A Holiday Like any Other Day

I said goodbye to Rachael this morning, again. We laid in bed until 7, then hustled to get around so we could be out by 8. I could have lingered, but she needed to drive her rental car to the airport in Jacksonville to make her flight back to Pittsburgh. There was no sense in me staying in the room with her gone. It felt lonely enough loading Bree up on the sidewalk outside after she drove away. One moment it's vacation with the girlfriend, the next it's back to the road on M'lady, trade one girl for the other.

I called my never-before-met relative on my mother's side, who my mom had arranged for me to stay with tonight, a good thing, considering the struggle to find hosts during holidays. She told me to call her for instructions on what route to take at Flagler Beach. Then I biked over the Bridge of Lions, out of the part of town where Rachael had spent all out time. We had talked about getting over to the lighthouse, because she's apparently never been in one (not as big a deal to me, because I've been in many), but we never made the time to do it. So, for her, I made my way over to the lighthouse and took a couple pictures from the outside.

It was A1A most the day. I stopped at a beautiful park beside the Mantanzas River, with a boardwalk along a marsh and walking path through some scrub. There was a nice, winding bike trail off A1A for awhile, and even though the highway had good bike lane, it was nice to get off it for a time, especially for the shade. Flagler Beach was a madhouse, lots of traffic and beach goers and some traffic blocks on A1A. I was supposed to call for advice on what way to take...but I didn't. I navigated a block over, off the highway and beachfront, and was able to bike with minimal traffic through town. Then I got back on A1A, actually a paralleling trail for much of it, along some preserved scrubland.

I got off onto a side road, John Anderson, that had no shoulder, but also very little traffic, followed it for a number of miles, then got off onto a road with bike lane, Halifax I think it was, taking me over to the Ormond Bridge. After crossing the lovely bridge, with both a bike lane and pedestrian walk way, I stopped in a pretty little park and called my relative to let her know that I had ignored her advice and would be there soon. By just after 1, I rolled up and was done for the day.

I've spent the evening relaxing, doing mostly nothing. There's been offers to be driven around town, see the Speedway and the colleges and all that stuff in Daytona, and of course there's fireworks tonight for the 4th. ...But I don't really have that much interest in all that, and I've opted to just relax and do more nothing before an early bed tonight. Because tomorrow I've set myself up with no less than 100 miles to get to a host, for lack of an ability to find anyone else. And I need to get to bed early if I'm to get up early enough to be able to make that long of a haul, twice what I did today. I'll be honest in saying that I'm not really looking forward to it. But we will see what the day brings.