March 1, 2004
Unfuckin believable - I took no pictures today! This morning, I said my goodbyes to brother Jeff...Rocky has already snuck out for work, and me and Cuz and Sonia packed up for the ride to Ft. McCoy near Ocala. Was a rather uneventful ride - stopping for Breakfast in Crawfordsville, snaking through northwest Florida to a beautiful ride down Hwy 316 east to Fort McCoy and the Griffin Ranch.
Here is where we will spend the next two nights, visiting old friends and using it as a base for the Tuesday day ride to Daytona. We get in mid-afternoon, and stay in their newly finished guest lodge - a two-bedroom, two bath log lodge with great living room, den, kitchen and wonderful back porch complete with rocking chairs.
We were greeted in the yard by Lauren, the 7 year old daughter of the owners - Harley Bear presented to her right away to let her know we were here to see HER of course - and settled in for the night.
We were invited over to the main house to connect to the internet for emails, and seemingly to eat all night long. Julie and Carl are excellent hosts and seemed to have food for every occasion. We finally had to push away from the table in unison, begging not to bring any more food to the table.
If you're tired of the Yuppie / RUB / traffic bullshit of Daytona - I strongly urge ya to look into a central Florida ranch like this to enjoy your ride from. Only an hour outside of Daytona -and a beautiful ride at that, too. Next year I plan to use this as a staging area for visiting more of central Florida on my way down to Key West. Hitting Daytona - either for Bike Week or Biketoberfest will likely happen, too, but only as a ride-through - I've had it with staying over there in that crap, especially after the city has forced the Fireside Bar to shut down it's free camping out back - greedy bastards felt they were losing out on the camping permit fees I suppose.
Anyway - if you want more information, check out www.TheGriffinRanch.com for details. Right now, I am in the process of developing their website, but come back soon for the real stuff. (Can you say after me: 'write off the whole ride as a business trip'?)
Cuz, Sonia and me spent the night on the back porch rockers shootin the shit, drinkin and belching - damn, I love bikin'!