Gypsy Chickens in an Unholy Land

[Nice Goat]

Another awesome day.  No rain, bright blue skies mostly.  After lunch, we rode a tour trolley all around Key West --- saw most of the island and the major attractions.

After that, we went to Sloppy Joes for a while to listen to music and drink cold drinks.  Then we went to Mallory Square to watch the sunset and the street performers.

[Nice Goat]

[TFancher]

Our view at lunchtime.
....and at sunset

[KevinB]

Just rolled into the driveway about 20 minutes ago.

4 days,  1903 miles,  1 helluva time.

[JBMFT]

Home. If you had a chance of doing this trip and you didn't... I'm going to say you blew it. One of the best rides and vacations I've had in quite some time. Photographic evidence to come.

[Nice Goat]

I made it home about 30 minutes ago.  Got the bike unpacked.  About to shower, then start processing the photos and video that I took.

[kdtrull]

Welcome home fellers.

[TFancher]

I'm home about 8:45. 1970 miles. That is about the most fun I've had in a very long time. Thanks for putting this on Glenn and to everyone who went, I hope you had half as much fun as I did. Sorry if you missed it.

[Brian A]

It was good. Real good.

If you look back at Glenn's pic of us having lunch in Key West you can see those who shared in the discussion.

We talked about life and "stuff". I made mention of having shared something in my Idaho ride report. Something that applied to our trip to Key West and our lunch that day.

Here is a cut/paste from the Idaho report. It is what we talked about.

This pretty much sums up the past 4 days.

Dr. Thomas Gilovich is a psychology professor at Cornell University. His research is interesting and has served, on a personal level, to reinforce my views of myself and life.

"There's a very logical assumption that most people make when spending their money: that because a physical object will last longer, it will make us happier for a longer time than a one-off experience like a concert or vacation. According to recent research, it turns out that assumption is completely wrong.

"One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation," says Dr. Gilovich. "We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them."

"Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods," says Gilovich. "You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences." "


4 days and my sum total is much larger now.

[KevinB]

I was having way too much fun to remember to take photos.

Here's the very few mediocre pics I took...




Steinhatchie, FL




Value Jet Flight 592 Memorial

[Brian A]

So yeah. We saw this guy do his thing at Mallory Square.
And it was really cool. 

The dude was quite legit. Or at least I thought so.

[TFancher]

A few more of mine.

And 1 that Glenn took of some guy drinking a beer.

[Nice Goat]

I went back and replaced most of the photos in my posts above with higher resolution links, so you can click on the photo and get a larger version.

I had a total of 1,986 miles in our four days of riding.  It was painful on Day 3 and Day 4.

A couple of notes about the ride....

This ride was the most miles that I have ever done in four days.  I think that doing 820 miles on the first day was good because we arrived in Key West sooner, but it also took a lot of our energy.

It was also the longest group ride that I have ever led.  I was amazed that so many people wanted to go.  We had a few bike issues and some trouble keeping the group together, but that was all expected.  No matter how hard you try to keep the group together, people sometimes need their alone time and their personal space, so it was all good.  We all had each other's phone numbers in case there was a major problem, but for the most part, everybody took care of themselves and others.

April is a very good month to visit Florida.  We had very little rain, very few bugs, excellent temperatures, and traffic was not terrible overall.  It tends to rain more in northern Florida, but once you get below Orlando, the Gulf has less of an effect on lower Florida.

The Keys have a very laid-back vibe, and most everybody was relaxed and having a good time.  We really did not encounter any a-holes in the Keys, and the few times when our group was acting up, nobody paid us any attention.  Never once felt unwelcome or unsafe in the Keys.

[Nice Goat]

A few more pictures...

We saw lots of bicycles with ape hangers....



We found time to play a tag game on another forum...



While we were at a rest stop, a bird flew up and landed on Tony's windshield.  A few moments later, he left his mark and flew off.



The music man at Sparky's was awesome.  I've never seen anybody play "The Wall" all by their lonesome.  The music man helped to re-energize our crew after a long day walking all over Key West.



The ValueJet Flight 592 Memorial was powerful.  Each stone obelisk represents a person who died in the crash, and it was hard not imagining the obelisks as people when you walked through the monument.

[Nice Goat]

Good Times Marina and Hotel was really awesome.  I have been to Florida more times than I can remember, but like most people, I have usually stayed in the tourist areas.  Steinhatchie is not a tourist town --- it is a working class fishing town.  It made me realize that there are large portions of Florida about which I know nothing.  The locals probably like it that way, but from now on, I will make an extra effort to visit parts of Florida that are not considered tourist destinations.