Cycling The Globe

I couple of weeks ago while planning my route through Mexico I noticed I would be in Cancun a few days before the 4th of July. I thought it would be very nice to arrive in the United States on Independence day, so I go myself a Jetblue ticket on this date.

My flight was leaving at 3:30 in the afternoon so I had plenty of time to put my bike in the box and do a few more errands before leaving Mexico.

Check-in went fine and I ended up paying 50$ extra for the bike. Fair enough, it’s a big box… Ready to fly!

It’s only a 1½ hour flight from Cancun to Florida, and even immigration was fast and smooth. I was a bit worried what the border officer would say about all my stamps from Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador etc, but he hardly looked at all. A few minutes later I had found my bike next the baggage belt and I was ready to enter country number 37, the United States!

Outside of the arriving area Pete and Ed were waiting for me. Pete N8PR is a radio amateur, a friend of friends, and lives 15 minutes from Fort Lauderdale airport. Ed had been driving 5 hours from the Tampa area just to meet me for my arrival in the US. I last saw Ed 10 years ago when we were both doing volunteering work in France. Time flies!

From the airport we drove down the Hollywood beach for a nice dinner and to enjoy the fireworks; what a way to arrive! Pete joked that it had been very expensive to have all this fireworks ready just for my arrival 🙂

The next day Pete had arranged a meetup with a number of radio guys from the local club. We met at the Falcon Pub and I was invited to tell a few stories from the trip. To my big surprise they passed around a hat and I got no less than 100$ in contributions for the rest of the trip through the US. Wow, thank you guys. I didn’t expect that!

I had thought about leaving Fort Lauderdale already the next morning, but it turned out that the radio club was holding a amateur exam test the next day. It was a good chance to upgrade, so I decided to stay an extra day with Pete.

I managed to pass the exam and I’m now also K9DXX 🙂

Doing the research for the rest of the ride in Florida I noticed that there is a bike path called the East Coast Greenway that starts all the way down in Key West and runs up to Maine. When Pete offered to drive me all the way down to the “End of the World” I decided that this was the perfect way to begin the US ride.

A huge thank you to Pete for such a great welcome to Florida. I had heard about the southern hospitality before, but now I have experienced it first hand. Good stuff!

Now, let the US adventure begin!