The Art of Two-Person Touring (USA Day 170)

We’re fortunate (or skilled) to have by this point perfected the two-person tour. I guess Amy and I knew each other pretty well before we started, but getting to understand someone for a second time under different, more stressful conditions, is a risk. If you don’t trust them, forget it. If you don’t find them interesting, forget it. If you fall out, well, you’re stuck with them for six months so you’d better make up quick.

Ivan has a snap-off with a crab

It’s a great learning environment, though. Each day starts anew and you’ve got another chance, under similar conditions, to do better at sharing a bike tour. Sometimes I’ll get anxious about time, or Amy will worry about where we’re going to sleep. In either case we either solve it or we don’t, we win or we lose, and that all feeds into the next day of riding. It’s a resource-management game. A dating sim. A favourite level you’re dying to perfect, so you play it again and again.

Through brute repetition, we’ve learnt what works, and managed to craft a daily routine that suits both of us. We know the minimum acceptable mile tally (40) and the maximum (85), we know how many miles on average until we’ll need a break (15), the number of feet before a turn the leader needs to indicate (about 400) and the number of tiny pots of gas station creamer to put in each other’s coffee (4). We know how much energy to expend at what times of day to reach imperceptible checkpoints that bouy our moods, or when to stop and plan, organise, think ahead, and not blaze on into the sunset. I actively like grocery shopping, Amy actively doesn’t. I enjoy patching inner tubes, Amy enjoys replacing them. Mile-by-mile, we carve out an existence that isn’t always easy, but certainly has been successful.

I say all this because we’ve begun to take it all for granted. Each day on this blog I have less and less to write, because the process of completing our miles has become easier and easier. We wake up and find coffee. We pack in something like a waltz, filling each other’s bags and finishing each other’s sentences. We remark on the time we managed to leave, and adjust our soft targets without having to discuss it. Today, the challenge was keeping calm and positive when the Florida coast seemed insistent that we couldn’t stay the night. Churches, fire stations, WarmShowers hosts and campgrounds rebuffed us for valid reasons (except the churches, who brought up insurance issues or flat out refused without any reason given. Jeez.)

The Florida coast is busy, but nice. The waterfronts are all built upon, so when our close-quarters dolphin encounter occurred this morning, it did so in the front garden of a rich Floridian with a dolphin on their front wall. It’s hard to find a square foot that hasn’t been either developed or marked as some path or reserve, so stealth camping is hard. By fifty miles, with our options in Vero Beach dried up and the last unresponsive WarmShowers host already ten miles past, it was time to be a good team. We stocked up on groceries at the first shop we could find, then cycled fast enough to get there by sunset, but slow enough to work out where ‘there’ actually was. After a few false finishes, a gap in the bushes presented itself and Amy hopped off her bike to have a look. She came back smiling.

A sandy path led through thick undergrowth to a flat patch just perfect for a tent. Then a few paces further along it opened to the beach, with crashing surf and emerald green water. The surfers were out in number, sitting patiently on their boards until the right wave came, which for different individuals had different meanings. Either that or they’d agreed upon an order. Who knows.

We jumped waves and collected pink and black cockle shells: the more pedestrian beach experience. A posse of tiny waders chased the waves in and out, sifting through the freshly-wetted sands for morsels. Then we sat on a bank of sand with peppers loaded in aubergine and spinach dip and watched an orange moon rise behind wisps of cloud. Way out at sea, a couple of cruise ships made their slow way south to Miami, while way up high a steady stream of planes made quicker work of it. In less than two weeks, we’ll be on one of those, and the journey will be almost over. Obviously ours won’t be travelling towards Miami unless the pilot forgot his lunchbox or something.