One week is a long time ...

I'm getting cagey sitting here in Florida. I'm ready to ride but I need to wait until the 1st to take off to Gainesville. Our new tent arrived today. Shira and I threw the old one out last week, into the trash compactor it went! That was a terrible tent. It was great at keeping water out, but it was also great at keeping condensation in. It was a single-walled Eureka tent, don't do the single-wall, get a fly.

Outside of Reidsville, GA we ran into our first touring bikers. Dana and Matt were a couple from Portland, OR travelling south to West Palm Beach, FL from Reidsville. They were travelling 80 to 90 miles per day and riding on a tight schedule. I hope they made it in time. We biked half a day with them and then had a great dinner in town. It was fun to meet people who were sort of in our same frame of mind. We also picked up some travel tips from them, since they had travelled in Asia by bicycle.

Hmmmm. Out of all the states we've travelled through, I have to say that Florida is the strangest. Before Florida turned into New New Jersey it seems like it was actually a cool place populated by Florida Crackers. For me, the easiest way to describe a Cracker is to compare them to the self-sufficient people in the Appalachians. They are basically flatland hillbillies, many of whom had Scotch-Irish roots, similar to the folks of Appalachia. These Florida Crackers were semi-nomadic farmers and cattle herders. They scraped a living by growing or making most of was they had. Their main drink was "low bush lightning" or moonshine, mostly homemade. Their main food was corn in the form of grits and cornbread. They also harvested swamp cabbage, which is the heart of the Palmetto palm tree, and boiled it to eat. One of the facts I like most about these Florida Crackers is their disregard for property rights and the law. Criminal matters were dealt with between the parties involved and usually the courts were left out of it. And, in deciding where to settle, Crackers would travel until they found a suitable plot of land and begin building a house. If it was someone else's land, they would live there until kicked off.

Now these Florida Crackers are being squeezed out of Florida because of the several decades of outrageous development. Development that has brought the snow birds and other weird and strange characters to Florida, most of whom have white hair.

A few more days of all day Law and Order for me, then I'll be headed west! Woohoo!