Hey there, Mike!

It has been like two weeks since your adventure trip was over, i know. Sorry
for taking so long to write, to send you the pictures as promised. From your
webpage one can tell you’ve had a lot of fun all along. On our way to Miami
from Key West the storm had its worst at Florida City and Homestead instead
for downtown Miami. That is, a huge amount amount of trees on the main road
and some flooded streets, a fallen down brick wall that had cut the US-1,
minutes of driving in heavy rain and total darkness… but not much more to
it. As our friend in Hollywood told us, it came out much worse north of
Miami. But then still who could have forseen what took place in Louisiana…

The fact is that next day the eastern Florida airports reopened, and so we
got our flight to Kentucky. Amazing enough, the hurricane followed us up
there, hitting again on us but this time only with heavy rain, after all of
the dramatic trail it had already left behind. Great trip after all, with a
sad episode in between if you watched the news.

Anyway, here are the two pictures we took at the gas station in Islamorada
(make that ’s’ sound! Eace-la Moh-rada, yeah man), one of us three after
getting soaked looking for deer and then buying some food in Publix, and one
us both that Toni took…. basically to get a pic of the car. He’s really
into cars, motorbikes and engines, i guess.

That’s all for now. Take care and remember, next time you have to go for
Alaska! ;-)

Lluís (Louis as posted in your blog of thursday, august 25. But of course,
how could you know how the same name is written in Catalan? Now you do. It’s
just fine).

Look at the size of that thing!

What else would you do with huricane winds?

RULE! So much fun to be had!

Since I finally made it to Key West, and there weren’t many places to camp out in the area, I decided to treat myself to a night in a yout hostile.

It cost $35 plus tax a night, but I was able to get the student rate even though I didn’t have a student ID on me, which ran me $31 tax included.

I was in one of two dorm rooms that shared a bathroom, and had a small air conditioner. It really wasn’t woth the money for what it was, but was far better than any of the alternatives, and still wasn’t a huge rip off.

The thing that made it worth while was the small common area. I sat out there around 10 pm and talked to a man from England who was starting a motorcycle trip around the states. Before too long we were joined by two men and a lady from Spain and Austria respectively, and then two girls from Germany. We stayed up till 12:30 talking about our trips and comparing countries. It was really a good time.

This morning I got up around 9 and went to find breakfast with one of the Spainards, Louis, and the Englishman, Harvey. Louis, and I came back to the hostile to check out.

I made some phone calls to try and plan out my next few days, but it is still very much up in the air. I have a lot of good looking options though, so it should all work out I’m sure.

For the first time since the third day of my trip I’m finally headed home again!

90 Miles to Cuba.

This morning I woke up at 7:30, went to flags, ate breakfast, packed up my gear, and started riding again.

For the most part, the riding down here is pretty good. There is a bike trail beside Route 1, the only road down here, most of the way, and the road almost always has a reawonable shoulder. I’ve been sticking with the road more than the bike trail because it seems to be cleaner.

The only really nervracking part of this morning was crossing the seven mile bridge. I’ve been hearing bicyclist night mares of this bridge for weeks, but it wasn’t actually all that bad. The shoulder was about half a car lane wide. It did have some debrise in it, but I made it through without any trouble (the guy I talked to at a bike shop about 6 miles back said he has never crossed it without getting a flat).

At flags, they gave a weather report stating that there is q tropical depression in the area and that there would be eight foot on the sea. This means that I will probably be encountering pretty heavy rains for the next few days down here. Unfortunatly, it sounds like there might be hurricane warnings in Fort Lauterdale, where I’m going to be flying out of next Tuesday.

I was planning on riding back up there because that would make the trip 3,000 miles long, but so long as I get to Key West (which is less than 40 miles away now) I’ll be satisfied.