Ride Here. Just Don’t Go Bare

 I have cycled many times in Palm Coast, Florida. It never occurred to me, however, to ride in the nude.

That’s probably a good thing. According to a survey from Lawnstarter.com, Palm Coast ranked fourth-worst among 500 US cities surveyed for naked bike riding. Each city was ranked in five categories:  Naked Biking Popularity, Cyclist-Friendliness, Nudist-Friendliness, Climate and Safety.

Although I could ride on lanes that paralleled some of the main roads, they sometimes began seemingly out of nowhere and ended abruptly. (It’s been nearly two years since I’ve been to PC; perhaps things have improved.) Also, for all of its bike lanes, the city and state are auto-centric. So while there is some semblance of a cycling infrastructure, and I wasn’t the only cyclist using it, I wouldn’t say Palm Coast is particularly cyclist-friendly.

I would love to know how the surveyors gauged the nudist-friendliness of Palm Coast (or any place else). Jacksonville, about 100 miles to the north, is often seen as the port of entry, if you will, to the Bible Belt. I don’t know whether PC qualifies as BB territory, but it’s definitely conservative in a Southern way. So someone who decides to unbuckle might suffer the fate of two Dutch racers who changed from their cycling kit between two car doors in a Kansas parking lot.

Me, Dad, Ian, Rita, Maureen And Delilah

The other day I took a ride to the ocean. 

And I took another yesterday.

From those images, you probably can tell that I'm not talking about the Rockaways, Point Lookout or Coney Island, my most common sea-bound treks.

For that matter, I don't mean the Jersey Shore, where I haven't gone in some time.  Rather, for the past two days, I've done two other seaside rides I've mentioned--though, again, not for some time--on this blog.

I arrived in Florida on Friday evening.  The purpose of this trip is a visit with my father, whom I hadn't seen in three years, since my mother's funeral.  We'd planned another visit but, like so many other plans by so many other people, it was put on hold when "COVID happened."  

Since arriving, I've had nearly perfect weather for cycling and, of course, have taken advantage of it.  The bike I rode during previous visits--a balloon-tired beach cruiser--got rusty and dusty. My father, thinking the bike was beyond redemption (it just looks that way) went and bought another bike--a cheapo full-suspension bike--from a friend.  I rode it on Saturday, along the Lehigh Trail, over the bridge in the first photo and up Route A1A through Beverly Beach and Painters Hill.

Along the stretch from Flagler Beach to Beverly Beach, I was looking at some of what Hurricane Ian wrought.  While the damage wasn't nearly as widespread as what befell Sanibel Island or Fort Myers, there were piles of debris on roadsides, testaments to damaged or destroyed buildings and trees. As I looked at one of those ruins, a car door opened.  Just when I thought I was about to be "doored" again, a woman emerged from the half-opened portal and said, "You write a bike blog!"

Nothing like being famous, eh?

Actually, she is someone I met during a previous visit, about seven years ago.  I'd stopped at a gas station-convenience store for a cup of coffee or to use the bathroom--possibly both--when Rita broke me out, for a moment, from my stereotypical New York "don't talk to strangers" mode. (If I recall correctly, I had just arrived the night before.) We stayed in touch for a time but I think her number was part of the data that didn't transfer from my old to new phone, in spite of the salesperson's promise that everything, including a bunch of photos, would make the journey.

I didn't experience a near-catastrophe-turned-happy-coincidence the following day, when I pedaled up to the Castillo San Marcos in Saint Augustine--49 kilometers, or 30.5 miles--into a gusty wind, on the rusty and dusty balloon-tired beach cruiser.  Upon arriving, I wended through the shops and houses of the historic old town before enjoying a picnic lunch on the waterfront promenade and riding back--with that same wind, of course. So, I reckon that I at least rode a metric century on that rusty beach cruiser, though that was not the point of this trip.

After that ride, I showered, got dressed and went out to Mezzaluna for a delightful meal of mussels in a sauce of butter, garlic and lemon with even more delightful company, which included my father and his friend Maureen, a retired Canadian nurse.  She, as it turns out, was something of an avid cyclist and hiker before, as she said, "arthritis found me."  Afterward, we went to her house, filled with her plants and handicrafts, photos and paintings by friends and her late sister, all against backdrops of walls and alcoves painted in very Floridian shades of blue, green and yellow, and "guarded" by my newest friend--Delilah, her cat.

So now there are two Delilahs--well, a Delila and a Dee-Lilah, on this blog. Both are synonymous with delight, even if one is furry and black and white, while the other is lilac-colored and probably would have loved the ride I took today.

So why did I come to the Sunshine State this weekend?  Well, today is Columbus Day, Italian American Pride Day or Indigenous People's Day. (I prefer the latter because, not in spite of the fact that, I'm of Italian heritage: Why should our "pride" day be in honor of a guy who got lost?)  That meant a long weekend and, while some people traveled--There were quite a few out of state plates along A1A and foreign languages spoken at St.Augustine--it isn't nearly as hectic or expensive as traveling at, say, Thanksgiving or the Christmas-New Year season.  Plus, I didn't want the focus of my visit to be a holiday. Rather, I wanted to see Dad again, and because I wondered what it would be like to meet him without Mom or other family members.

I met him into a new phase of his journey--and, I suspect, mine, as I took familiar rides for the first time in a long time.

 

Lunch, Palm And Moss

Yesterday I had lunch with my mother and her friend at the local Cracker Barrel.  The place has a split personality :  The restaurant serves homey Southern-style and comfort foods ( no avocado toast), while it’s shop sells overpriced kitsch.  Mom, Iris and I had chicken pot pies , which had more chicken in them than you’ll find in a plate of chicken strips in a hipster bistro.

After lunch and conversation , there were still a couple of hours of daylight remaining.  So I went for a ride along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, which parallels the ocean coastline a few hundred meters inland. The waterway is popular with boaters, recreational fishermen and bird-watchers, while its path connects with other trails, including this one.

It seems that, within a quarter-mile or so, you can find every kind of palm or fern lining a section of this dirt trail that loops away from the main bike and pedestrian lane.

E

From there, I rode along Colbert Lane to the head of the Lehigh Rail Trail, where a wooden bridge leads to a moss-canopied lane.  You couldn’t find anything more Southern Romantic.

Pedaling A Parallel Universe

Yesterday I pedaled into a parallel universe.

All right...You might think Florida--or anything south of the Potomac, for that matter--is a different world if you come from anyplace north of it.  You would not be wrong.  But I am not talking about culture, politics or even climate.  Rather, I mean a waterway that, for about 5000 kilometers, runs as close to the Atlantic Ocean as it can without actually being the Atlantic.

I am talking about the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, which runs just inland of the Atlantic Ocean all the way from Boston to the tip of Florida.  The purpose of it was to provide navigable waterways for shipping along the Atlantic Coast without having to deal with the hazards of the ocean.

 One hardly thinks about the AIW in Massachusetts or New York or New Jersey because it's known by other names.  Actually, in those states, it's a series of rivers, bays and other bodies of water linked by canals. 

The stretch I rode yesterday is one of those canals.  It hooks up with the Halifax River to the south. Its shoreline is dotted with gazebos on piers:  the sort of thing one envisions when thinking about life in Florida. 

The weather, however, was another story--overcast, which I didn't mind, but colder than yesterday and colder by the end of the ride than at the beginning.  And windy, again. I was reminded of why I don't have kickstands on my own bikes:  Using the one on the bike I rode today virtually guaranteed that it would be toppled.  Such falls wouldn't damage the bike; still, I laid the bike on the ground when I stopped, figuring that I would have had to pick it up anyway if I stood it up.

One interesting feature of the trails that line the Intracoastal Waterway, and connect it to several parks, are bike maintenance stations operated by the city of Palm Coast and local businesses.  

They include small tools such as screwdrivers, adjustable wrenches and tire levers attached to cords, and a tire pump.  

I actually rode a technical section of a mountain bike trail near Herschel King Park (one of my favorites in this area).  And, no, I didn't need those tools--or anything to repair my body!

They're Gone!

A couple of friends are gone!

On Thursday,  I rode by the City Market Place near my parents' home in Palm Coast.  During my past few visits to PC, I've stopped by the Market Place to see an old friend:

but I found this:

an empty lot where they "rode"!

I am trying to find out what happened to Wes Cackler's "The Race".  I'm guessing--and sort of hoping--that it was knocked down in recent storms and will be reinstalled on that same site, or somewhere else.  

Sun, Sea And A Summer Storm In January

Since I've come to Florida, I think I've seen every kind of weather one can find when the temperature is above freezing.  Today, I thought I was entering a path of sunshine.

Light and warmth threaded through those tree limbs and filled the sky as I rode the Lehigh Trail, which begins about two kilometers from my parents' house and extends for five kilos to Colbert Road, which leads to SR 100 and the bridge to Flagler Beach.

There are few things in this world that I love more than descending a bridge to an ocean I can see on the horizon

even if I turn right at the end of the bridge and pedal 50 kilometers straight into a 30 kilometer per hour wind that, at moments, gusted to 40 KPH.

I mean, how could I complain when my ride was filled with the wind, the light and the hiss of the ocean--which meant that they were filling me>

Like Flagler Beach yesterday and today, Daytona Beach did not lack for people walking along the sand on the warm day.  At Flagler and Daytona, however, swimming was not allowed.  No one was allowed even to enter any of the beaches along the 50 or so kilometers of Atlantic Coast between them.

After savoring two of mom's meatball sandwiches and polishing them off with some strawberries and a mandarin orange, I started my ride back.  After the ride down, it was almost too easy:  the wind I'd fought on the way down was blowing at my back.  But that wind also brought something else:

gray clouds thickening ahead of me.  The fact that I was riding about as fast as my body could move the ballon-tired beach cruiser under it meant that I could ride right into the rain.

Which is what happened after I turned left from the Flagler Beach pier onto the SR 100 bridge.  After climbing away from the ocean and descending on the "mainland", a cascade dropped from the sky on me.  There was no prelude of light showers gradually turning to rain; that storm dropped straight on me.  It was like the "instant storms" that often soak this area, momentarily, late on summer afternoons.  The difference was that this storm didn't include lightning and thunder.  But it ended about halfway into the Lehigh Trail--about fifteen minutes before I got to my parents' house.

In The Sunshine State, In A Cloud

The rain that pattered the canal yesterday turned, for a time, into a barrage last night.  When I woke this morning, raindrops were poking ephemeral pockmarks in the face of the water.

But, by the time Dr. Phil's show ended (Yes, I watched it with my mother and father.), the rain had stopped and the sun looked like it was trying to wedge itself between clouds.  I got on the bike a while later, and the clouds closed ranks on the sun.  Still, I managed to ride along some trails to the Palm Coast Parkway Bridge, where the scene changed just a bit.

Of course, when you see something on your left, you look to your right.  Or is it the other way around?  Who told me that, anyway?

In any event, I looked to my left and saw this:

I thought, for a moment, it was sea mist.  After I descended the bridge and turned onto the Route A1A bike/pedestrian lane, it thickened faster than the makeup of a reality TV star.

The shrouded area is known as Painters Hill.  It's a very lovely area where, on many a day, breezes skip across sea oats and other grasses and shrubs on the dunes that line the ocean.  I would have loved to see how a painter might have rendered it in the light I saw today.

The Flagler Beach pier jutted out into water that dissolved into mist.  The eponymous beach, about 10 kilometers south of Painter's Hill, was the only one open along  A1A from Palm Coast to Ormond Beach.  The area is still recovering from recent storm and the surf was rough.  Nobody was swimming at Ormond, but of course, a few surfers flung themselves into the tides.

Finally, as I reached Ormond Beach, the fog began to dissipate and the sun that, earlier, had been trying to get a few waves in edgewise pushed some clouds aside--and shone through a light mist.

I must say, though, that I don't recall much, if any fog in my previous two dozen or so trips here.  Certainly I had never before seen what I saw today.

A Quick Ride, The Race And A Race To The Bottom

Today I had breakfast with my mother and a friend of hers who's of a generation that didn't, and still doesn't, do brunch.  Later, I went to see La-La Land (nothing deep, but not bad)and went out to dinner with my mother and father.

In between breakfast and the movie, I squeezed in a bike ride. I just made enough turns to ride in circles (and sometimes squares and triangles and other geometric figures) that brought me back to where I started.  

Along the way, I visited an old friend:

Well, OK, I first encountered "The Race" two years ago.  Its creator, Wes Cackler, actually seemed to understand cycling.  Perhaps he is a cyclist?

Unfortunately, nobody in the city or county seems to understand that pubilc sculptures require maintenance as much as buildings or other structures do.  Well, to be precise, while there was grant money (apparently from outside sources) for the sculpture, no money was budgeted for its upkeep.  To be fair, the city's and county's arts budget is all but non-existent.

Enough about politics and philistinism.  The ride was pleasant, with early afternoon weather much like yesterday's.  I did something, however, that I regret--at least a little:  I stopped at "Wally World".

It was the same branch of Walmart in which I bought a tire and two tubes during a visit here a few years ago because I flatted, it was Easter Sunday and no place else was open.  Today, I had no such excuse.

You see, we don't have a Walmart anywhere in New York City and, to my knowledge, the nearest one is at least 100 km away.  The only department stores in the Big Apple that rival Wally's in size are those of Macy's.  But Macy's, shall we say, caters to a different clientele, and doesn't offer building tools and supplies or sporting goods, among other things.  And the other department stores, such as Kohl's or Target, can fit into one or two floors of Macy's.

The day I bought the tire and tubes, I took a quick glance at what was offered in the bicycle section and was neither pleased nor surprised.  Today, I wasn't looking for anything bike-related, but I decided to check out their bike section anyway.  

Now, it was sad enough to see brands I once respected, such as Schwinn, Mongoose, affixed to bikes that were, frankly, junk.  And it was rather disheartening to see Bell--the creators of the first bike helmet that offered both protection and performance--on generic bike parts and accessories to make them seem, well, less generic, as well as useless plastic "baskets" for the handlebars of toddlers' trikes.

Today, though, one of the mighty really had fallen, at least in my estimation.  A company that has a long history in cycling, and whose products I've used for almost the entire time I've been a serious cyclist, are now embossed on emissions from Chinese factories:

I can't believe the company that made the first really good frame pump for clincher tires--as well as other fine accessories--in France, for decades, is now on the shelves of stores owned by a company that has done more than most to enable child labor and other kinds of worker exploitation in developing countries.

I doubt that Walmart has ever sold anything made in France (except perhaps for some cheese) or any other European country, or the British Isles.  I don't think much, or perhaps anything, at all the store sells today was produced in Japan.  None of that, however, is as galling as the fact that the company continues to label merchandise "Made in USA" when, in fact, it is made in China  or other low-wage companies, or is made from components manufactured in those countries and assembled or merely finished in the 'States.

Zefal products, made in China, on Walmart shelves:  How the mighty have fallen!

Rusty Race

During the past seven years, I've come to Palm Coast, Florida a dozen or so times.  On each trip here, I've done a few bike rides.  As a result, I've seen much of this town and its surrounding area.

One of the few places I've never explored is The City Marketplace.  There's a good reason for that: From the road, it's completely nondescript and half of its offices and stores seem to be vacant at any given moment.  Today, after the rains let up and I had lunch with a friend of my mother's, I took a short ride. I passed the Marketplace and took a detour through the parking lot behind it, which I had never before seen.  A surprise awaited me:

 





This is Wes Cackler's "The Race", installed for the Gargiulo Foundation's bike and poetry show in June 2012. (I wish I'd known about that!)  The photo was taken when the show opened.

Of course, no bike--or human--remains in "showroom condition" for very long, especially if left outdoors in Florida rain and humidity:

Part of the reason for that is, as you might expect, the town has practically no arts budget, and ten different organizations share what little money is allocated.  The irony is that the bicycle sculptures are in such a sorry state (and the sign in front of it has faded as well as rusted, rendering it unreadable) in a place with an extensive network of bike lanes.

Does anyone make Gore-Tex bike shoes?

 
Who needs gloves?
 

Looks like the chain needs replacing, though!