Key West FL – Jacksonville FL
Thur March 14, 2019
(~500 miles)
So what does breakfast in Key West look like for a few weary LD riders? Glamourous? Enthusiastic?
These ARE our happy faces.
Breakfast was nothing special, typical hotel buffet, but it was hot (warmish?) and hit the spot. Plus there was coffee! After lumping most of our gear down to the bikes first, we ate in a lounge area open to the courtyard, enjoying the warm outside air, which was still pegged at around 79 degrees, same as during our arrival the previous night.
Appetites sated, we headed down to White Street Pier, reputed to be the proper sunrise-watching spot in Key West, to see if that firey ball would make its scheduled appearance for us at 07:50. We easily found parking at the pier at this early hour on a weekday.
Finally, we were at a spot where we had to just STOP, relax, and inhale the vibe of the keys a bit.
Nothing was going to rush the sunrise, so we stood and chatted on the pier, watching the locals doing the same thing. There was a funny little old dog with a bright vest reading “CAUTION” wandering the pier and alternately chasing the flock of pigeons begging for feed and catching its breath. One resident mistook us for workmen there to fix the streetlights, due to our reflective gear.
Finally the sun did it’s thing. Not a ton of clouds so the colors were fairly subdued, but it was a nice tropical moment for us boys from the north.
Roy headed back to the bikes almost immediately after the sun rose, while the rest of us lingered a bit to see if the colors would get more dramatic (they didn’t, but it was still beautiful). I had pinpointed a few lighthouses along the southern Florida coast prior to the trip, depending on how plans worked out. I wanted to ride back up to Jacksonville with the group, but I knew the Key West Lighthouse was only just around the block.
Ken and Marc agreed to make a quick stop so I broke the news to Roy, who took it in stride and remounted the bikes and got underway. I found the lighthouse, which is situated right in the middle of town and got my photo. During a major storm decades ago, the entire island was washed over by the ocean, and the original lighthouse had collapsed in the surf. This one was the shorter replacement. We realized we’d lost Marc somewhere in the morning traffic and met up with him back at the Circle K station on the way out of town.
We had a nice ride out of the keys along US-1, now able to see and appreciate the beautiful blue waters, palm trees and open water views. I remember the guys mentioning seeing a fighter jet flying above, probably out of the nearby naval base. I’d missed it, but as I write this entry I just realized that I’d captured the jet in this photo!
There was some traffic, but not too heavy and moving along at speed limit or above for the most part. We’d been experiencing a lot of static over the four-way Sena intercom connection, so Roy opted out of our chat this morning. We all were eager to stop at a nice local coffee shop somewhere to finish waking up, but we seemed unable to make a decision and passed several by without stopping. Before we knew it, we were back on the mainland, so I punched up coffee shops in Google Maps and located a likely target a couple miles off the highway west of Miami, called Bahia Coffee Shop.
Roy elected to continue moving on towards Jacksonville, while the three of us embarked on a sleep-deprived and unsuccessful hunt through the traffic-laden local street grid to find some caffeine. The Bahia place turned out to be a bust, bringing us to an abandoned mini-mall in an industrial park area. Aaack! At this point, we just needed to get off the bikes, and so hit up the local Dunkin. We had a nice 20 minute break from the humidity (not even that bad actually) in the air-conditioned comfort, getting our caffeine fix and reflecting on the ride out of the Keys.
Refreshed, we mounted back up, picked our way back out to the turnpike and zoomed north uneventfully for the remainder of the day. We pulled in to the Ramada in Jacksonville around 17:00, looking forward to showers, rest, and a good meal. After checking in and registering our BBG ride with IBA’s Howard Entman, we chatted with some riders in the bar for a while. It had come to our attention via the interwebs yesterday that a bike had been stolen from the hotel parking lot. To our amazement, it had already been recovered by police, and owner Ken Andrews regaled us with the tale over a beer.
Soon it was time for food. Our friend and local ST rider Ashley had volunteered to pick us all up in his SUV to get some dinner at a local watering hole, Miller’s Ale House. It was a nice way to kick back at last and unwind from the two days of hard riding.
