The start of a new phase… and not just the Southern Tier. Today we consumed around 2,000 calories and burned about 80. Yes, fish and chicken burgers for lunch (not to mention the jumbo bag of Cheetos that our hands are dipping into as we type this blog), and we only cycled 1.7 miles from the Ferry Terminal in Fort Myers Beach to our motel for the tonight. Blimey!
Hopefully we’ll put that right tomorrow when we cycle back on ourselves down to Marco Island to make sure that we actually cover as much of the coastline as is humanly possible. There are limited options for getting from the Florida Keys to the first inhabitable part of South West Florida (well, inhabited by humans rather than gators). In fact, the 3 1/2 hour ferry jaunt at night up the Gulf of Mexico was pretty much the only option. But it is fair to say that the ferry ride was our highlight of the day.
We boarded the Big Cat (our ferry) with much excitement, but sadly lacking in motion sickness tablets. We realised our schoolgirl/boy error about 30 minutes into the journey as the Big Cat was leaping over the waves and we were lurching from side to side, fearing that we may be seeing our fish and chicken burgers again rather sooner that we had hoped. The outlook for the following 3 hours was bleak until we managed to purchase some Dramamine from the bar, wash it down with lashings of ginger ale and borrow a blanket and pillow from a kind passenger who had clearly been a girl scout in her early years…very famous five (though no sign of Timmy the dog). Oh, and the Captain decided to divert from the usual route to avoid the worst of the swells, for which we (and many other green-faced passengers) were extremely grateful.
So, with all our brightest gear on, and with bike lights flashing, we disembarked and did our best impression of a couple of Xmas trees as we cycled the short distance in the dark to our motel. Though Anthony might have gone a little bit too far with the tinsel wrapped around his helmet…
Us x
You are not the only ones worrying about your calorific intake in Florida - the infestation of giant pythons is, too. It started as a few discarded pets released into the Everglades but now it's estimated there are over 30,000 of them - some up to 30ft long - in there. They have already started eating the 'gators, so it probably isn't advisable to do much more night riding while you're there or, instead of your daily menu reports, we could soon be reading a big snake's blog about chowing down on a couple of Doritos-seasoned cyclists... Check out this link for some of the details www.squidoo.com/alligatorvspython
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