My riding partner, Mary Garita, and I decided we wanted to get in an end-of-year century, so we took off for the south end of the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, a paved path on the dike of Lake Okeechobee in Florida on Nov. 18, 2006. Here's a sample of what it looks like http://ken.steinhoff.net/LOST_South/ If you look at my GPS, we didn't set any world speed records. 9 hours 17 minutes moving, 3:36 stopped. A moving average of 10.8 mph.
A bunch of stuff conspired against us.
1. A cold front was moving through, which meant that 42 of the first 50 miles were into a brisk headwind.
2. To get out of the wind, we dropped down to Ghost Road 27, an abandoned section of U.S. 27, which has been one of my favorite riding spots. For pix, see http://ken.steinhoff.net/Ghost_Road_27/ Unfortunately, someone decided to cut grind a bunch of the dead trees in the canal alongside the road into mulch. Instead of a nice ride, we had to carry our bikes for long distances over piles of ground-up trees.
3. After fighting a headwind to the turnaround point, the bleeping wind stopped just about dusk. We didn't have a headwind, but we didn't have a well-deserved tail wind, either. Life is just not fair.
4. When the sun went down, temps dropped to about 42 degrees. That's not impressive to Yankees, but, when the wind chill is factored in, it's cold to us Floridians. I had on two pairs of leg warmers, arm warmers, a wind vest and a jacket. THEN I was comfortable.
The i-Ride performed admirably. I started out with batteries that had some use on them and still managed to finish the ride with the original set. The iPod didn't perform as well. I had to reach into the panniers for the auxiliary battery about three hours from the end. On a serious note: you'll notice that Mary and I are riding without helmets. We have them strapped on the back of the bikes and we wear them on Ghost Road 27 and the few places where you come off the dike onto the highway. We've always reasoned that we are totally isolated from traffic, that the trail is baby-bottom smooth and that we frequently go a whole ride without seeing another rider. What is there to hit, right?
Work, weather and the holidays kept Mary off her bike until Jan. 6, when we decided to ride the LOST North leg. Temps were in the high 70s, there was a slight cross wind, the sky was clear and the birds and gators were all over the place. Mary was having a better day than I was. At our normal first rest stop, she was about a quarter-mile ahead of me. We each had an energy gel, split an energy bar, called my brother in MO to rag on him about our ride and took off again.
Mary quickly picked up a tenth of a mile on me. 1.57 miles after our rest stop, I looked up to see her on the road "pretending" to take a nap. Unfortunately, she wasn't napping. She had inexplicably taken a header and was unconscious with multiple skull fractures. The 9-1-1 dispatcher I spoke with took seriously my description of her injuries, put a chopper on standby and send rescue squads from two counties to find us (we were right on a county line). The thirty minutes it took for help to arrive was one of the longest 30 minutes in my life. She was taken to a local hospital (where the folks were great) and then transferred to a second one with more specialists. Much to our surprise and delight, she was discharged on the Thursday night after the accident. Her road rash is healing nicely, but she still has blurred vision and no recall of 24 to 36 hours during and after her short attempt to fly.
