1999 November

I ride up to the gate as usual at 7 am, and surprise! It’s a full gate, I can’t go under. There are two gates, one on the bike path and one on the road, right next to each other. As I’m removing my panniers a car pulls up, a ranger gets out, and starts opening the road gate. I don’t know what to do, so I keep fussing with my bags. He drives in, gets out, and closes the gate again behind him. His shirt is unbuttoned and he seems to be in a hurry. I don’t know whether he doesn’t see me or doesn’t care, but he leaves me in the same predicament I started in. I’ve soon tossed the bags and bike over the fence, put them back together, and I’m off again.

It takes a lot longer than I thought it would to reach Ft. Meyer. I go through Ft. Meyer’s Beach on the keys, cross the pass, and then ride endless sidewalks through palm-studded neighborhoods. I pass Thomas Edison’s winter home but have no time to explore.

The bridge over the Caloosahatchee Inlet is hairy. I have to ride about a mile across on it on a ledge just barely wide enough for me, a low guard rail threatening my fingers on the right, traffic on the left, and topped off by high crosswinds. It takes a while to unclench my jaw afterward.

The road, 41, breaks west for Venice through glades, golf courses, clubs, and strip. That steady north wind ceases to resist me, and I put the miles back. 41 is generally decent, though the shoulder goes away now and then. Traffic is moderate.

After Venice it’s mostly strip mall to Sarasota. I scout for bike shops, but see none. By and by I roll up to Paul Sudermann’s house and find him about to give a piano lesson. He sets me up in an apartment upstairs where I relax, stretch, and clean up.

The family converges about 6 o’clock and takes me out for Thai food. I meet Susan, a petite Italian woman, but mostly I meet her son Jason who talks nonstop and is disappointed that I am tougher to stump with science questions than his mom and Paul. He’s in a similar situation to me at 12, only Susan doesn’t get along with his father anymore. He’s got some tough times ahead, but I predict he’ll pull out eventually with a good education and enough fire left to go places. Susan and Paul seem happy together. They enjoy good food and each other. They work hard, and are both very active in Jason’s life. They sqeeze orange juice from the tree in the back yard, and swim in their pool.

That’s about all I have time to learn at dinner. I make the mistake of mentioning the Thai restaurant in Greenville, which is impossible to compete with. Still, I enjoy the food and go to bed full and very tired.

I’m under the gate a little early, about 6:45. Slowly the developments grow until I hit Naples. There I’m instantly in beachfront condo land again. I peer out over the Gulf of Mexico for the first time of my life. The water looks clean and blue.

It takes a long time to run out of condos. I ride some highway, cut through some more humble neighborhoods. Finally I find the road that runs along the keys south of Ft. Meyers. There’s a state park I didn’t know about on one of them, Lover’s Key. I check it out. There are lots of boardwalks and beaches, all open to bikes. I hang out, swim in the gulf near a school of dolphins, eat, and finally decide to camp on the beach somewhere. I haven’t come far today, but it’s a nice spot, and I haven’t yet slept on the beach.

I explore, cook some dinner, use a beach shower, buy ice cream, and swim again. When I decide to look for a spot to camp, I ride up the beach. In one area there’s a gorgeous woman sunbathing nude, and a guy videotaping her. I try not to smile too big as I ride by.

I find my spot and read until sundown. Vic told me about something called “greenflash”. I watch the sun sink into the gulf, and sure enough the last little bit looks like it turns bright green before it disappears. The air is warm but fresh, the sky clear. I pitch the tent without the rainfly so I can watch the stars as they pop out.

Not hard to get up and leave that nasty campground early. I stop and cook breakfast at a wayside, where a fisherman stops and says hello after walking by a few times. Then he comes back in his truck, reaches in a cooler and cerimoniously hands me half a dozen big claws and looks at me expectantly. “Thanks,” I say, “what are they?” Patiently, and a little disappointed, he explains that Stone Crab is a local delicacy. When continue to act clueless he demonstrates how to eat one.

After that I ride easy. I have to patch the front tire again once. On the bike I just stare out at the grassy, watery, cypress-filled expanses as they go by. There are so many American Egrets it looks as if they’re growing in the tangled branches of the cypress stands. Lots more alligators too, some of them holding their ground right in the road.

When I leave the preserve the wildlife slowly fades and the signs of development grow. It’s still early when I reach Collier Seminole State Park. It’s mainly a departure point for canoe trips into another preserved area of the Everglades. I note that it might be a good spot to come back with a sea kayak some day.

I lay around the picnic area eating, reading, and writing. Some Dutch tourists give me a couple of sandwiches and some veggies. I’m doing well in the food arena today!

There is a smaller area of the enormous campground where I decide to risk occupying a site. I melt some butter and start bludgeoning my stone crab claws. They’re not bad! When the ranger drives by he doesn’t even notice me there at the picnic table, dipping fresh crab meat in melted butter. The day has gone well.

The gate has been closed when I leave in the morning, but as usual I just ride under it. Thankfully traffic is light on the shoulderless road.

The crossroads with 41 are in the middle of nowhere. A huge Indian casino stands caddy-corner from a lone gas station. Looking down the thin pavement of 27 as it continues south toward the keys, and considering all the recommendations I’ve received, I decide not to go for Key West. I figure this may be the last gas station I see for a while, so I buy a snack and a few supplies.

41 has a nice big shoulder, so I relax and enjoy the sun and vast Everglade grasslands. I take the first airboat I see. The guy there is in army fatigues and has a huge wad of tobacco in his cheek. The airboats are small and it looks like they have a good touring area. They’re not ready yet, so I follow some German tourists to an area in the back. There is an enormous 11-ft alligator in a fenced pen there. He doesn’t even look real except for his stony eyes. He stays perfectly still. I wonder if he’s a little fat. A separate area contains two smaller gators. A couple of guys are herding them around by poking them behind the legs with long sticks. They bring one, about 9 feet long, to the front. “Little Man” is his name, as opposed to “Big Man” in the other cage. Jesse, a pony-tailed guy in jeans, demonstrates the art of alligator wrestling to us. He taps Little Man on the top of his snout. Little Man can’t see straight ahead, so he just opens his mouth. He’s cold still, and not thrashing around much. Jesse lifts his lower jaw up from underneath, again out of the gator’s eyesight. His head is now lifted almost vertically. Jesse clasps those jaws in his hands, then deftly moves around the gator’s head with one knee behind his fore leg. Now, he says, the gator is pretty much helpless. He tucks the monster’s jaws under his chin and lets go with his hands. He then picks a German girl from the audience, who he instructs to perform all of these feats except the switch from front to back. She does it all with remarkably little trembling.

There is also a restaurant here that raises gators in glass tanks and serves them cooked. Those gator tanks are an interesting and sad sight. But, from what I’ve heard, they are not as awful as the places that raise the chickens and pigs we eat. I just hadn’t thought of alligators as a food product.

The airboat ride is great. Not only do you get the thrill of flying over grass and water, but you see the flora and fauna of the Everglades right up close, and have someone there to identify them. I eat a stem of sawgrass, watch an alligator swim, examine the trees, and learn about this 100-mile-long, 40-mile-wide river of grass called the Everglades.

When I leave, the front tire is low. I pump it up, but soon have to stop and patch it. There are gators by the road here and there, gaping and sunning, but not moving at all. I ride by with curious care. I’m happy I took my first airboat opportunity when I see other places cramming 50 people on a boat.

The campground I planned to stay at is closed and barren, and I need water. I continue to the visitor center for that. There are fish feeding there that make a popping noise. It sounds like a bunch of people jumping on bubble wrap.

By the time I reach the next campground my back tire is low. There are no nice spots here, just a multitude of swamp buggys parked around a lake. I sit in the dirt and pull a piece of glass out of my tire, watch people drink and drive their monster trucks around, and finally pitch the tent and rest.

I read until 8 waiting for Aunt Lou to get up. In the silence I start to consider what I would do if she died during the night, but then she emerges. Just doing her morning devotionals, she says. We have a quick breakfast, then I pack up and go. I take Nerissa’s phone as it seems to make Aunt Lou nervous. I give her a big hug goodbye, and she gives me an envelope, which I tuck away.

It’s not hard getting around Miami, I just weave my way through surburbia. I only have to turn around once. All my cravings are answered by a Taco Bell and Dairy Queen before I leave civilization and head for highway 27. It gets rural fast as I go west, and 27 is really Everglades country. Nothing but swampgrass and mangrove trees out here. I ask the universe for a decent place to camp. Late in the afternoon a campground appears. I just ride in and set up. Then sun sets gray and gold, and no one asks me for any money.

We eat a light breakfast in the dining room and I meet some of Aunt Lou’s friends, including Lydia Hewitt, who says she was my dad’s 4th grade teacher at Wheaton. How does she remember him? “Sad” and “disturbed” are the only words she comes up with. She remembers something about him being separated from his mother while she was sick with cancer.

We watch the Macy’s parade on TV and look at some old pictures. She only has a few, but they are high quality portraits. I get her to talk a bit about her trip around the world with Uncle Bill, but she is reticent. She seems singularly focused on joining Uncle Bill in heaven. I wonder what it must be like to fully believe in and expect such a reunion and ultimate destination? Unable to even imagine such a state, it seems unlikely I’ll ever reach it myself.

Nerissa never calls. The number where I contacted her before is not responding.

At noon we go down to the cafe for our Thankgiving dinner. There is a flurry of activity at first, then it’s just us and a woman in a wheelchair by herself. I try to think of all the relatives we have in common and what they might be doing today, but I can’t seem to perk Aunt Lou’s interest. We barely keep the conversation going. It’s like this through the rest of the day. We take a nap, then watch a sermon on TV. I think it might be a rerun of a sermon I watched out of curiosity as a child. The tired old grain-of-sand-on-the-beach metaphor for eternity. The Golden Rule, presented at its simplest and least paradoxical levels. And always that tacit assumption of the bible as the sole source of truth. Every Christian evangelist I’ve heard a message from on this trip has assumed that I accept this. And so they all miss their mark and their messages bounce off of me, meaning nothing. They’re baiting their hook with fish and trying to catch an anteater. I go to bed without asking Aunt Lou the things I’d really like to know, leaving her to cope with her own struggles and not with mine.

I’m escorted out of the park by another wet little rain shower. Under the gate at 7 am. Slowly the terrain becomes more urban, until I’m in the pits of West Palm Beach. A man at the city limits persisently asks me for a cigarette. A big man with a bleached, dredded beard checks payphones for change. A woman with her shirt open in the front yells at me as I pass, careless of her sun-beaten chest. I wait until the neighborhoods improve before I stop for breakfast.

When I cross the intracoastal to Palm Beach I’m instantly in wealthyland again. I stop and watch the bright blue waves roll in for a while.

Miles of condos, beaches, and pretty tanned people line the way to Boca. I find it pleasant to stop and watch the girls shower the salt off their bodies. This is the sort of thing one never sees in the high country. Too bad, really.

It’s mind boggling to try to imagine how many wealthy retirees must inhabit this coast. I envision myself riding down A1A in the future in a grand canyon of condos hundreds of miles long, interrupted only by upscale homes, estates, and the occasional conspicuous park where vegetation and wildlife may still exist. If the developers truly have vision perhaps they’ll build a private road along the tops of the condos from which the ocean can be seen, and inhabitants can travel to the store without ever descending into the dusty canyon.

I say goodbye to the East Coast and head west into Boca Raton. I haven’t really seen much of the coast between here and Bar Harbor, Maine, but I feel a little melancholy anyway.

To avoid showing up hungry I stop for a rather large calzone. A man eating there warns me not to start my own business. “Get a good 9 to 5 job working for someone else.” Further west I pick up a cell phone by the side of the road, scraped up but still working. I make one last stop at Walgreens for some odor eaters for my foul shoes, then make for Aunt Lou’s.

I’m talking to a couple sitting out in front of the retirement home when a tiny lady in a brown wig and bright lipstick somes trotting up to me, “Dylan?” So this is my Aunt Lou. She’s excited that she saw me ride in from her window. She makes some remarks about answered prayers and the quantity of perspiration I’ve accumulated. I welcome her suggestion of a shower. Afterward I fiddle with the cell phone I picked up looking for a number to call, but Aunt Lou is eager to get to dinner. I’m still fairly full from that big calzone, but apparently I must eat again. I manage to pack it in while I drink about 8 glasses of lemon iced tea and talk about my journey. I learn that Aunt Lou is 89, in good health but for a bad knee, and misses my great Uncle Bill terribly since he died a couple of years ago.

I call Nerissa, the owner of the cellphone. She is very relieved and agrees to come pick it up at 10 am tomorrow. I look forward to the meeting - I like the way she sounds.

We watch the news, Jeopardy, and a new Regis Feldman game show before bed. Game shows seem to be a guilty pleasure for Aunt Lou.

A lazy morning. I pack, Lee walks, Vic and I eat cereal. I accept their offer for coffee to avoid offending my hosts. Coffee is one of those words that means different things to different people, and I’m afraid I’ve become too snobby to include the canned-grounds-drip-filter variety in my definition. A few pictures, and I’m off again. Is it hard to leave the lifestyle of a very comfortable retirement? I have to admit I liked it. But I love what I’m doing.

My bowl of cereal has left me hungry, so after a while I stop at a little dive and load up with an omelette, hash browns, and toast.

I see a bike shop and buy a new pump, one with easier action and a pressure guage.

I call my great Aunt Lou. She’s happy to hear from me, and invites me to stay for Thanksgiving when the phone disconnects. I have to try two more phones and buy a new phone card before I can get her again. I’m frustrated with phone cards that don’t work, and hang up on you when you call the customer service number. Eventually I reach her again and we finish our plans.

I impusively buy an expensive milkshake, then a load of good groceries. I conclude that the good life has made me careless with my money.

Finally I get around to making some miles. It’s familiar terrain between the ocean and the intracoastal hummocks, beaches, parks, and condos. Then the road breaks inland. Often there are sidealks to ride on, but sometimes I’m forced onto shoulderless road with the cars. The road follows a railroad, and just for fun and a break from the traffic I try riding on the rail for a while. This could be done, but would require a lot of practice. I just manage to get very sweaty in a quarter of a mile.

Eventually I hit 1 with its broad shoulders, then the Jonathan Dickson State Park. Again I easily pull the trick of paying $1 to picnic, then scurrying off into the trees to camp.

Vic and Lee play golf today, so after breakfast I go to the beach and write to the music of the surf. When I get restless, I ride north towards some big clouds. Soon I’m in a rain so wet I feel like I’m bicycling underwater. I take shelter at another beach with some surfers. After this storm, and throughout my whole stay at Vero Beach, the sky is decorated with rainbows. There are so many that Vic jokes it must be National Rainbow Week.

My ride around Vero Beach reveals many, many expensive homes and condos, golf courses, and yacht clubs. Somehow I miss “downtown” entirely.

Vic returns from his game admitting that he was unable to resist the demands to bring me to dinner at the club. At least I have time to go out on the sailboard again first. There is better wind today, and I play for hours, until I feel my arms will soon come off at the elbows. I never imagined such carefree amusement would find me on this trip.

For dinner Vic loans me an entire suit of clothes. Amazingly, once everything is tucked in and cinched up, I don’t look half bad. I get a very strange feeling when I look at myself, though. I realize that I have come to think of my clothes as part of me after wearing them every day for 5 months. I feel now like I’ve stepped into a new identity, and I’m whisked off to the club.

Almost everyone there is older than Vic and Lee. I discover that evening dress for golfers may incliude such eye-popping combos as a neon orange jacket with blue-green plaid slacks. The club is dark and lofty, with staff (including the only black people I’ve seen around) constantly running past putting drinks in your hand. I begin responding to the barrage of questions, glad that I brought my map. This continues through dinner. I have learned to eat furiously whenever someone else is talking. I am the conversation piece and the entertainment for the evening. I’m afraid I overshadow the guest of honor, Jeannie, who made the first hole-in-one of her life today.

Afterwards Vic and I attempt to watch Das Boot, but we both give up and go to bed halfway through.

Vic and I have cereal while Lee is on her morning walk. Then we spend a couple of hours washing the boat, which already looks clean to me. My reward for this is an outing on the windsurfer, which takes a while to put together. Somehow, once I’m in the water, my windsurfing experience from 14 years comes back and I’m able to sail around the cove. Sort of. I fall few times and before I know it it’s time to get ready for an evening outing. I talk Vic into taking the board out for a swift cruise nonetheless, and I carefully watch his much more skillful manuevers.

Two friends in their 70’s, Dick and Kay, arrive for dinner. We climb on the boat and embark on an 8-mile ride up the intracoastal waterway to have drinks and a candlelight dinner on the boat. I learn that they have cycled the Florida keys, but have nothing good to say about the roads. Kay has a way of moving that makes it clear she is still a beautful woman, and always has been.

On the return trip a school of dolphins chase us, playing in the wake. I’m thrilled. They jump gracefully not five feet away. I silently urge them, challenging them in my mind to jump ever higher. They do it! Somehow they aim their splashes directly at me, as if they’re competing to see who can give me the best soaking. Then they disappear. I say goodnight to them, but keep watching, thinking now and then I see one in the distance behind us.