I’ve been a bike enthusiast for as long as I can remember, even if not exactly steadily over these years certainly at least as far back as my first red & white baloon-tire Schwinn and the
metallic blue cannonball that succeeded it. That one, which Dad acquired for me in Belgium, was the first derailleur anyone’d seen over here, a blazing three-speed model! It once propelled me at sixteen from New York up the Connecticut River valley all the way to Quebec, a five-hundred mile escapade that manages to thrill me, as you can tell, to this day. Afterwards I hung up my bike for college and successive, presumably richer, lifetimes in the Navy, Mad Ave, Academe, and Art.
It took arriving at my sixth decade to rediscover the pure pleasures of the open road. And the inviting roadscapes of Central Florida, most often in the company of my venturesome partner; Adele and I have been steadily pedaling these deeply satisfying regional backroads & rails-to-trails over our graced decade together. Along the way we
discovered the grand adventures of the annual Bike Florida event. ( See also my video clip of Bike Florida/Springs Training 2000 ).
My bent these days is writing &
photography ( see my homepage and some photos ). In May '03, at the invitation of Sierra Club's Central Florida Chapter I presented "Journey From The Center", a multi-dimensional look at Bike To Beach in the context of Central Florida's natural settings and delivered in poetry, music, and photos over big sound on the big screen. The program has since been finding new audiences in the region.
Maybe Bike to Beach, besides providing much enjoyment to favorite beaches during its preparation, can be a return for some of these pleasures, including the endlessly wondrous if not yet always perfectly contiguous miles of Central Florida trails passing happily under my wheels.
Won't you join me?
