Take It To The Bridge (USA Day 175)

As of today, we’ve seven days left in the USA before our visa runs out and the FBI throw us into the sea. So in an effort to stay dry, we’re going to wrap up this ride in the next two days, find our way back to Miami in another two, then get the bikes all packed up and take care of that sort of uninspiring but necessary admin before our flight.

Our new friends Felix and Sarah made bagels and Cuban coffee, which was quite possibly the best brown drink I’ve ever tasted. Utterly transformative. Then we headed off down the Keys in no particular hurry, enjoying the first quiet mangrove-clad seven miles before we joined up with Highway 1 and suffered through the touristy and not-altogether-that-nice town of Key Largo.

One lovely outcome of our finish line being the end of Key West is that we have a set of mile markers counting us down to the end. As 106 frittered away to 78, we were both struck with a quite pleasant feeling of fatalism and finality. One lonely percent of the total mileage remained. We watched a dock full of holidaymakers feed buckets of fish to 100lb tarpin fish who writhed away in the water. A few tame pelicans hung around for scraps. I spent far too long wondering if the massive tarpin or the feeding came first to this particular attraction.

The chain of islands continued, with a general trend towards the picturesque as we progressed. Each connecting bridge was lined with fisherpeople and their bored families, whose poles we had to deftly avoid on the narrow bike paths. At some point the entire road was bike-pathed beautifully, but hurricanes have damaged many of them beyond repair, so we spent most of our energy not actually cycling but working out where it was that we’d be safe doing such an activity. The sectioned-off paths were consistently attractive, but regularly ended in large floods or small cliffs.

The sun didn’t really come out for us, and there was a sniff of headwind throughout, especially on those bridges. But it didn’t really matter. We may as well be rolling downhill what with the expectation of finishing. After a little asking around for free camping options and hitting figurative brick walls of local frostiness, we found a small car park off a bike path that led down into a kayak launch. Nearby were a few improvised trails, and plenty of places to sleep. It would do. We bolted down some vegetables and cheesy dip, then erected our tent in a gap between bushes and bedded down as soon as it got dark. Slightly worried about being moved along by police wary of smugglers and stuff, we banned ourselves from making light. No blogs, then. And reading is no fun if you can’t see the page. I fell asleep at 7:30, happy as a snapping crab.