Vacation

This past weekend I vacationed in Florida with Eric and his fam. Like any obsessed bike racer, I couldn't leave the bike at home. But, for the purposes of discussion, this past weekend was vacation, since it involved a beach, crashing ocean waves, having a nice time with good people, eating well...even though Saturday was spent driving to a race (hey, the drive was pleasant, so it still counts as R&R time...of course, I wasn't driving so it's easier for me to say that) and Saturday evening involved speeding through downtown Jacksonville.

Thursday the flight to Tampa was pleasant. The in-flight movie was "Freedom Writers" with Jennifer Gardner. I was determined to get some sleep so I missed the first part of the movie, but judging from the last half, the movie is worth watching in its entirety. Eric was waiting for me at the airport, after driving a couple of hours to get there...and on the way back we noticed that where he had driven moments before had become a parking lot. Whew! Spring break in warm places like Florida (especially after such a brutal winter) yields traffic jams of epic proportions.

Upon arriving at his family's vacation home in Bonita Springs, we sat down to dinner and watched the sun set on the ocean. Not long afterwards, it was time to play mini-golf! The mini-golf place was nicely designed and I'm saying this more because the holes were at least twice the size of a normal hole found on a mini-golf course. So, it makes a really rusty mini-golf player such as myself feel pretty good. Come to think of it, I never heard the final score for anyone.

Later that night I got to learn, or begin to learn, euchre. It's a pretty entertaining game...quite fun to try to understand and to watch the players and the variety of reactions a seemingly benign card can cause.

Friday was a truly hot and humid day, but the heat isn't so terrible when pedaling along and creating a nice breeze. Eric and I had a really nice ride on the road, next to some pretty ritzy ocean-side communities. We wished that we could have gone for longer, but it gave us time to get the rental bike back (yes, they rent road bikes in FL), Eric took a long swim and I got in a nap. How easy to be lulled to sleep by the crashing waves and ocean breeze.

Once again, we watched the sun set and took in the last few minutes of calm prior to worrying about packing up and turning to race mode. Moments later, there was a torrential rain, it must have been all of the humidity becoming too heavy for itself. Hey, being able to live without cracked skin for a few days was great, the humidity is fine so long as jeans aren't necessary.

Saturday found us driving most of the day to get to Jacksonville. Countryside driving helped us avoid the interstate which probably saved us hours and lots of stress. Jacksonville is a pretty city.

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