FL Coast Day 5: Sarasota
Already 2 days behind schedule, and making a 400 mile detour to take in some of the Florida Gulf Coast (ostensibly to avoid some bad weather), Tave was keen to add a visit to Sarasota to our itinerary. Since the fast route back to Orlanda from Naples along the interstates took us within 10 miles anyway, we decided that it would make a good mid-point stop for the journey home.
With an early start to beat the weather we were making good time, and reached Sarasota around 11:30am. While refuelling the bikes, I was surprised to discover that Sarasota had a bay area surrounded by several keys of its own! With barely a cloud in the sky we quickly headed to the nearest, Bird Key, where we stopped for half an hour to stretch our legs and admire the view. Notice the bottle of factor-45 sun block we are using up at a steady rate in the bottom right corner, and the John Ringling bridge behind me as I look out over the beautiful Sarasota Bay. If only we’d found these earlier, we needn’t have bothered with the South Florida Keys!
A friendly couple with a pickup full of dogs stopped to chat when they spotted Taves Street Bob, to suggest a stage 1 exhaust kit and chrome lower forks to finish the bike off properly. We discovered from them that the notorious hurricanes rarely make it to this part of Florida, and that he hadn’t seen one here in his whole life. Tave and I were both really taken with Sarasota, and plan to find an apartment here for a future trip. Orlando is a great central point from which to explore Florida, but is geared heavily to tourists and is not even part-way as pretty as many of the other parts of the state we’ve visited this time around.
After our short stop, we needed to quickly finish the rest of the journey back incase the weather turned. But, soon after getting back onto the interstate, I was devastated as my beloved sat nav leapt to its death, and smashed into lots of tiny pieces on the road when the plastic part of the bracket connecting it to the handlebars of my bike sheared off. As it is only a few months old, and has only been used moderately from the bike in that time, I’m going to try to claim under the warranty. The rider model isn’t made anymore though, so I’m not sure what they will be able to do. Gutted. 
All in all, despite (because of?) the traumas, our Florida Coast Road Trip has been quite an adventure, covering some 900 miles over the last 5 days. We’ve all had a blast, but I think I need to plan only 100-150 miles of scenic riding per day into our next trip to avoid the sunburn, and numb-bum we’ve endured this time around!
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- FL Coast Day 3: Alligator Alley
- FL Coast Day 4: Naples Beach