscuits, chicken supplier is putting up the price of chicken, and those prices are going to hit the end consumers in the café too. Who kicked over the first domino? Probably climate change, and the continuing refusal of businesses to switch to producing more sustainable food. But that's an opinion i keep to myself for the most part.
Anyway, i better stop typing and get moving. I need to get to the bike shop by 5.
-o-
Man, the High Springs bicycle mechanic is a boss. Fixed all my stuff on the spot, didn't try to upsell, and taught me a bit about what he was doing while he was at it. Dude had a very prominent militia tattoo, so is probably at bare minimum a gun nut, but hey if you're not an asshole that's cool with me.
He fixed everything so fast i probably could've cycled to the city campground, but after two days of kinda desperation cycling (when something is broken you don't really enjoy the ride) i figured i deserved a motel. On the recommendation of the mechanic, i checked into the divey place downtown. It's a total Supernatural motel. They had to rip open a plastic sheet that was covering the door because they're renovating. Still looks oldskool as hell inside, but that's the charm.
Then i went next door to a fantastic diner that is basically the diner of my dreams. The decor in the front is typical American 50s neon and chrome, and in the back there is a beach shack styled beer garden. There is a band playing here later tonight. I can order fruity drinks. And - get this - almost half the menu items are vegan. Beyond burgers, Beyond bratwursts, sure, but this is how you get vegan food out to the ordinary person. Don't ghettoize it. Just put it right there next to the regular burgers, and people will give it a shot. Even if they only switch to vegan one or two days a week, that makes an impact on carbon footprint. Ten guys eating vegan one day a week is better than one guy eating vegan every day.
So, fruity drinks, vegan food, neon lights, even though i'm in the swampy bit of Florida, i can pretend like i'm still on the beach. This state already wins everything. Florida is the best state i visited on this trip, and it's even coming up on Nevada and Cali as one of my faves.
-o-
Okay. Of course the band is playing jazzy rock'n'roll with their guitars reverbed like we're back in the days before distortion pedals were a thing. Covers of everything but as if it was Dick Dale doing them. When i am old i shall buy a Hawaiian shirt and a Panama hat and this shall be my life.
-o-
It's a party in the motel parking lot too, with the neighbors playing their funky p funk allstars groovy tunes, and the Cuban (?) owner coming out to chat. What a wild and wonderful town.
-o-
I got quite drunk last night. All the formal campgrounds for a hundred miles around are fully booked, so i booked a spot on a private lakefront property. Florida smells like a fucking toilet when it rains. I hate the swamp.
-o-
Today was a miserable ride. It was overcast and spitting rain most of the time, the swampy parts reeked, and the non-swampy parts were hilly. Yes. I know. Florida is the flattest state in the union. Flatter than Kansas. But this one section is hilly. The hills are all very low, like only about 20m high, but the road just goes up and down and my legs are tired.
And then, the worst part, fucking Marion county, the road doesn't have a shoulder any more, but there are miles and miles of weird "estates" that according to Google Maps don't have any shops or restaurants inside them, but they take up so much land there must be tens of thousands of people living there. I assume they're private retirement communities, but if they are then fuck them for having so many people living there and still not paying enough tax to make the roads safe for passing cyclists. The gas prices here are the cheapest i've seen in the US too, barely a few cents over $3 a gallon. I assume this all means it's a tax boon for the developers who built the communities, but it feels like they're shirking their responsibility to society by owning massive amounts of land and housing entire cities worth of people without funding any services or decent roads outside the estate. Roads without shoulders should not be as busy as this one was.
Anyway, before i turned into that hellhole, i ate at Williston. I passed several other towns along the way and was about to take back my opinion that inland Florida restaurants were good, because everything looked as tedious as middle America all over again. Eventually i took the plunge with small-town Japanese... And it turned out to be pretty great. I got some sushi and tempura and tofu, all veg, and really enjoyed it.
Now i'm at a self-proclaimed tiki bar in Dunnellon that isn't very tiki. It has fruity drinks and a wooden deck, but no pastel colors or neon or flamingos or island themes. Like, you know, tikis. They're playing country music too. Sigh. It's my last stop before the campsite, and was intended to be a moment to try reset my brain after that stressful ride, but it sucks. Hopefully the last stretch to the lake will be okay. I am not a fan of this part of Florida at all. I can't wait to get back to the beach. Or, fuck, the swamp even. This is the worst.
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I have been defeated.
Last night, i cycled out to the house of the host whose property i would be staying on. I used a website called Hipcamp, which is basically Airbnb for hipster vanlifers and cashed-up tent campers. It was an acre or so of lakefront property with a mobile home and a few sheds/cabins in various states of disrepair. He gave me a beer and had a fire going when i arrived, i set up my tent, and had a very relaxing and peaceful night. Hipcamp ain't cheap, but given how expensive campsites are anyway in Florida, it might be an okay option for emergencies like last night where i couldn't find anything else.
Tonight i also couldn't find anything else. There was one municipal campsite that i might've been able to stay at for free, although recently they changed their policies so that you can't do a same-day booking. It didn't matter, because during the first hour or two cycling today i just fucking gave up on this part of Florida. It's so fucking depressing. There is just miles upon miles of private estates, golf courses and gated communities. It's as if somebody gathered up all the suburbs from a large city, then just dropped them in the middle of nowhere. There are no shops. There are no restaurants. There is nothing except for a vast labyrinth of residential streets, with only one or two entrances onto the main road, where there are no services, so it's like cycling through a wasteland, except the wasteland is housing estates. It's just horrifying.
One of the places on my Florida bucket list was Coral Gables, which i wanted to visit because i played a great historical computer game that was set there - you are a sleazy real estate broker trying to make money during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s. I also kinda wanted to visit The Villages, after watching the documentary Some Kind of Heaven that was made about it. But now i don't want to visit either of those places, because i have just spent two fucking days cycling past planned communities, and judging by the maps this is just one small section of the vast fucking black hole of misery that these have carved across the state of Florida. It's disgusting. It's as if real estate never moved past the 1960s. Like there was never the realization that it's important to have walkable communities, to have mixed-use properties, to actually link your town to the next fucking town over in a way that makes both towns better. But this... it's like they've just plonked down one isolated prison camp after the next. It almost makes me want to cry, it's so utterly against everything i believe in. It's like China, but even fucking worse than China because it just goes on and on and on. Even in China they understand you at least need to put a metro station in here and there.
What's also like China is the poor people trying to sell shit on the side of the roads. Or going into the rich areas and trying to fish as much as they can from the canals before the police get called. Some of these roadside vendors sell homemade boiled peanuts, which i have seen since Louisiana. Today i saw a fruit stand - the first and only one i have seen in America's supposed capital of citrus fruits - so i bought some tangerines, a tomato and a large cup of boiled peanuts. I ate them tonight in tortillas. They remind me a lot of Chinese roadside snacks, where people just boil whatever the fuck and try to sell it - corn, dumplings, tofu, hotdogs, eggs and so on. Boiled peanuts are fiddly because you still have to shell them yourself, but after they're shelled they're soft and taste a bit like beans. I like them.
I am in a motel tonight. At the point in the road where i could choose to cycle through another 40km or so of fucking miserable gated communities on the way to a protected forest (which most of it has recently been un-protected and converted into more gated communities), i just said fuck it and turned toward the coast. I rode right out to the water, to a tiny little community at the end of the marshes called Pine Island (not to be confused with the much bigger Pine Island that lies further south). There are about 20 houses there and a public beach and a burger shack. I wanted to get fish and chips, but that's not a beach thing in America, so i got crab cakes instead. I don't think i've ever eaten them before, but they're basically potato croquettes with crab in them, i think? Doesn't matter, this was just an overpriced junk food place so i probably didn't get the authentic version, but it was just enough to make me feel slightly less miserable.
Not entirely less miserable, though. Fuck. I just gave up. Florida defeated me like Missouri defeated me. It's just so deflating to cycle through this shit. I got a motel. I downloaded the AEW Full Gear wrestling pay-per-view. I am going to watch it while i eat all the rest of the food that is in my Ursack because this fucking motel is on a billion-lane road with no restaurants or shops within walking distance and the vending machine doesn't work. My neighbor's wife cheated on him and i am getting half the screaming match over the phone. God this is so depressing.
I have booked my next two nights in advance in Florida state parks that are right in the heart of the Tampa suburbs and exurbs. It's the only way down. I hate creating an itinerary, i hate knowing where i am going to be two nights from now. It barely even feels like traveling any more with this kind of structure, it just feels like work. But i know if i don't book ahead in Florida then i won't get a spot. Ugh. Fuck everything. I hate this shit. I want to go back to the beach. The real beach, with sand on it, not these endless miles of marshland and private housing estates all round it. Fucking, fuck. I want to cry.