First Long Ride (Heading Home)

Sunday 7/6/08:

 

We woke up around 10 am today, feeling very relaxed, but we knew we had to get our butts up and going very soon as we had to return the keys to our RV by 11am. The morning felt fresh and just a little on the cool side, maybe 72 degrees. The entire campground was already filled with folks up and moving as almost everyone was checking out today.

 

Late last night I had seen 3 other bikes parked a couple of lots away next to a very expensive RV’s. There was another Harley parked behind our RV, but this morning all had already packed up and had taken off. My wife and I got the stuff we had carried in our backpack and put it in her sister’s RV so that we didn’t have to carry anything on our way back. After we got all set, we went to the little cafeteria and had breakfast. This KOA campground is definitely one of the better organized and maintained in all of South Florida. I’ve been here about 4 times before and never had any complaints.

 

After breakfast, we double checked the rental RV to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind and mounted our bike. I had told my wife the day before that we needed to find a name for our bike. This morning she decided on “Blue Ray”. I asked her why that name, and she couldn’t had given me a simpler explanation. “Because she’s blue and the little sparkles in the paint make it look like rays from the sun”. And here I was trying to find something deep and meaningful. Oh well “Blue Ray” it is.

 

We took off heading north on US1 ahead of the rest of the family as we knew we were going to have to stop for gas and would probably get some rain showers as well today. Blue Ray had been doing really good gas mileage (about 51mpg), but it doesn’t have a reserve tank, but rather once it gets under 1 gallon a yellow light under the speedometer lights up. Also one of the trip meters resets itself and starts counting your miles until you fill up again. It’s a nice feature but I don’t like seeing the little yellow light, so we pulled over about 4 miles down the road and filled her up.

 

While filling up Blue Ray, my wife’s kids drove by in the van honking like mad and waving at us. The rest of the family which were riding in the RV was still packing. Without noticing I pulled the nozzle from the gas pump out of the bike while it was still pouring. Whoosh! Gas everywhere. My wife quickly got some paper towels, soaked them in water and started cleaning up the spilled gas. Something that I need to start keeping in mind when filling up is to try not to let it top over.

 

Traffic was pretty smooth until we got to the northern part of Marathon Key. Here traffic just stopped! There was a huge line of cars, RV’s, campers, boat trailers as far as your eyes could see just moving at a snail’s pace. I found myself never getting out of 2^nd gear for a good 20 minutes. Every now and then the congestion would open up for about a mile but then back to crawling. We decided to rest up back at the Tiki bar as we did the day before.

We finally got to the Holiday Isle and the Tiki Bar around noon. Our butts were sore, and so was my clutch hand. I had been holding down the clutch for most of the ride so far because of the intense traffic jam.

 

Now here’s where things get really interesting!!

 

I’ve lived in Florida almost all my life and I had always been told not to eat oyster or shell fish during the summer if you weren’t sure where it came from. The reasoning behind this is that you’re more likely to get food poisoning during summer month from these types of food than in other times of the year. Well I’ve abided by this unwritten rule for most of my life, but for some reason, today I forgot about.

 

Now the Tiki Bar is a clean place to eat and in all fairness and credit to them, you can get sick from seafood at any restaurant. (I think you know where I’m going with this by now).

 

My wife and I sat down and ordered a breaded seafood platter that included fish, scallops, calamari, oysters, and shrimps. Now the reason why I mention the food poisoning is because I didn’t feel anything wrong until the following day. On Monday night I began a fever that lasted for almost a week. I also got seriously sick with ulcers throughout my mouth and my gums became super enlarged. Eventually I wound up in the Hospital later that week.

 

How do I know it was the seafood. Well my wife ate all the same things I did except for oysters and calamari and didn’t even get a stomach ache. My friend Mario experienced a worst scenario several years ago when he got salmonella poisoning from oysters as well.

 

But anyways I’m good now so back to our ride.

 

The traffic heading back to Miami was murderous. Even “The Stretch” which people tend to go a bit faster on was at a complete craw as well. By the time we reached Florida City my left hand felt numb, so we pulled into a little biker joint called “The Last Chance Saloon”. This place has a tough, rustic “don’t mess with me” allure to it, and for folks heading down to the Keys it is the last hitching post before “The Stretch”.

 

My wife and I sat down on the large rectangular bar and ordered a couple of beers. We talked with a couple of local bikers and put in a few quarters in the juke box and just hanged out and relaxed. As Keith Urban played in the background “These are the days we will remember”, I took sometime to reminisce on the last four days of riding and it had truly been some great time to remember. We were only about half an hour away from home now and we hadn’t even gotten rained on all day. Already my wife and I are thinking about our next ride down here soon. Probably in September for the annual Poker Run.