Jacksonville Beach to Jacksonville Airport

Waking up allowed for a leisurely morning as Sachin had made promises of brunch and the beach, and I only had 40 miles or so to get up to the airport to meet up with my internet-stranger-from-cycling-association-bike-touring-companion (henceforth known as Sam or Samuel).

I had a great morning riding around in a classy transformer-esque car, ate a tasty breakfast bagel, and got to cruise around Jacksonville Beach and see some of the sights.

Sachin, my last-minute Couch Surfing rescuer and new friend

Apparently this is important...so I took a picture

Ze beach!

Nancy got a break for the morning, rode around in this foreign machine instead

After a trip to a nice hippy-esque grocery store (aka with bulk food to avoid soul-hearting packaging) and some snacks thanks to Sachin, I headed out in the early afternoon.  I rode quite slowly thanks to a forceful headwind and being in resting/beach/slothing model.  Just barely missed the ferry over the St. John's river, but it goes every half-hour so no big problem.  Chatted with some people on the 7 minute ferry ride and then was greeted on the other side to hoops and hollers of a road cycling group headed the other way.  I had to break it to them that it was only a 40-mile day, but they seemed to think I was pretty epic anyhow so that's always nice.  

Long story short I wound up riding for a couple of hours in nice end of day light followed by an hour in the dark.  Headwinds were certainly cause for very slow riding, and at one point I just stopped for half an hour and figured they would die down when the sun went down.  They did!  I did make it out by the airport around 8 in the evening and hung out in the hotel lobby to recover a bit while I waited for Sam's plane to arrive.  In that time, I made three rather boisterous friends (some guys who DJ and were in town for some music shindig).  They took several pictures of me, Nancy, and themselves, and said, "We gonna instagram this shit, gurl!"  Not entirely sure if the spelling is accurate, but I appreciated the sentiment as I tried not to collapse into a wind-beaten heap.  I also talked with an older gentleman who had done a fair bit of travel by boat in his lifetime and he shared what he knew about the Atlantic Coast.  

We were just running out of things to talk about when Samuel showed up and we spent the evening getting acquainted, putting his bike, 'El Toro', back together (aka he did that and I sat and watched), and deciding where to bike to the next day.  Luckily for me, he did not seem like a serial killer (to some of my friends, thanks for the advance warnings and words of caution) and, since I am horribly behind on this blog and am writing this entry with about a week's delay, you can deduce that I am still alive he has not yet left me in a ditch with some alligators.  What more can one ask for?