Bring a Snorkel (USA Day 172)

Our day started about right, with me discovering that I’d left my coat in our hosts’ garage. We’d made it five miles down the main road – just enough to make riding back a total drag. Four and a half, I’d have been straight back on that bike. As it was, our host Laura was kind enough to jump in a car with the offending article (and offending it was…we’ve been soggy enough often enough that it’s developed quite a funk over the past week, and you’re not supposed to wash it unless you have this special liquid) and run it down the road into our awaiting arms.

The sun came and went. This section of the coastal highway is wall to wall mansions, with the barest glimpses of ocean between their high garden walls, but more often than not just prim hedges, neat lawns and spotless painted walls. Shame the roads were bumpy, but I guess if you drive ridiculous 4x4s around you don’t notice that sort of thing. One piece of great news: after months of hunting, we finally found the number 397, and then 398 straight after, on the ornate house numbers that ran along this road o’ privilege. This was huge for me, and so should it be for you. Can we make it to 400 before returning to Britain?

We didn’t see any of the locals from these coastal islands. Perhaps that’s because they hadn’t made their winter migration yet, or because they were tucked up in their luxury homes with all their TVs on not engaging with the outside world. We saw plenty of their gardeners, cleaning up the front yards, blowing leaves around pointlessly with their leaf blowers, mowing patches of lawn that didn’t need mowing yet. The difference (financially, culturally, racially) was uniform and staggering.

On such a gusty day, with the wind blowing directly in from the ocean, once we’d been forced to ride inland into Palm Beach we didn’t much fancy going out again, so skipped a chunk of West Palm Beach where, apparently, the biggest of mansions of all hung out. This also meant that we didn’t see Mar-a-Lago, which I’m actually pretty relieved about. What this did mean was that our day had been shortened by a few miles, which as the wind shifted around and an ominous, dark grey shape appeared on the horizon, we felt rather pleased for. Today was humid to the point of wetness – I couldn’t open my phone screen because everything was just that little bit too damp. What the air needed was a great big rainstorm to clear it out.

That’s what we got.

The moment after we stopped for a 55-mile rest, the first spits hit and we dived behind a wall so that only our heads and knees got properly wet. Heavier and heavier it fell, until the laughing was the only thing to dry up. Between downpours we tried to make a couple of miles, but it redoubled and we found ourselves hiding beneath a tree which proved no protection at all. I looked over to Amy to find her hastily unwrapping the snorkel that we’d bought and not used a few days ago. Finally, we dived under the awning of a Hilton hotel, and stood awkwardly beside the valets in shorts who tried deftly to ignore us and ask as few questions as possible, in case that meant they’d have to ask us to leave. Amy didn’t quite need the snorkel, but it was a trendy addition to her cycling getup.

In fact, a great bucket of rain was exactly what we needed. Sometimes a bad day is worse than a dull day, so as we tackled the last fifteen miles in deep puddles and sodden clothes, we allowed ourselves to feel grumpy and enjoyed that feeling. Especially when a car honked at us loudly for…gosh…riding in his lane to avoid an enormous puddle. When there’s reason to be grumpy, being grumpy is allowed.

From here to the keys, we’ll see almost nothing of the Atlantic, because it’s tower blocks and private properties and great big highways. So we’ll hold our breath and get to the islands, no matter how grumpy it makes us.