Long (sort off) FL report

Flew down to Tampa last Wednesday and by 10:30 we were driving  up to Ken's House. Went down to drive the car back and in the process ride at Santos and Balm Boyette plus a short ride at Alafia.

Quickly unpacked the bike to find out it was dropped at the airport and the rear derrailleur hanger snapped in two. No worries, we were in no hurry, called a couple of bike shops and one of them happened to be a Jamis dealer and had one available. Very nice shop and people, got it fixed and headed to Santos.

Here is Ken sporting his G-man look"sleeveles shirt"

Arriving at the land bridge over I-75

Santos is a great place to ride. You have a lot of miles of easy to hard trails and then you hit the Land Bridge trail for miles and miles of turns and a flowing trail through the trees.

The bridge was made to facilitate the animals a place to cross 6 lanes of highway without getting killed. They cross mainly at night, we didn't see any wildlife this time except for the two turtles we almost ran over.

The picture doesn't really show how beautiful the trees look with the spanish moss all over them. To bad it chokes them to death. Next day we went to Balm Boyette, another great place to ride. It makes you wish you had a helmet cam to film the ride.

I hit a pricker plant head on and I thought it ripped my nose off with all the blood that was pouring out of it. Once I cleaned up it was only a couple of scratches.

Two great days of riding and eating good food. friday we left early and headed to Mullberry gap in Georgia. drove 8 hrs and heavy traffic through Atlanta but when we got there steaks were already cooking on the grill.

This is another great place to stay, it is ride in ride out. It was 5 mile climb to the trail and we didn't even get to the top of the gravel road. We were treated like kings here, great food.

From georgia we moved on to Asheville for our last day of riding at Bent Creek.

We had Breakfast on Sunday with Bruce and headed for home.

On our way north we witness first hand the devastation of the tornados that hit the area.

Many thanks goes to Ken for inviting me down to his house in FL, we had a great time driving and riding our way back to a soggy Ohio. It was raining when we left, raining when we came back. Good weather is around the corner. I'm ready to go back anytime if it doesn't stop raining.