March 14 -- back to Merritt

With a SSE wind at 10 mph and gusting to 20 at times, I headed down to Merritt Island, leaving just before 9am. It was sunny at first and then gradually hazed over.

I turned around as usual at the Visitors Center, noticing on the way that the carrion birds were still around that spot in the ditch on the south side of the road where the pig had been a couple of weeks ago. I figured that the park rangers had simply pushed the pig into the ditch for the birds, but it was mostly covered with water. On the way back I looked more closely at the ditch, since I was on that side of the road, and I understood why the birds were just standing around -- because a very large aligator was in the water there, probably dining on the pig.

Back home I attempted two small projects -- one, to install a spare disk drive that I had here as a backup but found it incompatible with my PC -- that took a couple of hours. Two, I tried to remove the trailer wheel bearings to grease them but found that they had stainless steel inserts which makes it impossible to get at the bearings themselves. So ... I went to Home Depot and picked up a grease gun and marine-grade trailer wheel bearing grease (of course I have three of them up north) so that I could simply inject grease into the hub. They should be ok for the trip north.


Jason et al arrived back from Orlando as I was driving down Saxon on my way to Home Depot. They were full of stories about Disney etc. when I returned. I guess that it was pretty busy -- we have never been there during school break -- and they spent much of their time in line or waiting for Kim who was in line. If he had his way, Jason would never go back. Time will tell. We have always enjoyed our time there but we have hit it off-peak.

Dinner was tile fish -- excellent.

Back to the ride --

Nutrition -- 4 water bottles; 5 gels.

Ride Stats -- 74 miles; 17.1 mph.