Day 2 - Lake Helen, FL

516 Miles

Hit the slab about 9:00 am heading for my brother's house in Florida.  Wish I could relate some great, exciting event, but the highpoint of the trip turned out to be seeing a sign for a McDonald's restaurant near the I-295 by-pass coming into Jacksonville featuring a picture of a large sweet tea for $1.00.  I realize this is only exciting to a true southerner (we just can't get enough sweet tea) riding a motorcycle in something like 95° F. plus.  Even at 80 MPH the air is hot.  It was a very refreshing stop. 

Though hot that doesn't mean it was a bad ride.  There's a lot to be said about cruising down the interstate with the iPod connected to the sound system and the volume knob turned up to the ®Patent Pending symbol.  I have a rather eclectic collection of music.  With the iPod set on "shuffle" selection it's a hoot to be boogie-ing down the road with the Allman Brothers one minute and listening to Bach the next.  Neat stuff!!

In Florida we have a very fine sand we call "sugar sand."  The root of the name is obvious; the sand has the consistency of finely grained processed sugar.   I arrived at Ron and Donna's about 6:45pm and determined Betsy doesn't like sugar sand any better than she does pea-gravel.   Ronnie has a "place in the country."  In Lake Helen, Florida that means down a long unpaved road covered with sugar sand.  In the old dirt-bike days you put power to the rear tire and let the front tire find its way through the sand.  That works on those 245 lb. dirt bikes.  If I haven't mentioned it before, Betsy is a rather rotund 845 lbs.   Fortunately I was moving slowly by the time I lost her she just sort of lay over on the engine guard and set up listing about 40° to port.  The sand is so "slick" and "moving" I couldn't upright her by myself so I called Ron and he came down and helped me with her.  After getting her upright I followed Ron back down the road and parked her in the garage of one of his friends with whom he had had the foresight to made previous parking arrangements, anticipating Betsy's distaste for sugar sand.  The boy's pretty smart sometimes.  Of course, like his brother he often does things to contravene being called that very often.