Of the celebrities who have been cyclists, my favorite is Robin Williams.
Now I am heartbroken: He is gone.
Here he is, sneaking out of his Midtown Manhattan hotel for a spin on 8 September 2008:
Time to ride, cry--and watch one of his films again. Good Morning, Vietnam and Good Will Hunting, perhaps.
Another dawn ride in the Sunshine State. Really, given the heat and humidity, it really is the best time to pedal. Plus, my parents live just far enough from the ocean that I can start just before sunrise and, within a few minutes, be treated to scenes like this:
That, from a place called Hammock. And this from, appropriately, Painter's Hill:
At that time of morning, one finds more surfers or fishers than swimmers. (Leave it to me to be, as always, a minority--both as a swimmer and cyclist!) When you're up before most other people and throw yourself at a great expanse that seems like infinity, it's hard not to wonder about the meaning of it all:
As it turns out, the woman in the second photo was watching her daughter:
As my mother is not, and never has been, a cyclist, surfer, swimmer or fisher, we have a different mother-daughter relationship. It was still more than welcome at the end of today's ride, in which I managed to beat the midday heat and afternoon rain.
During yesterday's ride, I stopped at the site of the Mala Compra plantation. The name means "bad bargain" in Spanish.
As you can imagine, the place was so named because it turned out not to be as suitable for agriculture as was hoped. However, there are some strange and interesting sights, including this:
At first, I thought it might be one of those "only in Florida" species. But a second look reveals otherwise:
They are actually two different trees, one dancing around the other:
It seems that the curvy, languorous one wants to be closer to the upright citizen:
What is it like to be locked in a dance for centuries?
