Saturday, December 1, 2001 - Pensacola Pedal
48 miles. Gulf Beach, AL to Aunt Jo and Uncle Stan's, Gulf Breeze, FL
We left Gulf State Park early. As we left we
encountered a couple that it turned had lived and been married in Fremont at the
First Christian Reformed Church in Fremont in 1948. They were Dutch, of course,
and had come over from the Netherlands as youngsters right after the war.
It was very cool for these parts, mid 40's, but clear
and turned into a fine day. Reaching the coast we turned east and passed a long
row of hotels and condos on the beachfront stretching all the way to the Florida
state line. This area must be crazy during high tourist season and will start
picking up after the New Year.
We rode past Orange Beach (pop. 2253), Gulf Beach (pop.
2855) and Pleasant Grove (pop. 16,049) and into Pensacola (pop. 58,165) where
Joan got a hair cut. We then decided to find a bike store to have my
recalcitrant pedal fixed (in case it started clicking again).
As we got ready to go a young guy in a car spied Joan
and asked if we needed any work done on our bikes. "Yes." was the
answer. We followed him to the store he worked at. It was the last day for this
store at this particular location so we bought a few items on sale while the
mechanic cleaned up my pedals. Bike stores usually go out of their way to get
cross country travelers back on the road we have noticed.
Then we noticed some of the guys carefully observing
our bicycles and then went out and explained our bikes to them and regaled them
with stories of our trip. They were quite interested in our old,
"obsolete" steel lugged frames. They were younger and really weren't
that familiar with our retro frames so we extolled the virtues of our custom
steel frames.
We then rode on to the U.S. 98 bridge over Pensacola
Bay and crossed the three miles to the south side to Gulf Breeze to Visit Aunt
Jo and Uncle Stan. They are 6-7 miles east of Gulf Breeze off busy 98 off Tiger
Point Blvd. What we did not know is that there are two Entrances to Tiger Point
Blvd and we took the first, riding quite a ways without any recognizable road
while everyone we asked had never heard of the road we were looking for. This
did not breed confidence. Finally we saw a postman and he steered us to the
second Tiger Point Blvd where we finally found our destination. Jo and Stan live
in a vast development called Tiger Point in a beautiful house with a fine live
oak in the yard. They are taking great care of us while we take a day off.
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