Today was our send-off on day one after spending 3 days with best hostess Prudy, affectionately known as “Granny P,” and her trusty and ever-present sidekick, Lulu.
We did a short test ride to make sure everything was tip-top after jack-of-few-trades and simulated bicycle mechanic Lewis re-assembled the bikes, which had arrived a week earlier courtesy of Bikeflights.com and Fedex.
The ride on the Amelia Island Bike Path is stunning, winding its way through forests of tangled Live Oak, dripping with Spanish Moss—see above (though with little Spanish Moss in evidence—but “trust me”). We went on to take the St. Johns River Ferry to Mayport, then along the Atlantic coast and thence to Ponte Vedra Inn and Club. Here’s the view from our room:
Of course, we played no golf for as all right-thinking people already know, “Bicycling is the new golf.” We had bicycled 28 breezy miles against the wind. Even the staff of such an estimable establishment now greets bicylists as welcome guests rather than as undeserving wastrels.
Nerd note: I decided to try the Wahoo Elemnt as the gps for this trip rather than my trusty Garmin 1000 (described here). It is easier to follow a course made with Ridewithgps because it stands out visibly on the map background. Turn alerts first occur at about 1/3 of a mile and then again at about 300 feet, remaining until you’ve made the turn. This device makes it incredibly easy to download routes and upload finished routes—pretty much automatically. There are several things which are dependent on an active bluetooth connection to your phone. Some folks think this is cheating. But, the functions work really well. We are using Live Tracking. And, if you need to create a quick route to some specific point, the phone app does it and immediate sends it to the bike GPS. I’ll write more at some point comparing the Garmin to the Wahoo. Neither dominates the other as the preferred device; indeed they are remarkably dissimilar for two devices in the same category that perform the exact same function.
