Fast, Hot, Wet and Unhappy - Zephyrhills to Wauchula.

 It was raining when we awoke, but by the time we mounted the bikes, the rain had stopped. Still, we were not destined for a dry ride. During the last 30 miles we rode in steadily increasing rainfall.  Fortunately, it was not the chilling drenching rain we experienced our last day in Idaho.  We were still able to enjoy the sights – different kinds of waterfowl and orange groves marked the day.  Rob took a spill today—low speed collision with a camouflaged rock drove him into the curb.  The force bent the front fork, but luckily Rob was not injured in the tumble.  Plus, he was able to straighten the fork to the point where we are able continue moving toward the Keys.  As final kicker to the day, Rob also had a rear wheel spoke break – again luckily, due to the way Sun Tour designed their cluster sprockets in the 1980s, he was able to “snake” the new spoke into the wheel hub without having to remove the tire from the rim.    We had a surprisingly tasty Chinese dinner at a small take-out/eat-in restaurant in the strip mall near our hotel (and did our laundry at the Laundromat in the same mall).

Traveling a Florida county road prior to the rain.

The ride was fast, wet and at times hot from the humidity.

 The usually sunny Diane not happy with the rain.

Broken spoke.

With the spoke replaced the bike was hung in the shower so Rob could true up the rear wheel.

With the spoke fixed the bikes were turned into cloth-lines to deal with wet bags, etc.

Tomorrow we may again have to suffer with rain but every mile brings us closer to “alligator alley.”

PS To give the reader an idea on the damaged suffered by Rob's take a look at the two pics below. The first is a photo Diane's bike and second photo is Rob's bike after the mishap. For context both share the same "touring geometry" and each were set up with the same spare water bottle hung behind the front wheel. As you can see Diane's bottle clears the front wheel's fender.  But now with the forks bent on his bike the bottle clearly will not fit.

Everything is copasetic.

Not the case here - drat!

Early in the ride we passed through commercial strawberry fields seen above.  Later we passed a large phosphate mine/processing operation followed by citrus groves - but by that time rain was heavy and the camera stayed in its bag.