Monday, April 13, 2015

So, I had two very wet days.  Sunday was also exciting for other reasons.  It turns out that one of my bags fell off of the bike.  It was the bag with all of my tools and spare parts, including extra tubes.  I'm surprised I didn't notice when it happened, but I didn't discover it until 15 miles down the road or so.  I came out of a convenience store ( still wet even after taking a break and eating something) and I noticed the bag was missing.  A real sinking feeling.  I didn't notice the bag was missing until I came out, so I thought maybe someone grabbed the bag and stole it while I was in the store.  Nothing I could do, so I just kept pedaling.  It turns out someone found the bag and looked to see if they could find the owner.  Inside the bag was a notebook with lots of phone numbers.  One of them was for the people I was to stay with on Sunday night.  The person who found the bag recognized the number as being fairly close in Florida, so he called that number.  It was for my hosts. So now we have a possible bag belonging to me, but no me and no bike.  That raised some worries.  Nancy ( one of my hosts) tried to call me, but it was raining and my phone was tucked away.  I rode to my destination ( about 50 miles for the day), took out my phone and noticed a lot of activity.  I ended up calling Nancy.  She and Nita came and got me and took me to find the person who found the bag.  I had gone over in my head if I needed the stuff in the bag, but what convinced me that I needed to retrieve it was that I had tucked my watch into the bag, away from the rain and wet.  Long story short.  Nancy and Nita were kind enough to take me back all of that distance and retrieve the bag.  Quite an adventure.  Nancy and Nita were great hosts.  They live in a very nice area, with lots of trees and fairly close the the Gulf and beaches.  Most of the other parts I came through were way too developed, but their area was really nice.  They took me to dinner and we had a great time.  Thank you Nancy and Nita.  It did rain most of the night, with a lot of lighting and thunder, but we got up and they took me closer to the route. The Lightning went away, and the rest of today was just pedaling  mostly in the rain. Similar forecast for a few days. Wet, but doing well. Til later.