Friday February 6, 2014

A cold start to the day, but the sun was out and it felt good. We are wearing our ShowersPass windbreakers as it is still too cold to switch to the lighter windbreakers.

The ride along Highway 98 to Wakulla was very straight with not much to see, apart from the odd rock garden.

There is a large wildlife management area called Aucilla which has about 2,800 acres of land, there are walking trails and canoe entry points along the river. At Wakulla there is the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, we had a long ride to Tallahasseee and didn’t stop.

From Wakulla to Tallahassee we followed an excellent paved rail trail, the Tallahassee – St. Marks Historic Railroad State Trail. This rail trail goes all the way from St. Marks to Tallahassee and was originally a rail line that was built in 1837 to serve the agricultural hinterland and the cotton trade.

Half-way along this trail I realized that we were now officially on the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) Southern Tier route. Up until this point we had been heading north from New Port Richey as opposed to west from St. Augustine.

We arrived in Tallahassee at 3:00 and found our warmshowers house very easily, it is just off the trail. Justin hadn’t arrived home from work yet, so we went around the corner to a nice café and had a good sandwich.

Ralf was amazed to see this sign reminding motorists that cyclists are allowed to use the full lane.

The bikes drew quite a bit of interest and we chatted to one young man who told us about the café. Jimmy Johns is a sandwich shop that has some very funny sayings on the walls.

• Never engrave your initials in something that doesn’t belong to you.
• Don’t speak with your mouth too full.
• Don’t pick your teeth or anything else.
• Don’t ask young kids to pull your finger.
• Don’t worry, be happy and don’t forget to smell the flowers.

In the men’s bathroom there were stick figures which had words like – creative, relaxed, girly and show-off …. You figure it out.

We met Justin back at his apartment who showed us our two options of sleeping accommodation. His small two room apartment or the community room. Justin was volunteering at a community bike shop that evening and his girlfriend was working late. We opted for the community room as we knew they were going to have a late night.

After we had set up our sleeping cots and got ourselves organized – checking the route for the next day and checking on accommodation we went around to the community bike shop where Justin was working. The not-for-profit bike shop assists people to repair their own bikes and builds bikes for people who need bikes.

Justin told us that his girlfriend made bags. Marina makes some amazing hand-waxed bags for bikes and has just created a new touring line her website is www.anhaicabagworks.com. The name for her company and line of bags comes from the original name of Tallahassee. On the first Friday of each month the galleries and workshops in the area where she works are open until late and there are food trucks and music. We decided to go there and look at Marina’s work and look at the other galleries. We had dinner that was prepared by Hari Krishnas, it was very good. It was a really good evening, albeit a little cold, I wore my puffy jacket for the first times since New Zealand!