20150501 - Florida Panhandle

Excuses first. While I've been in Florida, I've been searching for a house.  It's occupied a lot of my time.  Riding, unfortunately has suffered and I haven't done nearly as many long distance trips.  That said, I have done a bunch of little ones.  For me to blog about a trip, it needs to  either be greater than 250 miles, or have some special significance.  The good news is that I'm supposed to close on a house on the 15th of this month and once I'm settled in, I should be back on the road.  It also looks like my contract might end in June, so I might be able to do the Alaska trip in July.  That would clearly make up for all riding sins.

So, on Thursday, I get a text message from Susie.  I haven't seen her since I'd say 2004, maybe 2003.  She is coming to Florida, Panama City Beach to be exact and then headed out to Louisiana I think.  I have other friends Tom and Charity who live in the area and thought it would be fun for all of us to get together.  As if I need an excuse to get on the bike and ride, and with my home just waiting on the seller to close, off I went.

This is a no GPS needed kind of trip; down Little road, North on 19, West on 98 to Panama City.  The hardest part was going to be finding Susie.  Tom had a date and couldn't make dinner.  Charity is nowhere to be found.  Tom will meet us for breakfast.

The ride is fantastic.  Once you're out of the urban sprawl, things open up nicely and once you start going west, things get good quickly.  The turn west starts with open road and plenty of greenery.  The trees are plenty tall, so you can't see all that far; but, one thing is for sure, all that green is awesome, compared to the browns of the West.  Until I lived out West for awhile, I never realized how much I like green.  I digress.  Before too long, I started crossing a bunch of bridges and large expanses of water.  I really like this kind of riding, where there is water on all sides.  In fact, so far, this is the only ride, other than through the Keys where I've been able to ride over open water, or within sight of open water for such a long period of time.  The only other place where I think a ride like this is possible, east of the Mississippi might be in NE Florida, Rt. A1A, or the rest of the panhandle.  I haven't ridden those parts yet and am pretty sure the East coast doesn't feature rides like this.   Here's a 20 second sample.  I cut the audio out.  It's all loud wind noise!

So, I arrive in Panama City Beach and quickly learn that "Thunder Beach" is going on.  There are tens of thousands of bikes here, most of them Harley's or custom built choppers; all loud.  I also saw, for the first time a Suzuki R1300.  It's long and has a very low height.  It looks like it would take a football field to turn around in.

So, I manage to find a room, which I think was probably a minor miracle given all these bikers.  Parking is between two buildings and is for motorcycles only.  I was clearly out numbered by the Harley crowd.   Fortunately, I think everyone was tucked in fairly early last night.  I heard a few bikes come and go; but, by 5am, engines were starting and I was quickly awake.

Before retiring for the evening, I had dinner with Susie and her brother Billy at  Saltwater Grill.  Of course, I Yelped for it.  It was rated well.  The food wasn't ok.  Nothing special.  For breakfast, the three of us joined our friend Tom.   Tom, Susie and I all worked for a the US Treasury as contractors once upon a time.  It was great getting together with folks I hadn't seen in over 10 years!

As of this moment, the map of places I've ridden on the K1600GT  looks like this.  I think I need to close the gap between Panama City Beach and Mobile, just on the account of because.  That, however will happen once I'm going to go out west.  From my house, all points West include 10 across the panhandle.  There's no need to go it now.