To Key West and Return on a Fat Boy

Date: 25/08
City: Key West, Florida
Kilometres ridden: 257
Cumulative kilometre: 58133
Street: Highway
Weather: Cloudy, rain, sunny, humid

Sigrid called another hotel in the morning. We originally had earmarked that before but it had been booked. We were lucky, now they had room for when we would return from Key West. Even better, they offered to pick up our luggage from our hotel and store it at their hotel until we check in. So we send the luggage off and walked to the train station. The train looked pretty impressive, and the interior was really nice.

The train brought us close to the airport and after taking a shuttle bus and a taxi we arrived at the Eagle Rider. I had booked a 750cc honda shadow and the guy on the phone told me it comes with a sreen, luggage panniers and a sissy bar. When we arrived, there was no screen and no sissi bar. As it turned out the guys on the phone are sitting somewhere elses and haven’t seen any of the bikes they rent out. The guys at the shop were really nice and swaped the Honda with a Harley, a Fat Boy. They quickly fitted the screen and gave me a short run down about the Fat Boy, including that it is common not to be able to find the neutral and that the gear switching relsults in a massive clunck noise. That which doesn’t mean that the gear box is broken… That is a Harley standart issue gear box. I was happy that they warned me , otherwise I would have thought I broke th gear box. So we packed the bike and off we went.

Had a short break at a coffee shop and grabbed some breakfast.

I forgot the GPS bracket in the other luggage, that one in the hotel, darn! The Harley even had a Ram mount where I could have fitted it. …After driving onto the Keys I wouldn’t need the GPS any more (there is only one large road), but getting out of Miami was more of an issue. However we managed and we arrived at Key Largo.

And not long after that we needed to fill up the bike (no 60L tank here) and I had a power nap.

From our road, we could see the old road, mostly in good condition (from the distance), but all of the sudden there was a gap. Trap for the unsuspecting rider.. 😉

Anyway, not long after we arrived at Key West.

We found the tourist office and they recommended a nice hotel. We really liked it, so we dumped our gear in the room and went to the sunset point, not far from where we were. On the way to the point we saw a funny guy riding around with an Emu on the back of his bike. At sunset point they had a restaurant with life music and a sign that showed how close Cuba really is.

The sunset was not too good, there were just a bit too many clouds around.

After strolling through a couple of shops and getting Sigrid into a nice dress J

we decided to have a look at a restaurant that sold freshly opened oysters for 50 cent/ peace. We were in heaven.

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Date: 26/08
City: Key West, Florida
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 58133
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, rain, sunny, humid

We liked the hotel so much that we decided to stay a day longer. The heavy rain in the morning may have contributed a bit to that decision as well. So we waited until the rain cleared and after taking some pictures with the motorcycle we went on a discover tour.

Upon leaving the hotel, we found another guest not far from our balconey. On the left picture you can see the bigger dot on the top of the tree, and the right picture is zoomed in.

There was a church we had a look at.

And then we went to the most southern point in the continental US.


Around the corner there was a beach and Sigrid was keen to have a dip before we had a look at the shops.

An there we stumbled over the Mc Connell Irish pub! That must be the most southern Irish pub in the US, we had to check it out…

Then we found a croc shop, thinking Sigrid could do some advertising with her pink ones.

After all that shopping we hurried to get again to the sunset point, and today the sunset looked great. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries so I only got a couple of pictures.

Tomorrow we will leave and see how far we go, we have no destination yet.

Date: 27/08
City: Key Largo, Florida
Kilometres ridden: 167
Cumulative kilometre: 58300
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, rain, sunny, humid

A couple of pictures and

a short look at Ernest Hemingway’s home before we continued.

On our way back we stopped at points where we could see the old bridge.

At the end of the seven mile bridge we cold walk on the old bridge, which we certainly did. On the left is the new bridge, on the right the old one.

So we continued until we reached Key Largo and here we stayed at a dive resort. We had to be carefull, otherwise we or the bike could get hit by a nut.

Ah, I nearly forgot. I almost started to doubt that Harleys are loosing oil. Well, I noticed that this nearly new bike started to loose oil, so there seems to be still something to it. The other bit that I noticed was the rust on the chrome. Having said that, this Harley had the same number of cyclinders and the same capacity than both of our DR’s. I must admit, it was fun to ride.

The weather was fine, so we went shopping, had a dip in the pool, before we sat outside and watched the sunset.

This was our last day with the bike, tomorrow we’ll have to return it.

Date: 28/08
City: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Kilometres ridden: 90
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: Highway
Weather: Cloudy, rain, sunny, humid

We packed up, took a couple of pictures of the surrounding and the bike and then left. The challenge was to reach the shop without seeing the GPS, just by voice announcements.

We managed without too many detours and somebody form the shop took a picture of us.

To get to the other hotel we booked before we rented the bike we used public transport.

The new hostel was great, particular that they had a pool, which we immediately tested after we arrived.

We have two days before we leave for New York. We will see what we can organize in this time. I would like to have a look at the Everglades, but it seems to be too hard to get a shuttle to the glades.

 

1 comment

  1. Regards from Chile ! Miss the adventures on the DR´s…snif !
    Good luck and enjoy the rest of Europe.
    Javier.

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