Way Down Upon The Swanny River (USA Day 163)

We slept about as well as a couple can sleep on bags of clothes instead of pillows and the constant drone of a million mosquitos around our heads. Out of the morning’s mist waggled Bella, keen for dawn strokes before we left. There was an ominous air about the day. ‘You hated yesterday,’ it said, ‘so what makes you think today will be any different? Have a horrible ride.’

But we didn’t. We made sure that we didn’t. The first eighteen miles were a hungry rush to a gas station for coffee and packaged Danish pastries, but the allure of such delights was enough to get us there without much trouble. After that, we came upon a game involving every cyclist’s favourite shoulder: the hard shoulder. Approaching each bridge, of which Florida has many given its many rivers, the shoulder became adorned with repeated rows of four cat’s eyes, presumably to warn night-time drivers that the lane was disappearing. You don’t want to go over these bumpy reflectors, so each five-or-so metres one had to choose which gap, of the three, to cycle through. So we began to weave little patterns, one two three, one two three, until naturally each gap had its own note that had to be sung and we discovered a sort of musical obstacle course. The rumble strip to the left was a trilled fourth note. A risky moment in the slow lane a high dominant.

This led to multiple performances of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, each more elaborate and nuanced than the last. Whoever had the lead as we approached a bridge led the other through a harmonic masterpiece. If only we’d thought of this game yesterday.

Cross City marked halfway through the day, and we hadn’t even resorted to podcasts yet. After that we were treated to a smooth and comfortable path a little way off the highway, cutting through some quaint woodland full of oaks adorned with the dangling pale grey moss that populates many trees in the south. We barely used a road the entire way to Manatee Springs, by which time the trials of yesterday had been utterly forgotten. Campsite paid for, we washed off the muggy day with a swim in the crystal-clear spring pool where manatees gather in the winter to hide from the shiver-inducing Suwanee river. We’ve arrived a month early, unfortunately, so no sea cows, but the spring was a delight. There, in the middle of a forest of palm trees, millions of gallons of cool fresh water bubbled up from deep below and glid off downstream.

A boardwalk led to the main river, much murkier than the stream, but full of life. An enormous tree creaked with the weight of hundreds of vultures, fluttering and croaking, vying for the perfect roosting spot. Beneath them were a more select bunch of storks (nine, by the time it got dark), who didn’t move once settled. One stork arrived at the wrong tree and got so chided by the vultures that it needed to fly a big loop around the river just to calm down. Fish leapt from the water and disappeared with a plop. Kingfishers made bigger splashes as they hit the surface in an attempt to catch something pesky. Amy caught the shiver-inducing sight of an alligator, swimming silently upstream, only its eyes and the top few ridges of its washboard back visible. Aside from the little pier on which we stood, there was no sign of human interference. Quite a change from Highway 98.

When we returned to our camp, we found that an armadillo had been unwrapping Amy’s box of tampons. He’d made it into three, but didn’t much like the contents. I wonder how many he’d have patiently worked his way through before deciding that none of them contained food. We watched him slope away, disappointed. A while later, Amy heard a scratch and turned on her headlamp to find a family of four racoons sidling up to our bikes. They scarpered, eventually. A moment later we heard a lady in the next camp shout, “Jesus! Shoo! Shoo!” I guess they ate well tonight.

We did too, with a positively European platter of sausage, cheese, beer and vegetables, all of which paled in comparison to the star of the show: squeezy cheese. This can of compressed American sin was a little unnerving to serve, but tasted surprisingly delicious, and the best thing to spray since silly string. We made a few increasingly complex designs which quite quickly spread onto both sides of the cracker, and then realised we were no longer eating for the sake of hunger, and packed it all away before the armadillo got involved.