I got on highway 1 and followed that most the day. It was a nice road to be on as a whole, with good shoulder or even bike lane most the time, and often very minimal traffic, thanks to the paralleling interstate. I biked much of the morning with barely a stop. Though at Edgewater I came upon a roadside art museum, paintings and carvings done by an individual and put up all around his property for free and public display. It was neat. I didn't want to take the time to call to get past the barrier, though the sign claimed he would be there to let anyone in in three minutes, but I did take some time to look around from the sidewalk. It was easily the most interesting thing I saw during the day.
I saved a little time and shortened the distance of the day by a few miles by staying on 1 at several points when Google suggested to get off. It was good most the day. Though there was one section of construction where it was reduced to one lane for a long stretch, and I made some drivers very angry by being in there way on that one lane. With no indication of any more construction vehicles on the coned off section, I eventually popped over onto the unfinished road, thankfully dry, to keep them from going crazy with impatience. It turned out okay, but I didn't like being forced to not respect the coned off space. There were also a few places where the road got extremely rough, frame rattlingly so, but thankfully they didn't last too long before the road would smooth out again.
I didn't get much view of the Indian River (some land between it and the actual ocean) despite being so close. It often was out of sight behind buildings, and when it was in view, it was on the other side of the highway, so close but so far from reach.
Around Melbourne, a lack of shoulder finally made me decide to take Google's route and get off of highway 1. It was frustrating not taking the most direct road (essentially the hypotenuse of the route I actually took) because I questioned my safety on it as a cyclist, but it's nothing I'm not used to. I ran down to the last of my water and had to stop at a 7/11 even though I was nearly done, because it was too worrisome to be without in this heat. The short stretch where I was heading due East against the wind was miserable for my overtired legs, but soon I was pulling into the parking lot of my host's apartment complex
After my shower and some relaxing on the couch, my host took me to dinner. There was some deliberation on where to go since she wasn't sure what there was that catered to vegetarians, especially when I explained I wasn't a pescatarian, and so I don't eat seafood either. In the end, we went to an Island themed bar/restaurant, where I got an interesting cheese tortellini with grapes and bananas in Alfredo, a combination that worked better than expected. Then afterwards we went to the beach to watch a rocket launch. I got a chance to take off my shoes and put my feet in the ocean, then we sat down on the beach in preparation for the rocket. After the repeated scrubbing of the launch from Wallops Island while I was heading down Delmarva and North Carolina, and my disappointment of getting out of its range (I looked and it finally launched last week), I finally got to see a rocket launch. It was neat, a little line of fire in the distance, generating a vapor cone, then disappearing from sight, and some time later producing a rumbling as it entered the upper atmosphere. We sat for awhile afterward, as the sun got low in the sky, enjoying the surf and the sand. It was a good end to the evening.
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