Florida Crystals (5/10/2023 Wednesday)

At home and in my coffee making kit, my raw sugar comes from Florida Crystals. I departed my campsite around 0800 and plotted a gps route back to Ocala. Minutes later the gps had me exit the bridge and travel a few thousand miles out to sea. Luckily I don't do everything I'm told to do. Never had the gps behaves so crazy. It seemed like most bridges caused it to select some single point far into the Atlantic Ocean, making todays drive back North via the short route take 60000 hours. When I refused to exit the roadway it asked to recalculate to address my off-routedness. For hours I would retry with similar results, and sometimes it would just say it couldn't find a viable route. Since most of the issues started from bridges, I decided it would get better once I rode off the keys and onto the mainland, and left the chain of islands connected by bridges.

The mainland didn't provide much relief from the gps troubles or the heat. All day the gps troubles continued and the heat climbed to a peak of 96F. Since the gps route jumped to some point in europe and then back to the desired road some number of miles further along the expected route, I was given some hints of the desired route. As I approached Miami signs indicated that all 8 lanes of my current highway would be closed for travel and that I should seek an alternate route. This wasn't just a gps glitch, this was a physical highway sign. And not just a single prank sign but a number of warnings counting down the miles until a solution was needed.

You might recall that on my way to the Keys was via the west coast route and went further south than the gps wanted me to. This cost me at least one extra hour of travel and required extra waypoints to keep it from the shorter and faster route near Orlando. On the return it was my intention to let it take me by Orlando on the big toll roads. But now it seemed that road was closed near Miami. As I approached Rt75 I knew it could take me back to the west coast, but for some reason I beleived the road I was on would end before ever reaching Rt75. In order to avoid Miami I decided Rt27 would keep me clear and hit Rt75 with less congestion. That might have turned out true but I hadn't considered that Rt27 would also be under heavy construction. So much so that at times I thought all the vehicles I was traveling with could just be construction equipment and that this road might just end. Eventually construction transformed into mining operations that further evolved into planted sugar cane. Signs indicated it was even my sweatener of choice. Miles of straight road and sugar cane plants as far as the eye could see. Why didn't I take Rt75 west, because it was clear on the map that Rt27 went along Lake Okeechobee and that was something new. Before I reached the lake I realized that I had not seen any gas stations, the gps was unwilling to predict any. The bike was quite willing to predict an emtpy tank in 60 miles. So endless sugar fields wasn't the best case for refueling. But I was about 35 miles from an intersection that seemed promising. Turns out that And it was, and gas was available at the tiny town just to the east.

The gas stop was odd. Bars on the windows, tiny indian woman manning the register in a plexiglass fortress any pope would envy. I bought water, gatorade and fried fish. The fish looked decent, a lot better than the bacon and "eggs?" they shared the glass display case with. I took my breakfast fish outside to eat it by my bike. Before I reached the bike a woman aproached me asking for money to buy water. I told her if she had a container I would give her some, but she played with her phone and headed back towards the buildings door. I kept a look out for someone she might have informed about my presence but all the new patrons just went inside. Then I realized that I was going to put the water into my back pack bladder anyway. So I poured most of it into the bladder and went looking for her with a cup of water in the bottle. She confirmed my fear that this is just some scam by refusing the bottle of water. I packed up and headed out of town still wondering how this scam works, and if |I was clear of it yet.

My navigation was still jumping from points on the route to the other side of the planet.. And the points from here traveled up the east side of Okeechobee. However my path out of town trying to interpret that was so random that anyone following me as part of an elaborate water scam would have looked just as out of place as I did. Nobody could predict this route, not me nor my gps. At the gas stop I did seat the uSD card inside the gps that held my map data. Not sure there was any improvement, but as I went further North the jumps did seem less frequent and eventually didn't even cross the Atlantic. They just couldn't be used to predict an ETA. I had traveled Rt75 to go to the airport, as well as the Dali museum. So I knew enough to get back, which just skirted a storm cell, close enough to get pretty wet. But above 90F that felt good, and even when it rained hard enough to soak my pants and jacket. Eventually I made it all the way back to Ocala.

Once back to the Ocala residence I collected my dirty clothing to wash and took a shower. Shortly after completing that a 30 minute long thunder and lighting storm ensued that flooded the roads. I was glad to have not be riding in that storm. But even happier to be back inside someplace with AC. Another bonus was finding a botle of aloe-vera gel. I just kept adding it to insect bites and sun burnt areas on my arms and legs. Man I'm just a soft american wimp. I was reminded that Alaska is known for clouds of moskeetos. I need to be more prepared for my next engagement with that particular enemy. I'd learned to put my socks over my pant legs to keep my lower legs covered. But only having a tee shirt left my arms and neck too exposed. And I never confirmed that I transferred my deet bug repellent to this bike. On my old bike repellent lived under the seat with the tools. At the start of the day I had confirmed my tiny tin of Noxema was in my medical kit, and Noxema felt great on my arms and back of my hands. Short trips to the beach and dinner exposed those body parts to the sun when I opted to forego my normal jacket and gloves in the heat.