Arcadia, Florida

With my flight from Guyana arriving in Miami at five a.m. I was able to get a slight jump on the morning rush hour traffic after clearing customs and reassembling my bike.  I was initially a bit groggy with my limited sleep on the five-hour flight, but once I began riding I was invigorated with the joy of being back in the homeland and pedaling in temperatures nearly thirty degrees less than what I left.  It was as if someone had turned the air conditioning down to under seventy, quite a contrast to my last hotel in Georgetown where my room didn’t fall below eighty degrees.   It was sheer bliss to be riding in cool temperatures and to be back in a place where the ant wasn’t the dominant species.

Before long the four-lane Okeechobee Highway was bumper-to-bumper traffic and remained so for nearly an hour until I escaped the urban sprawl and got out into rural Florida.  The terrain turned swampy and wide open with a canal running along the highway for fifty miles until the first town of South Bay at the bottom of Lake Okeechobee, the second largest fresh water lake after Lake Michigan fully in the US in the lower forty-eight. For some of the way the shoulder was marked with a bicycle, though I was the only cyclist taking advantage of it.

A cool wind from the north kept me under ten miles per hour, but I had no complaints, as for the first time in over two months I could pedal without the weight of uncertainty of what lay ahead and what hurdles it might present. I could never fully relax for two months preoccupied with one concern after another, not the least of which was making sure I had enough water, carrying as many as nine bottles of water at times. Even when I could somewhat lose myself in the riding, there was always something or other giving me pause, especially with the perils of camping amongst the most voracious ants and mosquitoes I’ve ever encountered.

What a relief it was not to have to worry about finding nourishing food or cold drink or places out of the elements for a rest or uninfested places to camp or crossing borders or finding bike shops or enduring rough roads.  I was back in the land of libraries and service stations with ice dispensers and ninety-nine cent hot dogs with loads of toppings and easy camping and toilets one could flush toilet paper down.  It was as if I had gone to heaven.  I was happy to have this capper to my South America adventure to ease me back into life in the land of plenty (or too much) rather than flying all the way to Chicago, much as I looked forward to seeing Janina and catching up on all the Oscar season movie releases I’d missed.

From the very beginning of my life as a touring cycling, going back to 1977 with a 4,000 mile coast-to-coast ride, I’ve never wanted a trip to end.  On that first one I continued down the Pacific coast for another thousand miles.  A long bike tour becomes a way of life that is hard to relinquish. This would be a perfect wind-down, gathering Carnegie libraries and also being able to drop in on one of my favorite touring companions, Jim Redd, who is presently residing in Gulf Shores, Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico with his wife Marshia, having recently divested themselves of their bed-and-breakfast in Banos, Ecuador.  It is hard to pass up any opportunity to meet up with The Don.

At some point I’ll let Amtrak finish off my return to Chicago.  It will be a much easier ride completing this journey to my home in Countryside with Janina from Union Station in the city than from O’Hare out in the burbs, though about the equal distance—sixteen miles. 

The first supermarket I came upon in Miami was a Walmart, which I didn’t mind at all, as it’s two-pound, two thousand-calorie tub of Amish macaroni salad is one of my staples when touring in the US. I was delighted to make some of it my breakfast and first meal back home. As I sat beside my bike outside the store making a dent in it, a woman paused on her way in and asked with a strong Spanish accent if she could buy me a chicken.  It was nice to inspire generosity, as I had in South America, though it would be now more out of pity and concern than respect and admiration.  I was no longer heroic, but rather homeless.  A day later as I sat outside a Circle K eating a hotdog and tapping away on my iPad someone slipped me a five dollar bill.

Mosquitoes continued to be drawn to me as well, though not with the same persistence and determination as in South America. A handful slipped into my tent as I was setting it up and filling it with my gear, but no more through its multitude of holes.  I had camped in one of the few clusters of trees I had seen alongside the canal.  Though I didn’t see any, I was told it was inhabited by alligators. Nor did I notice any evidence of them from footprints or slitherings in the mud.

I had fallen behind in my podcasts with the weak WiFi of Guyana struggling to download them.  I have a lot of catching up to do.  Michael Moore’s podcast offered up its second 5-6-7 mention, though this time it was from a guest, the author Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who observed that the US military budget is as large as the next 5-6-7 countries combined.   

The deceased Elie Wiesel in an interview with Teri Gros on Fresh Air from 1988 replayed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, also invoked the magic number.  Gros asked him why he waited ten years before he wrote about his Auschwitz experience.  He said he could have waited five or six or seven years, but arbitrarily chose ten.  

Tony Kornheiser also perked up my ears with a 5-6-7 mention, saying that there are presently 5-6-7 upper-tier quarterbacks presently in the NFL that he would gladly have on his team.  And Peter King on his football podcast, speaking of Kansas City’s quarterback Patrick Mahomes, said he was destined for greatness from the age of 5-6-7 hanging out with major league baseball players his father played with.