Saturday, May 7, 2011
Perry to Chiefland, FL
68 miles
The beginning of the road was a little irritating today. I arrived in Athena, and the only building was a bike shop. Cool!
Oh. A motorcycle shop. And no convenient store either.
Then there was a lot of road narrowing, which really means the shoulder narrows, which means I have to swing out in to the road. But the way they do it is with stripes and bumps leading up to the narrow part which make biking on the shoulder more difficult.
I don’t quite get the point of these. Are they reminding drivers not to drive on the shoulder? Do drivers in Florida need that dramatic of a reminder?
Coming into Cross City, I knew there was a bike path somewhere, but mostly I was looking for someplace to eat. First, I met Artie and Moon. They’re retired, and they described how they often bike 43 miles on the trail with their 83 year old friend, stopping at all the Hardee’s along the way to drink tea! You’re never too old to bike, says Artie, a retired truck driver, whose hobby is rebuilding bikes. You just have to find the bike that fits you. Like me, he rides a red Giant, though he has rebuilt his several times, most recently after he was run over on it and in a coma four days from Monday to Thanksgiving. It took him nine months to heal from that, and fixing up the bike he got hit on was a big part of that. “I like that bike the best,” he says. “I guess it’s just sentimental.”
When they’re not biking, this crew sits at the picnic table on the bike path under a gazebo and watches traffic. “We’re retired. We ain’t got nothing else to do.” That’s how I met them. I came into town on the road, and they yelled, “Hey, girl on the bicycle! Get off the road! The path is over here!” They also seem to spend a lot of time listening to Artie’s tales of love and loss. Just in the time I was there, I heard how he had his heart broken in Seattle, Pheonix and El Cajon!
I had lunch at a tacky but serviceable BBQ place across the street, where I met a nice couple who were taking a break from flying their small plane. It was a really bumpy day in the air, too. They had an interesting view of the unpaved roads, hunt clubs and tree farms from up there. When I left, I had to check in with Artie and Moon, who were still keeping an eye on traffic. I was happy to get off the road and start down the path.
I soon came across another rider, and I mistakenly asked him if he was retired, too. Oh, no. Mr. Websmartsuccess moved here from Miami to help his son. “Wrong answer!” he said. I guess it’s not working out that well for him. “They still use DSL out here!” I mentioned I had seen a lot of cell towers. The towers are here, he told me, but they’re not plugged in. He also railed against the retired people going to Hardee’s to drink tea. He goes there to use the wifi, but they only have one outlet and they don’t like people to use it, because they think it will run up their bill. He brings a “brick,” a power strip.
He had nothing nice to say about the people who lived around here. “Just stay out of their yards and don’t mess with their dogs,” he advised. I declined to share his brick at Hardee’s, and kept on, starting to feel like I was in Carl Hiassen’s Florida now.
I met a music teacher and her husband. They described the locals as “interesting.” It’s a beautiful area, but there’s no call for a music teacher here, and no gigs either. On July 1, they’re moving to Gainesville after nine years, due to gas prices. Her husband had been commuting an hour each way, and the savings in gas would cover the higher housing prices.
I asked what they thought about canoeing on the Suwannee, and they told me the story of when a 200 pound sturgeon almost jumped in their boat! People get killed that way every year, apparently. Sometimes they keep a scorecard that reads like: Sturgeons 10, People 0. We also talked about dying towns along the railway lines, and rebuilding along the Gulf. People do seem hopeful, the music teacher said. That’s really all you can do, is hope. Just like biking. You can be miserable or you can just keep going.
“When you get to St. Petersburg,” she said, “tell your dad he should be proud of you! What an accomplishment.”
“Oh, my parents all think I’m crazy,” I said.
“Well, that’s the best way to be, now, isn’t it,” she replied.
Manatee Springs State Park is six and a half miles off route, but it sounds really nice. I also needed to do laundry today. I called the park, and they said I would have to check in before 7:30. I believe that makes them the only campground I have ever experienced that does not have some kind of late check in arrangement, be it an honor envelope or find a spot and pay in the morning when the office opens. They did not care that I was coming by bicycle and would probably arrive by eight if I stopped to do laundry. Though they did give me very good directions to a laundromat behind a private RV park.
Well, I stopped at the RV park first.
The office sign pointed to an RV that looked a little daunting, but I stepped right up and knocked on the door.
A big dog barked, and a large, shirtless man with red shorts and white stubble on his head opened the door. Larry’s jaw nearly dropped off his face when I said I’d biked here from San Diego, but he said to set down for a while.
They don’t normally allow tents, but he would make an exception for me. In fact, he didn’t even charge me. So there, Manatee Springs! And I got to hear about his plans.
Larry got divorced when he was about 36, and he was all set to ride his horse across the country, and then he got cancer. He was in the hospital for a year. During that time, the woman he had been dating wanted to get married. So they did. But then she wanted him to change his life insurance policy to benefit her, rather than his mother.
“I’ve only known you for two years,” he told her, “but I’ve known my mother all my life. If I die, she’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
She asked for a divorce, and he gave it to her. Then he married a nurse. Then they got a divorce, and he lived, and he married the woman he’s been married to now for 21 years.
When they first got married, he made a plan to build a hay wagon, and they would travel across the country in that. His wife’s a beautician, and she would cut hair for donations to support them. He bought a beautiful horse, seventeen hands high. He trained it to always walk a foot from the edge of the road, and cars didn’t bother it a bit. He arranged with a man to weld a lightweight cart using of a pickup trailer. He and his wife went to Gainesville for the weekend, and when they came back, the horse had died of colic!
“I’ll get a mule and train it,” he told her, “they can eat anything and not get colic.”
“I’m not going,” she said. “Don’t you see? This is a sign!”
She suggested a houseboat, and he agreed, but only on rivers and bays. But they weren’t comfortable enough to navigate it through those tricky parts. She said she’d travel on a sailboat, and he said he’d tried that already and would never do it again.
He told me how a three-day sail from here to Key West had turned in to an eleven-day odyssey, with storms, drugs, pirates, losing generators, being becalmed and everything, all with his seventeen-year-old son aboard. That was the last time he’d do that. So here he was, still in this trailer park.
He has a bike with an electric motor, and figures he could easily do one hundred miles a day at 30 miles per hour. He has a trailer for his big German Shepherd to ride in. He hasn’t given up on the idea yet.
Beyond that, Larry’s life has been both charmed and amazing. He told me stories half the night. Some parts were horrible, and some hilarious, some heart-wrenching and some crazy. He says his goal in life now is to be as nice to people as he was mean for the first forty years of his life. His story is about redemption, hope, change, and the possibility of religion as a force for good. I can’t even begin to recount what he’s told me, but I hope he writes it down someday soon for others to learn from. I am honored to have had a small chance to listen. There is nothing hard about helping people, he says. Thank you, Larry.
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