We left the Comfort Inn in Marianna this morning at 7:00 with breakfast to- go. While our trip was still in the planning stages, Shafiq from Danny Cycles Bike Shop (Stamford, CT) spent many hours with us, advising us on what bikes to get (even though he knew we were going to be buying the bikes in Tallahassee) teaching us how to maintain our bikes and telling us what to expect on the road. One of the most valuable things Shafiq told us has been the importance of biking early in the morning and delaying breakfast until after putting 1/3 of our day's miles behind us. We tried this today and brought some english muffins, peanut butter packets, and jelly from the hotel in our bags. Shafiq's advice was great We drank a lot and rode 20 miles before we were even hungry. We stopped for breakfast in the shade on the side of the road and continued on our way. Around mid- day temperatures reached 107 degrees and we took shelter in a gas station where we drank Powerade and relaxed at a table set up in the back of the adjoined convenience store. As in the past, many people during the day asked us where we were headed and proceeded to tell us stories of what they have done and/or what they planned to do. Spending an hour or two at a mini mart has been a cultural revelation. People are extremely friendly. Everybody smokes, drives pickup trucks, and they sell beer and beef jerky as quickly as they can stock the shelves. We stayed there for about an hour and a half, and decided to continue in order to reach Ponce De Leon, Fl, named after the famous explorer who claimed to have found the Fountain of Youth (people must have been laughing at his funeral) . We took a quick dip in the 'fountain' and felt good enough to push the last 11.5 miles to DeFuniak Springs. At the Ponce De Leon fountain we noticed another Surly bike, fully loaded, up against a tree. The owner of the bike - a woman, told us that she had traveled on the same route going west to east. She had left San Diego 6 weeks ago and hoped to finish in about a week. We didn't get to ask her a lot of questions but the thought of doing this trip alone is quite scary. The terrain today was especially flat, except for the last 10 miles which made us wish we had stayed at Ponce de Leon. We basically followed Route 90 all day. The theme of the day was definitely - who let the dogs out. We had dogs barking at us about 10 times today. The good news was seven of those times the dogs were behind a fence. The bad news was 3 times we were chased by the dogs (sometimes multiple dogs) We had read a lot about dogs instinctively chasing bikes on other blogs and brought mace for both our bikes. Coby has developed a quick draw for the mace spray - grabbing it and arming it in one motion. Fortunately we were able to outrun all our dog encounters today. The dogs we saw were not the breeds we see in the northeast, but rather look to us like they came right out of a Harry Potter movie - quite scary. We had originally thought nothing could make us ride faster than seeing lightning on the horizon. Today we realized that no matter how tired we are, we could go even faster being chased by dogs.
Thanks again to Shafiq, Christine and everybody at Danny's Cycles who helped us plan our trip. Having spent a lot of time in bike shops over the last few months we can say they have the most knowledgeable, friendly staff and a great selection of bikes at all price points.
We are planning out our route for tomorrow and hope to get started even earlier.
Thanks for coming along for the ride!
Check out our rout at this link:
Marianna to DeFuniak Springs, FL
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