Day 48: Thursday, 4/23/15 Tallahassee, FL (63º at 6:00 am) to Madison, FL (86º at 3:00 pm) 48 miles plus 8 additional miles, elevation changes: +1160/-1083.

Theme for the day:  Hooray for another day! A day made in heaven! It was another glorious day to bike in all ways. I didn’t have to do much to make it a great day because all aspects of the environments I experienced today were exceptional. I loved it in all ways. What a fabulous trip this continues to be.

I started biking at 7:30 am turning right on FL 90 and 48 miles later, I turned left off of FL 90 at the Colin P Kelly Fitness Center at North FL Community College in Madison, FL where we are sleeping tonight in a really nice gym. I tried to take my time to stretch out the day, but somehow still averaged just over 15 mph. It was truly an exceptional biking day: the weather including a slight tailwind, the road – very smooth; the company of my fellow C2C companions; and beautiful scenery.

Bike stats: 48.4 miles ridden in 3 hours and 12 minutes of actual biking averaging 15.2 mph with a maximum speed of 30.1 mph. I also biked, slowly, an additional 8 miles on the Madison County Four Freedoms Trail.

Highlights of the day:

• Stopping at the Lake Miccosukee dam and lake that was literally on the left as I rode along on FL 90.
• Stopping at Ray Charles park in Greenville, FL that was Ray Charles hometown as a young boy. There was a life-sized statue of Ray in the park.
• After lunch, riding by myself a few miles down the Madison County Four Freedoms Trail, a rails-to-trails bike trail that runs for 11 miles from Madison north-north east to the GA border. It was a beautiful bike path, but there were lots of branch blow downs in the wooded sections of the path. It was tough to ride around them.

The dam creating Lake Miccosukee, a close-up view so that you can read the sign, taken from FL 90, looking north.

The dam creating Lake Miccosukee, the wide view.

Lake Miccosukee taken from standing on the dam walkway looking north, the same direction as the two pictures above.

The beautiful swamp to the right of the dam, further to the right of the picture above. Can you tell that I thought this was really beautiful!

Ray Charles and me at Ray’s statue in his park in his hometown of Greenville, FL where he grew up as a young boy.

A cattle ranch I passed along FL 90.

The view looking north-northeast on the Madison County Four Freedoms Bike Trail. (Four Freedoms: Four kinds of freedom mentioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in aspeech in 1941 as worth fighting for: freedom of speech and expression,freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Rooseveltspoke of the Four Freedoms before the United States entered World War II. He was presenting the war as a struggle for freedom and calling for aidto the Allies. From Dictionary.com)

Make it a great day!

John