The Final Stage to The Villages

Tony's View

Today was hilly, hot, humid and wonderful. It was 85 degrees and humid, which caused some major sweat for me. I enjoyed every minute of it, and it was great to have Tom riding with us and Cindy as our Sherpa. We started out and first thing we went through Payne's Prairie Preserve. It was cool. This morning, however, it was very foggy. We did walk out on the Observation Deck though and saw a very large alligator swimming by.

 We got back on our bicycle and continued on the foggy road. Our Sherpa, CIndy, said there were no hills on our 66 mile ride today. As you can see from the picture below, there were plenty of hills. She got grief for that one. 😀 Tom would catch up going up the hills and we would lose him going down. We nicknamed him Billy Goat today.

Then when climbing a hill, I told Joan it seemed like we had a flat tire and it was hard to turn the wheel. We got off and it was partially flat. I had just filled the tires with Tom's pump before we left, so I was thinking that maybe I didn't close the valve and it just slowly leaked. We stopped in a driveway in the shade as you can see in the picture to the left. I was having struggles with my pump and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. I figured out later that the release valve was sticking. I used Tom's pump and shortly thereafter our Sherpa showed up with the better floor pump. We were then off on the road again only to find out there was a small leak, so about five miles down the road we stopped at a gas station. I decided to get the new tire and tube out and throw away the old ones.

Joan got a picture of Cindy bringing the pump again. Tom helped hold the bike so Joan could get another picture. The picture below shows me putting on the new tire and tube. The trashcan in the background is where I tossed the old tire and tube. I just wanted to be rid of it. That tire has served us well though with over 4000 miles, and tires usually only last 2500 -3000 miles.








From there, things went well for the tires for the rest of the day.


Cindy found us a nice place to eat in Ocala called Harry's, where we ate outside right by our bicycle as you can see from the picture below. I ate too much with such a hot day. It took me a while to get my energy back. After we traveled about 15 miles from lunch, we came to the start of The Villages and I told Tom we were turning left. Tom said "I know where we are at and we should go right" and he took the lead. About a 1/2 mile down the road and after going up a big hill, Tom decided to turn around. We now call him turn-around Tom. We met up with Cindy's parents at one of the Fire Station and Joan took a picture as you see below to the right.



















After Tom taking us the last 18 miles to their house at 18 mph, we arrived in time to get our celebration selfie picture. We went through many round-abouts, that seemed to work pretty well. The cool ones were the ones for the T roads where the opposite side had a by pass that skipped the round-abouts completely.

Tom got home and thought it would be a good idea to dip his rear tire in the pond behind his house. I decided to spray our bike down with water to get the grit off before I started to pack it back up again for the flight home.




Joan's Extras

Once again, on our last day of riding, we find another Nick (Nicholas) sign. Maybe, it's because they like Christmas down here so much that we found so many Nick's. 

We all did a celebration high five after our long last day of this ride. Lots of great memories and great people in our few short weeks. It feels great to be in The Villages though.

I apologize for the late post today. I was tired after a long, hot ride and the Winslows kindly took us to the strawberry festival at the Brownwood Paddock Square this evening. Actually, we were all tired because Cindy & Tom got up extremely early to meet us in Gainesville. Tony stayed up the latest working on this blog. Can you all believe that?  


Another first for us is that we are allowing a non-Schroeder to add some comments to our post, and because he has so fervently fought the wind, and managed to keep up with us, and put up with us, here is Tom:

Tom's Tidbits

I had a first yesterday while riding a bike.  I have warned before about cars, golf carts, bikes, pedestrians, runners and walkers but never a train, especially one that was moving.  As we approached a train track, I looked right and saw a train.  I cautioned "train right".  Just after we crossed the train tracks, the warning signals activated and the gate crossing guards started descending.  Hope I never have to warn about a moving train again.