Brass Monkeys

Brrrrrrr… How cold was it today in FLORIDA? We could hardly believe it when we stepped out of our room to go to breakfast this morning. Dressed pretty similarly to Joey in the episode of Friends where he wears all of Chandler’s clothes and starts doing lunges, and with a dash of antifreeze in our Gatorade bottles (just kidding, although we are thinking of suggesting a mulled wine flavour Gatorade), we headed out for our 65-mile jaunt to Perry, Fl.

It was a pretty simple ride. The first 20 miles were spent on another wonderful cycle trail – for the third time, thanks Chuck!! The next 45 were on one (fairly) straight road, but it was actually a very pleasant ride, with a decent shoulder all the way, or it would have been pleasant had the clouds lifted and let the sun through…as it was, our teeth were chattering, and our fingertips almost falling off until around 30 minutes before the end of the trip. Perhaps we need to invest in some cold weather gear… However, for some reason, we were also super-organised today: packed lunch courtesy of our hotel breakfast, and a good system of teamwork for tackling the inevitable headwind, which worked very well for us, and made the miles fly by.

We were stunned by the amount of wildlife that we saw, particularly the birds. As well as the usual storks and graceful herons that we have become ridiculously blasé about, today we were surrounded by Northern Cardinals, bright red birds with red-crested heads (see downloaded picture – we can’t take credit for knocking together this little drawing). And on top of that, we also saw…wait for it… an Eastern Screech Owl, in the middle of the day. Perhaps it was so cold that he thought it was still night.

We’re in one of our cheaper motel options tonight, but are actually very warm and comfortable, having tucked away a Pizza Hut pasta and garlic bread, delivered direct to our door (too cold to step outside). We’ve suffered our usual fate of forgetting about the Sunday trading laws, so have had to go without our usual tipple but it will no doubt do us good (we’d start carrying round miniatures in our panniers if it didn’t sound so horribly inappropriate).

Tomorrow there is another frost alert (what fun) for our ride into Tallahassee, where we will stop for a well-needed rest day.

And finally, a mention for MG&T who, on top of the incredible commitment in terms of their blog comments and other messages of support, have just made an enormously generous donation on our charity site. A huge THANK YOU, guys. You are both amazing.

Us x