East Beach 360 North
This was a nice ride and went more or less as planned. Four of us ate at John G’s and Ian joined us later. The bikes rode along the ocean to Hobe Sound where we cut over to US1 to make up some time. We joined the Stuart group and set out along the ocean and A1A.
Now, the ocean rides in Broward are a bit boring due to the endless building of condos. Riding in Palm Beach County is better, but very slow. Most speeds are 30 or 35 and if it’s hot out the ride becomes painful. I had never been on A1A in St. Lucie County and it was a pleasure to learn about. The speeds are generally 45 or higher. While you aren’t up against the ocean very often, you have a lot of natural scenery. It was a great ride most of the way to Cocoa Beach with only a few slow spots. The only down side was that you were not riding along the water as you often due in Palm Beach.
I managed to have a bug fly down the back of my shirt which made for an interesting 30 minutes of the ride. It was either a beetle or a bee and was biting along my belt line where it finally settle on my back. That took a lot of the pleasure out of that part of the ride. We stopped for gas on the north side of Cocoa Beach and I shook out my shirt.
We doubled back through 520 and found a nice little restaurant on the water. Vic had to breathe that salt air and Ian thought it was medicinal for his cold. After they figured out how to put 11 chairs at two adjacent tables (Vic had to help them) we finally got seated and ate. This was a good group. The pictures are on the meetup.
The ride back was something I really looked forward to. Vic and Ian had family commitments and peeled off at I-95. They missed the best part of the ride. We took 520 to CR528. Naturally I missed the turn which was clearly marked as St. Cloud. We would have ended up in Orlando if it hadn’t been for the group pulling me over. We took 528 for awhile and almost missed CR419, a tiny little road that isn’t marked until you are right up on it. Both of these roads were incredible. There were nice curves and some areas were wooded. If the wind hadn’t been so high I would have done it again.
We rode to US192 west and connected to the every popular US441 to Okeechobee. The rest of the way home was very familiar since we come up that way often. The sun went down and the unbearable heat turned to cool air. I left the house at 6:45 AM and returned at 7:20 PM. It was a nice day of riding and gave me more ideas. It is unfortunate that the battery on the cam died as I was taping our fly-by and I didn’t get any of that footage. We have a special event coming up that we’ll have lots of highlights from our group.
While the video wasn’t what I had wanted it to be, I created one anyway and published it.