20160221 - Spring Hill - Orlando and back (dinner with Craig Barrett)

Let me just say that I am not a planner.  I have to repeat that, mostly to convince myself.  I am not a planner.  The majority of my riding has been to point the bike in a direction and ride it.  I may have had a destination in mind and I have used the GPS to get me places; but, on most of my destination rides, I'll look at a road atlas, get a general idea of where I want to go and ride.  If I get off course, fine.  I've used Google Maps on my iPhone extensively to figure out where I was in relation to where I want to be and picked cardinal points that got me going toward that point.  I've discovered many things that way.  When riding across country, I had to have an idea of when I needed to be at a certain point in order to make it to work on time...weeks later.  I'm not a planner though.  I don't recall making a hotel reservation, outside work, for domestic travel EVER.  I've gotten into 'town' late and on more than one occasion found that everything in the town was booked up and had to ride an additional our and something more to get to a town with a place to stay.  My contingency was camping gear and I don't think I've ever had to use it because I couldn't find a place to stay.  Now that it's clear that I'm not a planner, I have to confess that I actually planned the first half of this ride and had an awesome time doing it.

I have Garmin BaseCamp, a not all that intuitive mapping tool.  You can do route planning with this tool and download the plan (route or waypoints) to your GPS.  My objective is to not use Interstates, Toll Roads.  I prefer county roads over state highways.  Basemaps allows me to make that happen.  For the first time, I created a route and rode the route.  When I found that I had more time on my hand than expected, I went exploring; but, for a large part, I rode the route I planned.  There, I said it.  I planned my ride.  As you can see, I'm trying to get myself to accept that planning is OK.   I've also found an API called overpass.turbo.eu that allows me to box an area on a map and query the map data about what's in that area.  As an example, I can ask it to show me all the secondary, secondary_link, tertiary roads in the box.  With this, some Python and BaseCamp, I can craft routes that I haven't been on, are off the beaten path and much more fun than riding on highways!  I didn't know about this tool until after this route was planned (I said it again); but, I will use it in the future.  My route partially used a track from a previous ride, so I already knew that I would be on some awesome roads!

So, the destination was Flemmings Prime Steak House in WinterPark (Orlando) and I was going to be meeting Craig Barrett, a friend who used to work with me on the Treasury Communication System.  I planned to ride for 3 hours before getting there and then ride home for another hour and a half.  We talked for 3 and a half hours.  There was so much to catch up on - family stuff, work stuff, stuff stuff.  It was a great time, the food was great and so was the riding!  Going home, a dead racoon jumped out in front of me.  It must have jumped out because it wasn't there before I saw it.  I had enough time to decide to run it over as opposed to trying to steer around it.  Steering around it would be dangerous.  If I hit it on an angle, I would have a high probability of wrecking.  This brings the number of dead animals that either hit me or I hit to 6 - 2 birds flew into me (one hit me square in the chest and one flew into my lower right leg);  1 bat (it glanced off the right side of my helmet); 1 snake (he didn't deserve to get run over; but, he was completely stretched across the lane when I came around a curve); one running ground hog and now, one dead racoon that magically appeared in my lane.  Hopefully, there won't be more.

Here is the all important map of the route.  I just realized I did not get a picture with Craig.  I am now very bummed out.

20160205 - Springhill - Jupiter and return via Cape Canaveral

At this point, I've ridden from the west coast of Florida to Jupiter and back many times, and most times, I don't bother to write about the ride.  This time, I decided to take the long way home and ride A1A and Rt. 1 up the east coast to Cape Canaveral before turning west.  I'd never been to Cape Canaveral before.

Most of this ride, and most all coastal rides in Florida are pretty disappointing.  Florida is so built up that it is hardly possible to see the water from the roadway.  Instead, you see well landscaped buildings - luxury vacation rentals, hotels and the like.  The obvious exception to this is the ride to Key West.  That has miles and miles of ocean view.  Even out on the panhandle, the view of the Gulf is limited, except for some spotty bridge crossings.  This trip was the same - limited view of the ocean.



That having been said, there were some pretty cool things to see during this trip.  The US Navy Seals museum is in Ft. Pierce, right on A1A.  They were closed when I pulled in; but, I got some pictures anyway.




The Disney cruise liner was in port at Port Canaveral.  I never cease to be amazed at how big cruise ships are.  I also can't imaging how the lifeboats can possibly accommodate all the people that are on board.  There was an offset gate that was big enough for a motorcycle to go through that led to the employee lot.  It was from there that I took the pictures.  The other gates would have taken me to palaces within the port where pictures would have been obstructed by buildings.  It was interesting that nobody saw me and nobody asked any questions.








Cape Canaveral is a place I need to go and spend some time.  I think I will put an invitation out to the local BMW motorcycle chapter and see if anyone wants to ride out there, do the tour and come back.  I expected to see a little more from the road than I could.  That said, I got a picture of a rocket booster and I was able to see the launch pad for a good amount of the travel on A1A.  I can imagine that all the parking lots that face it must have been filled when the shuttle would launch.  I can only imagine what a site it was.  Interestingly enough, just south of the turn off on A1A, a space shuttle can be seen on the ground.  I tried and other people were trying to get to it.  It is way back in a junk yard.  I couldn't get to it and people are probably not allowed back there anyway.  I don't know if it's some kind of replica or what it is; but, it is interesting that it is just sitting there.  I couldn't tell; but, it might just be a model.  I couldn't find a place to get a picture of it.




From the Cape, I decided to not go through Orlando.  Even though the trip would be longer, I would do much less stop and go and interface with cars much less...or so I thought.  While riding on Rt. 50 just west of Orlando, a car decided to pass a large motorhome with me in the oncoming lane.  It was too close.  I had to go out on the shoulder...if you can call it that.  It was only about 30" wide.  I don't know why people take risks like that.

Other than that, the trip was uneventful.  The trip home stayed in the 60's the whole time.