I want to take a minute and explain the tweet I sent out on the 16th about how small the back of a cop car is. It actually turned out to be a funny story and something that I will never forget. So here we go (I hope I can do it justice because it was a hell of a time!):
After driving for 20+ hours from Iowa City, IA to Clermont, FL the group wanted to do an easy ride to get the legs moving again. Jackson, one of the Trihawks, came to this area last year and knew of a bike path that he thought we should check out. He said that he knew where it was and that it would be "an easy hour". I thought to myself "what could possibly go wrong. only an hour of easy riding. we'll be back in no time"...turns out I was dead wrong! So we jumped on our bikes (*note: we hardly brought any food or water because we thought that it would only be an hour) and took off for this trail system that Jackson knew of.
It took us about 45 minutes to find it, so there was no way that we would be getting back within our hour time frame. But whatever. We were in Florida and I was just glad to be riding outside without 7 shirts on. We took a trail map and decided to ride on the trail instead of turning back the way we came from. This would turn out to be our fatal mistake. On this perfectly flat, perfectly straight trial there were NO signs of life...besides the occasional turtle. This trail had thick tree cover on either side, but when there was a break in them there was nothing but farm land as far as you could see. We were on this trail for about 40 minutes before coming to the trail head. According to the map that we had we weren't to far from home...which couldn't have been farther from the truth.
We turned onto a road that we all thought would get us back to our condo, but we were again wrong. On this road we had to flag down 3 different cars to ask for directions. Each vehicle said something a little different so we weren't sure what to think now. By this point our food and water supplies were being rationed out according to who needed them the most. We took the directions of the final car that we talked to because we weren't sure what else to do. This took us to a highway that luckily had a big enough shoulder that we could ride on...and by this point of the day it was getting so dark that we had to turn on the (few) bike lights that we had. One front light and two back lights split between 5 bikes isn't the best ratio to have when trying to find your way home in a foreign state.
After another 20 minutes on this road we stopped at a gas station to ask for direction again. A group of about 8-10 men gathered around us...probably wondering why our skin was so pasty white being from Iowa and all. I wasn't sure what was about to go down but they turned out to be really cool. We told them where we were trying to go and they all turned to look at one another...and just died laughing. Not a good sign. They gave us directions, that seemed pretty easy, and told us "good luck". So we set off again (keep in mind that it's about 9 pm at this point and we cant see more than 10 feet in front of our front wheel) in hopes that we would find our condo shortly. We followed what the group at the gas station said but shortly realized that we were more lost than we thought we were. We ended up on a highway, riding against traffic, trying to take advantage of their headlights, fearing for our lives every time a car or semi went past us. Not knowing if a vehicle saw you in the dark while passing you no more than 5 feet away at 70+ mph will put an uneasy feeling in your stomach!
So after about 30 minutes of defying death on a highway in the middle of nowhere Florida, we decided to turn back and go to the closest store and call a cab. We were now riding in the grass and dirt (on TT bikes) on the side of the highway because the shoulder of this highway was getting far to scary. It couldn't have been more than 5 minutes of us trying to get back to town that two cop cars pulled up behind us and turned their lights on. Right then I thought "great. the first night in FL and we're going to get arrested. who am I going to call. what will I tell my parents. i'm dead". However, these were two of the coolest cops ever! They were really nice about everything and they were really loving us up. We told them were we were trying to go and they too just looked at each other and laughed. They said that we were about 10 miles from our condo, with about 9 of those being on this highway. Looking back I'm actually really glad that these cops found us or else we would've been walking our bikes for hours!
Because there were two cops there one of them stayed with Jackson, Dan, and the bikes. Leah, Shane, and myself all got in the back (handcuff-less I might add) of the other squad car. The cop drove us back to our condo so I could get my van, drive back, and pick up the guys and the bikes. I never thought that I'd be able to speak from first hand experience about this, but the back of cop cars are really cramped and really uncomfortable. It was kinda one of my personal life goals to never end up in the back of a cop car but I think that this is the exception.
This was definitely the craziest "easy hour" bike ride of my life. It ended up being about an 3.5 hour, 50+ mile ride. Needless to say we didn't let Jackson pick the bike routes for the rest of the week! No matter how long I ride a bike for I don't think that I'll ever have an "easy" ride quite like this one. It's definitely a ride that I'll never forget!
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