29.4 mi / 12.7 mph / 144 ft. climbing
Home: Sebastian Inlet State Park

The “cold snap” appears to be ending. Even though it was only 45F when we woke up, and everything was wet with dew (for the first time in Florida), it felt warm enough that I never needed to put on my big wool fingerless gloves that I’ve been wearing for the last few nights and mornings, and I was even able to stash my down jacket relatively early in the packing process rather than waiting until the last second before hopping on the bikes.

Our three days of tailwinds had ended, but the relatively-light crosswinds meant that we were still able to move at good speed and the short mileage allowed Rett to be fine with another “late” 10:30am start (that late start is what also allowed breakfast and packing to be relatively warm). Just before we climbed the big bridge crossing the Intracoastal Waterway, we hit a few blocks of stately old homes nestled under large trees, suggesting a Melbourne core with an older history than many of the post-air-conditioning developments we’ve been riding through.

When the barrier island narrowed and we crossed over to the oceanside and A1A, our choice of riding position was less-obvious: a very narrow shoulder, or a bumpy relatively-narrow asphalt trail. We mostly went with the trail, though swapped over to the road if the trail was particularly ugly and there was a break in the traffic. The go-anywhere flexibility afforded by bicycle riding almost makes me feel guilty! (and I can understand why drivers sometimes angrily point us over to a trail if we’re riding on the road: “how come they can be on my road, but I can’t be on their trail?!”)

We stopped at one of Brevard County’s many beach parks to eat lunch, and were joined by a road cyclist taking a break in his day ride. He had a lot of valuable advice about our road south through the rest of Florida. A little later on another fast roadie sat behind us on the trail for a while because he also wanted to chat but first needed to finish the business call that he was on. He had done a Florida-to-D.C. tour where he ended up doing 100-mile days, and even before he talked to us that had already taught him that going slow might be a lot more enjoyable. Often the road cyclists see us as an entirely different species (and vice-versa), so it was cool to have some quality crossing of our cultures this day.

It was a comfortable 70 degrees at dinnertime in camp, when it had been 53 a couple days ago. I never even unpacked my down jacket, even when writing at 10pm. However, a tradeoff was that our campsite was filled with biting bugs (mainly no-see-ums, with a support performance by mosquitos), for perhaps the first time since we suffered sandflies in New Zealand.

But that was a minor fight compared to the epic raccoon battle. At least the ranger at check-in had warned about them, though the only help she could offer was “good luck…?” But knowing is half the battle, so we weren’t caught too off-guard when the first one started nosing around my bags at dusk. We got a visit at the same time three nights ago, but that “battle” was so brief I didn’t even remember to write about the lack of further skirmishes the next morning. These guys did not give up nearly as easily, despite being hit with thrown water bottles, squirted at from the same, and screamed at by my maniac wife. I couldn’t tell how much was the same raccoons probing multiple times, vs. new recruits scouting the area, but there were a minimum of two, and likely many more. I needed to stand our bikes together in the center of the cleared gravel pad, and sit right beside them to discourage approaches and maintain visibility of attack lines. Like a cowboy corralling his horses to protect them from bears or bandits.

Since the “keep our food in our panniers in our chairs under the rainfly” seemed to work three nights ago, I decided on the same approach, but additionally surrounded the tent with big dried palm fronds, and layered them atop the bikes as well. The idea being that their dry crackling would work as “alarms”, waking me up when the raccoons began their assault. Yeah, our campsite looked (and felt!) like something out of a goddamn Tarzan movie!