Fort Lauderdale to the Keys<\/p>\n
Day 1: Thursday May 5, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n I woke up exhausted.\u00a0 Yesterday I gave my final lecture of the semester.\u00a0 This Spring I taught about 550 MBA students and the last lectured ended last night at 10 pm.\u00a0 There is no time to go back to sleep since I have not packed.<\/p>\n I spent the morning putting all the gear out and trying to figure out what I might have forgotten.\u00a0 The goal is to go as light as possible since every extra pound has to be carried on my back, but not to forget something crucial.<\/p>\n By the time I was finished packing the morning was done and I fast walked to the trolley to start my trip to the airport.\u00a0 I was eager to start and left the house a bit early for the flight. \u00a0You know what that means when there is no time pressure!\u00a0 Right, everything ran exceptionally smoothly and on time.<\/p>\n The trolley (the Green line\u2019s C train) showed up just as I got to the platform.\u00a0 It went straight to Government Center.\u00a0 At Government Center I normally switch to the Blue line, but the Blue line was under construction.\u00a0 We were guided upstairs where the MBTA was running shuttle buses.\u00a0 The shuttle bus stop was a zoo, but I got on a bus that said airport and that bus went express to East Boston.\u00a0 I made it door-to-door in less than one hour!\u00a0 TSA, which is the security people at the airport, pulled my bag aside as suspicious, but once the man saw it was only wrenches and bike tools I was waved through.<\/p>\n The plane flight to Fort Lauderdale was just as uninteresting as the MBTA ride to the airport.\u00a0 I am sure I watched a movie, but for the life of me I don\u2019t remember a thing about it.\u00a0 The plane even landed a few minutes early.\u00a0 Then I went outside to wait for the hotel shuttle.\u00a0 I booked a room at a hotel called the 4-Points by Sheraton.\u00a0 Hotels in America are now super specialized.\u00a0 I am not sure exactly who the 4-Points brand is targeting, but the bed was relatively comfortable, so I didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n I ended the night by walking across the street to a Whole Foods Supermarket and picking up a light dinner of fish and rice, plus some food for breakfast before going to sleep.<\/p>\n Day 2: Friday May 6, 2022 — Fort Lauderdale to Florida City (~75 miles)<\/strong><\/p>\n I woke up feeling quite refreshed.\u00a0 The trip had been weighing on me quite a bit and before it started I did not sleep well.\u00a0 I mean what could go wrong pedaling in blazing heat, besides ending back in the hospital again?<\/p>\n I had made a reservation at \u201cDowntown Bicycles\u201d on East Sunrise Boulevard for the largest bike they had (a 61 cm Specialized Roubaix Road Bike).\u00a0 The bike store opened at 10 am. \u00a0This meant I was getting a late start to the day, but there was not much I could do without a bike.\u00a0 The hotel was next to a bus stop on a route called the #40 that went directly to the bike shop.\u00a0 Supposedly there were two to three busses an hour on this route.\u00a0 I waited over forty minutes and no bus showed up.<\/p>\n So I called for a ride with Uber.\u00a0 Of course the moment I got into the Uber car the bus did show up.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t matter at that point since the Uber ride got me to the store a few minutes before they opened, while the bus is probably still wandering around Fort Lauderdale stopping every block.<\/p>\n The Uber driver was interesting.\u00a0 He was \u201cretired\u201d even though he was spending many hours driving people around.\u00a0 The driver clearly did not understand U.S. labor force definitions, since to be retired you cannot be working for money.\u00a0 I let this all go; today I was not an economist, and tried to stay friendly.\u00a0 He then complained about young people paying him to drive them a few blocks.\u00a0 I told him what I was going to do.\u00a0 The driver thought that a 200 mile bike ride was just as crazy as people demanding a ride for 200 yards.<\/p>\n I showed up at the bike shop a few minutes before they opened and they had both the bike I requested and the paperwork done.\u00a0 I spent time pedaling around the parking lot and trying to get the seat adjusted to the right height and the right angle.\u00a0 Then it was time to be off starting the adventure.<\/p>\n Before I left the shop they asked me if I knew the route.\u00a0 Well, I had printed out 8 pages of instructions just to get through Fort Lauderdale.\u00a0 Derek, the man behind the desk, thought my route was terrible.\u00a0 He said a much better way was to go down the beach until I got to the 17th street bridge, cross that, take a left on 4th street and when it dead ends you are at the airport.\u00a0 At the airport go either left or right onto Perimeter Road and make a circle around the airport until you come out near route 1 and then take that south.<\/p>\n Derek\u2019s directions were simple and much easier to follow than my eight pages of twists and turns so I used his local knowledge.\u00a0 Leaving his shop I had to immediately cross the Intracoastal Waterway on my first of many drawbridges.\u00a0 There were no cars around as I skittered over the grates, and I made it without crashing. \u00a0One bridge down!<\/p>\n The first few miles along the beach in Fort Lauderdale were quite pleasant.\u00a0 There was a painted bike lane for me and cars respected it.\u00a0 The speed limit in most places was only 30 mph so the traffic going by me was not hair-raising.\u00a0 The 17th Street Bridge back over the Intracoastal had a wide sidewalk so I took that instead so I didn\u2019t have to do open grates a second time.\u00a0 4th street was relatively calm and didn\u2019t have a lot of traffic.\u00a0 This was all good.\u00a0 It soothed my nerves and helped me remember that I could pedal long distances.<\/p>\n Perimeter road around the Fort Lauderdale airport was another story.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t a bike lane or a breakdown lane.\u00a0 Plus it had two huge tunnels, which appeared to go under the runways and highways.\u00a0 The tunnels were quite dark and the cars behind me were not expecting a bicyclist.\u00a0 Plus, I still had my lights inside my bag where they were useless for showing vehicles that I existed.\u00a0 Luckily the tunnels were not that long and soon I ended up on Route 1.<\/p>\n Derek cautioned me about Route 1, said it was a death trap, and warned me to be on it as little as possible.\u00a0 I took it for about a mile to Sheridan Street.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t as bad as Derek led me to believe, but I think the main reason it was better than advertised was the traffic was so heavy at Friday lunchtime that cars couldn\u2019t go fast.\u00a0 I spent much of that part of the ride passing cars, instead of them passing me.<\/p>\n Sheridan took me to another Intracoastal bridge crossing, where I would be able to cycle down the coast from Dania, Florida to South Beach, a famous part of Miami.\u00a0 The strip of beach front I pedaled along alternated between fine and horrific.\u00a0 The road changes name a couple of times, but a major and well known part is called Collins Ave.<\/p>\n Sometimes there was a dedicated bicycle lane and sometimes the authorities put up a \u201cShare the Road\u201d sign.\u00a0 Putting up share the road and painting bike symbols on the pavement is meaningless for protecting cyclists.\u00a0 It gives the cyclist legal protection in case a vehicle hits them, but does nothing to slow down traffic or make the road any safer.\u00a0 Plus this beach road was filled with high-end expensive cars driven by people who didn\u2019t care much about bicyclists.\u00a0 That stretch felt more like a fight for survival and dominance than a pleasant ride.<\/p>\n Making matters worse, by the time I hit this stretch of road the temperature was close to 90, the humidity was in a similar range and there wasn\u2019t a cloud in the sky.\u00a0 I felt like melting into the pavement.\u00a0 Plus, partway down the beach road I realized I had forgotten to put on sunblock and my face felt like it was starting to burn.\u00a0 The trip was not starting off well.\u00a0 After a few hours of pedaling, I pulled into a Publix\u2019s Supermarket and purchased a turkey wrap from the deli counter.\u00a0 Eating the sandwich made me feel a bit better.\u00a0 Sitting on a shady bench in front of the supermarket\u2019s entrance also helped.<\/p>\n Then it was back on the road again to bike through South Beach.\u00a0 Posts on the Internet raved about the South Beach ride.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I could not find the right trail that people raved about.\u00a0 I ended up on a neighborhood street that was marked as a bike route and had lots of speed bumps to slow traffic down.\u00a0 That part of South Beach was okay, but nothing special.<\/p>\n South Beach ended and it was time to cross over the Intercostal and back to the mainland.\u00a0 I was dreading the MacArthur Causeway.\u00a0 It looked scary on the map; a six lane divided roadway with a 45 mph speed limit.\u00a0 Bikes get to ride in the breakdown lane.\u00a0 It turned out, because it was the beginning of Friday rush hour, to not be scary at all.\u00a0 For most of the Causeway, the traffic was so heavy I was flying by the stopped cars.\u00a0 The scenery was interesting.\u00a0 On the left side of the Causeway is the Port of Miami and there were a couple of giant cruise ships anchored while I rode past.<\/p>\n Then it was into the madness of Friday afternoon rush hour in downtown Miami.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say it was not fun.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t really know where I was going.\u00a0 While Fort Lauderdale is a grid making it difficult to get lost, Miami is not.\u00a0 There are lots of curving streets that go over and around the river that intersects the city.\u00a0 Plus, not all of the streets are two ways.\u00a0 Southern hospitality did not reign on the roadway that afternoon!<\/p>\n I finally made it through the worst of downtown and managed to get to the M-Trail.\u00a0 Miami built a Metrorail, which is an elevated train system.\u00a0 Under the tracks is a ten mile long protected bike route.\u00a0 I pedaled a few blocks on this trail and it was heaven.\u00a0 Then suddenly the trail stopped with a \u201croad under construction sign.\u201d\u00a0 The beautiful trail disappeared into mounds of construction dirt.\u00a0 I tried to take side streets that ran parallel to the trail but gave up after a few miles when even the side streets were being ripped up by the construction crews.<\/p>\n By now it was getting late in the day.\u00a0 I was hot, tired, hungry, and starting to hurt.\u00a0 I remembered there was another bike path going south called \u201cOld Cutler Road.\u201d\u00a0 It turned out it was more an extra wide sidewalk, with bike images painted on the ground, but it was headed south and no one else was on it so I rode it for about 30 minutes to my last trail of the day, the \u201cSouth Miami-Dade Busway.\u201d<\/p>\n The busway is about 10 miles long and ends in Florida City, my stop for the night.\u00a0 As the name implies the busway is designed as a special lane just for buses.\u00a0 No cars, trucks or bicycles.\u00a0 On the side of the busway the state of Florida spent a lot of money building a wide, smooth bike path.<\/p>\n Sounds perfect, right?\u00a0 Wrong!\u00a0 While the busway is clean, the bike path is littered with glass and trash.\u00a0 The bikeway goes through some extremely poor neighborhoods and some people sleep in tents next to the path.\u00a0 There was even one man sleeping or passed out on the path that I had to swerve around.\u00a0 Yes, I checked he was breathing and he did not look like he needed medical care.\u00a0 The ride on that path was stressful since I did not want to puncture a tire.\u00a0 Finally, I just gave up and rode in the busway, which was free of glass and other garbage.\u00a0 The bus drivers seemed to expect this since they would give short beeps of their horns before passing me.<\/p>\n The day was exhausting but I finally made it to the end of the busway.\u00a0 Then I looked around.\u00a0 I had gone too far.\u00a0 I had pedaled about 1.5 miles past the motel.\u00a0 Now an extra 3 miles doesn\u2019t sound like much, but at the end of this day I was totally exhausted and didn\u2019t want to pedal even one more foot.\u00a0 There was not much I could do about it.\u00a0 It was already 7:15 pm and the sun was just starting to set so I turned around and pedaled slowly back to the motel.\u00a0 When I pulled in I had been in the saddle almost eight hours.\u00a0 It was a long, hot first day.<\/p>\n I picked the Super 8 in Florida City to stay.\u00a0 There were nicer motels and hotels available in the neighborhood, but the Super 8 had the shortest distance walk to places to eat. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to walk or pedal any more than I had to at the end of the first, or any other day.\u00a0 Directly across the street from the motel was a place serving Italian food named the Capri Restaurant.\u00a0 I asked the motel desk clerk if the place was any good and she looked at me and said, \u201cI have never eaten there.\u201d\u00a0 It always amazes me how little people travel in this world.\u00a0 Even walking across the street is something some people just don\u2019t do.<\/p>\n The Super 8 room was fine.\u00a0 It was quiet and the bed was not too lumpy.\u00a0 I called the Capri and ordered dinner (soup and pasta) to go.\u00a0 Then I got in the shower to clean up.<\/p>\n I put on non-bike clothes, walked across to the restaurant and picked up my food to eat back in the room.\u00a0 The Conch chowder was tasty and the Fettucine Alfredo was also good.\u00a0 That said, after pedaling all day I think even garbage probably would have tasted great.\u00a0 I called home and got into bed.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t sleep much.\u00a0 After many hours of not pedaling I still could not feel parts of my body.\u00a0 Did I need to go to the hospital?\u00a0 Plus, I was worried about the next morning\u2019s ride, which was marked on the cycling map as \u201cdangerous.\u201d\u00a0 Finally, around 2 AM I began to doze off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fort Lauderdale to the Keys Day 1: Thursday May 5, 2022 I woke up exhausted.\u00a0 Yesterday I gave my final lecture of the semester.\u00a0 This Spring I taught about 550 MBA students and the last lectured ended last night at 10 pm.\u00a0 There is no time to go back to sleep since I have not … Continue reading Southern Florida Ride<\/span>