Going North

I head north today, for a number of reasons.

1. Because it's hard to go south from here ... unless you've got a boat.
2. I'm going to drop a chair off at Panama City Beach.
3. Saturday, I get to ride with one of my personal heroes.

The first two need no elaboration -- or at least deserve none. The last one, though, is the biggie.

You see, last year about this time in Franklin, TN (a suburb of Nashville, in case y'all didn't know), the Harpeth Bicycle Club hosted its annual Harpeth River Ride. It was a big deal. RandoGirl and I got to ride bike escort for the Governor of Tennessee and the Mayors of Nashville, Brentwood, and Franklin. Since one of the sponsors of our ride was Nissan, who also sponsors a professional bicycle racing team, they had three of their guys come out and ride with us. One of them is a seven-time winner of the Tour de France.

Lance was a lot of fun, and a huge draw for the ride. We capped our riders at 1,500, and filled up days before. People were coming up to me and asking if I could get them in, almost like it was a Billy Ray Cyrus concert or something.

This year, Nissan's sending these three guys:

Ben King came last year, and Lance gave him a sports car. I think he had an Oprah moment or something. Anyhow, since Ben knows where all of the tricky parts are on the descent down Pulltight Hill, Chris Horner and Matthew Busche made him come along this time. They may only give him a Nissan Leaf. Think green, lad. Green.

(By the way, there are no tricky parts to the descent from Pulltight Hill. The laugh's on you, guys!)

So, now you're thinking that Chris is the personal hero that I was talking about. Well, you're kind of right, in that I've always loved Chris Horner. He seems like a straight-up guy and friendly, but a fierce competitor. At 40, he's also one of the oldest guys in the pro peloton, which is always a kick. I respect the heck out of Chris Horner, and I'm looking forward to meeting him.

But this guy is the hero I really want to see:

Yep, it's the man. The legend. The one and only ... Dan Dillon!

This is my third River Ride with Dan. The first time, we did 43 miles. In 2010, we did the metric. It was Dan's longest ride ever. He was in serious pain -- cramping, suffering in the 100+ degree heat, totally exhausted -- and I offered a number of times to flag down a truck to take us home, or at least take a short-cut and shave some miles.

No. Freaking. Way.

Of course, Dan would never say, "No freaking way." He is a true southern gentleman, always gracious and thoughtful, and would not resort to foul language. He has a wonderful wife, and a full rich life. He just celebrated his 70th birthday. He's been blind for over 50 of those years.

And he would probably tell you -- very honestly -- that he is the luckiest guy on earth.

That's just one of the reasons that I am so looking forward to riding another metric with Dan this Saturday. He's the honorary ride leader this year, and he deserves it.

I don't know a lot of people that would want to trade places with him -- probably because of the whole "blind" thing -- but you can put me down as one of the people that wishes that I could approach every hardship the way that Dan does. For him, it's just another challenge that it might be fun to overcome.

And I think that's pretty heroic.

Friday Recoverage

I love nice easy recovery rides, which is I'm confused that I haven't been taking more of them.

I'm going to fix that.

Starting today, I'm going to try to give you, my loyal readers, at least one blog every week that's full of pictures of the weird, scary, ironic, lovely, and hopefully sometimes funny stuff that I see on my recovery rides. This should be a breeze, since I see this crap all of the freaking time down here. The hard part -- which will hopefully be the easy part eventually -- is slowing down and/or stopping and/or actually turning around to go back and take a picture of the thing.

Of course, there are some things that I just won't get, probably because I'm not fast enough pulling out a camera. For example, yesterday I was riding long and I saw a Dad out riding with his two kids to school. They had their backpacks, and we're working their way down the multi-use path along Imperial Drive, and I tried to get the picture but missed it. Could I have gone back and gotten it? Yeah, but I wasn't doing that kind of ride. Thus, a scene went un-captured that I would really like to see happening more in this increasingly unhealthy world.

My noodling this morning took me into a neighborhood on the northern edge of Port Royal. The road dead-ended here, and you could see that there was a nice pink classically Florida house back there, and the grounds included a dock with a cabin cruiser, a pool, and tennis courts. At first, I read the sign as "House of the Dog," but then realized that would be "Casa del Perro." This, instead, is "Dog House."

I would love to know the back-story on this place. I want to see the human's house, and know what transgression it would require to be sent to such a nice dog house.

This was just around the corner. The neighbors had the same sign stuck in their yard, and I do have to give them props on their unified front. Of course, the area is about the demographic that you expect for this kind of thing -- affluent retired white Protestants who don't want to pay taxes on their hard-earned money (well, Grandpa worked hard to earn it), don't believe in free health care for anybody (although you better not touch their Medicare), and hate all immigrants other than the ones that keep their yard so nice.

I was hoping that the rope was something they hung up for the grandkids to play on, and not part of the political statement. Gauging by the height of the thing, it would only work for hanging midgets ... but these are the kind of people that might do that, too.

The other interesting thing about this picture is the little addendum that they taped to the bottom of the sign, which reads "You're on Video!" I think that they've had people defacing their signs. Not that I would ever condone trespassing, and as an American I personally believe that everyone has a right to voice their opinion no matter how wrong-headed, but it does give me hope for south Florida when I think that someone is willing to dick with this moron's sign.

Finally, these trees. They're blooming like this all over down here, and I think that they are just gorgeous. I took a picture of this one near the Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club, but there are even bigger ones up and down Bayshore and Crayton.

About five minutes after taking this, I was on a road that didn't have a bike lane for about 100 yards when a big new BMW got behind me and honked. He believed that I was slowing him down, and wasting his time (which is, of course, more valuable than anyone else's). There was no shoulder, and we were going into a roundabout, so I slowed even more, and flipped him off on the other side of the roundabout, just before the bike lane returned. When I got into the bike lane, he finally zoomed passed, not even looking at me.

That's the other thing that I like about rich people: They'll bluster and make a scene, but they won't run over a cyclist if there's a chance of any witnesses. Contrast this with a good old redneck up in LaBelle -- if they honk at you, it's a message to get the hell out of their way. If you flip them off, then that honk counted as a warning shot.