Flor'Easter: Day 1

The hipsters were jealous.

Adventure will usually meet you half-way if you give it a chance.  Sometimes it even lurks on your doorstep, peeking in your window.  It will not, however, come into your home, turn off your television, shut down your laptop, and drag you off of the couch.

Day one of my Florida adventure started like every other day on my visits to Florida.  A late breakfast and I began to settle in a very comfy couch in front of the television.

Although I had already mapped out the area mountain biking trails on GoogleEarth, my (rented) mountain bike wasn't scheduled to arrive until Tuesday: still three days away.

I could very easily have written off the next few days and simply languished on the couch.  But, I had spotted some dusty old bikes on our way into the in-laws' house.  And as I sat there on the couch eating my cereal, the bikes began to work their way into my consciousness.

"Do you really want to watch Young Guns again? Let's go for a ride.  It's a nice day out there.  Hey, you look like you gained some weight since the last time we saw you, fat ass."

Unable to resist their gravitational pull, I talked my brother in law into going for an exploratory mission to scope out the trails of Palm Coast.

We pried (and I do mean pried) the bikes from their resting spots, filled the tires with air and rolled them around the neighborhood.  I climbed onto a vintage Boss comfort bike with a grand total of three gears, a seat the size of Montana, and pedal brakes.

Before long we crossed over the inter-coastal waterway and onto a world of trails that I never knew existed during the ten years I had been visiting the area.  Suddenly I was immersed in a tropical forest, absorbing the palmetto universe that I had only glimpsed from the local golf course.  A maze of trails and extra wide sidewalks extended along the waterway and deep into the forest.

In just two hours we radically shifted my perspective of the area from the gated, sterile, air-conditioned world I had known to something more visceral, organic,.... real.  Something unique.

I was confronted with a Florida that had been mostly hidden to me in the thirty years I'd been visiting.  Not since my trip to the undeveloped northwest Gulf coast had I felt this close to the heart of Florida.  This wasn't the beach at New Smyrna or the Daytona strip. I was into the backcountry.

Even if it took a hipster bike to get me there.