Bikers Welcome Here
We arose the next morning to unsettled skies and a somewhat diminished, yet still gusty wind. That was the good news. The bad news was that sometime in the course of the evening, the wind direction had shifted from the northwest to the east, so it was coming in right of the ocean. This presented a challenge, as our course was still in a south easterly direction, and we figured that we would loose about 5 mph by heading into it. Fortunately, we didn’t have far to go this day...just a 40 miler to get to New Smyrna Beach where we would be staying with good friends for a little R & R at the end of the trip.
We rode along A1A for a few miles or so until the maps indicated a turn onto a road that paralleled the main highway on the Halifax River side of the island, affording us some protection from the wind. We rode about 8 miles through some upscale housing areas and then crossed the intracoastal once again into the town of Ormond Beach. Turning left on Beach Street, we stopped for a second to review the map and noticed a mound and historic marker on our right. We had unknowingly taken our “mini-break” right beside one of the finest and most intact Native American burial mounds in eastern Florida, known as the Ormond Mound.
Native peoples lived in and around modern day Florida for many centuries before the birth of Christ. The St. Johns cultural period (as it is called) spanned two thousand years, lasting until the arrival of European explorers around 1500 A.D. The populations of this period practiced the same pattern of living developed by Archaic peoples centuries before, including shellfish harvesting, hunting, fishing, and plant collecting. It was also during this period that domesticated plants, mainly corn and squash, were used for the first time. The St. Johns people occupied two major regions of Volusia County: the St. Johns River basin to the west and the environmentally rich estuaries of the Halifax and Indian Rivers on the east coast. Abundant resources in both areas allowed prehistoric populations to grow and expand throughout these regions of the county, establishing permanent villages as well as ceremonial and political centers at locations where food was most plentiful. Some archaeologists believe that St. Johns groups made seasonal rounds from coast to river and back again to most effectively exploit food resources which were available at different times of the year. Both the river and coastal regions are marked by enormous shell mounds and the remains of prehistoric foods: snail and mussel in the freshwater environs and oyster and clam on the coasts, all of which served for centuries as the staple for the St. Johns diet. In particular, shell mounds on the east coast, such as Turtle Mound in Canaveral National Seashore and Green Mound in Ponce Inlet grew to colossal proportions. These coastal sites represent the largest shell middens in North America. The largest of these sites, Turtle Mound, has been estimated at one time to have reached 75 feet in height.
The Ormond Mound, however, is a burial site where it is estimated that more than one hundred individual burials remain, most dating from the late-St. Johns period, after A.D. 800. Associated with the Ormond Mound was a charnel house used to store bodies before burial. The St. Johns people used such structures to prepare corpses (mostly of prominent people) for the afterlife. The dead were laid out on wooden racks and allowed to decompose, with attendants--usually high priests--carefully removing flesh from the bones. After the bodies dried away, each charnel house priest ended up with sets of cleaned, separated bones that were then bundled individually and interred with special ceremony. This method explains the great number of skeletons found in burial mounds. It seemed incongruous to be straddling our bike in front of a 1300 year old grave yard located smack dab in the middle of a rather affluent housing development, but there it was. We began to more fully appreciate the rich and varied cultural legacy there is in Florida, and that it didn’t begin with the arrival of the Europeans in the 1500s.
We continued to ride along the rivers edge towards Daytona Beach. The homes and neighborhoods started to change in Holly Hill, becoming smaller, older, and in various states of disrepair. Crossing the city line, we passed through an industrial section of Daytona that was definitely not featured in the Chamber of Commerce’s literature. It could best be described as run down, neglected, and not a section of town that we would feel comfortable being in after dark. Cycling along, we noticed a number of signs on the marquees of bars or restaurants proclaiming that “Bikers Are always Welcome”.
Gee, we thought, it’s always nice to be wanted, but from the looks of it they were appealing to a different type of “biker”. And as we got closer to the downtown area, we fully realized that we were strangers in a strange land. For Daytona is the self proclaimed “Motorcycle Capital of the World” (At least that’s what the guy at the Harley dealership told us). We were amazed to see one motorcycle shop after another selling bikes of all shapes, sizes and description. In fact, we learned that we had just missed out on “Biketoberfest”, when hundreds of thousands of bikers nationwide follow the sirens call and head to Daytona to do whatever it is bikers do when they get together. Daytona Beach Bike Week is the largest of the major Florida motorcycle rallies. It started in 1937 with the inaugural running of the Daytona 200 and since then has grown to be a 10 day event. We know that the annual Sturgis rally in South Dakota is somewhat of an “unrestrained” affair, and could only imagine what it was like to be in Daytona during Biketoberfest. And darn it all, we were too late to take in the annual coleslaw wrestling matches (use your imagination)! But we did get to see the Holiday Art Show in the cordoned off streets of downtown Daytona and had an enjoyable time strolling with Olga and BOB through the crowd.
We stopped and chatted with a number of people who inquired about our trip. Interestingly, we both found ourselves answering a question that we weren’t being asked. People wanted to know where we were heading, but we felt the need to tell them where we came from. With our journey’s goal just a few days away, it was starting to sink in that all of this was soon to end. It was something we were going to need to get accustomed to.
We continued south along the outskirts of the city and then rode on a short section of US1 to New Smyrna. We had ridden a good distance on US1 in Maine, and had been crossing it a number of times since the trip began. And here we were, 2500 miles from our starting point and back on the same patch of asphalt. Passing the New Smyrna airport we turned onto a road that once again paralleled the Intracoastal. Our friends had asked us to call them when we got near so they would be able to come out and greet us. We would be spending the next two days with Kate and Bill Garner and Karen and Pete Ringsrud. Kate, Karen and Pete are childhood friends of Mary Ellen from Minnesota, where Karen and Pete still reside. During the course of our sojourn, they had cooked up a plan in which we would converge on New Smyrna and share some time together. We had been looking forward to this day for the past two weeks, and were thrilled to see them cheering us on as we neared their home. What we didn’t expect was to also be greeted by a reporter from the local press. Kate and Bill had apparently made arrangements to have us interviewed upon arrival. It really was quite unexpected and a bit overwhelming. Ever since departing Bar Harbor, people had asked us if we were being interviewed by TV or newspaper reporters. Frankly, we never even considered it a newsworthy event. Matt, who works with reporters on a regular basis in Montana would say that our trip would only be an item for “a slow news day”. But in this instance there was a good hook... with old friends getting together for an overdue reunion...and the reporter was most inquisitive, asking excellent questions. We spent 30 minutes or so with her, posing for photos, and responding to her inquiries as best we could. The reality of our trip nearing completion was starting to sink in. With merely 5 days left of relatively easy cycling to reach Boca Raton, it all would soon be coming to an end. The reporter asked us how we felt about that, and we had a difficult time responding, as it was a question that we really had not yet considered to a great extent.
We recall meeting a young man near Williamsburg VA who was two days out from the end of his TransAm bike trip. He had started in Astoria Oregon and crossed the country riding solo in about 60 days. We asked him how he felt, what his thoughts were at the time and his response was that he hadn’t thought much about it, other than the fact that he was tired. As for us, we certainly weren’t feeling tired. The rhythm, pace and routine of bike touring were much to our liking. There’s an old bicycling mantra that sums up bike travel quite succinctly... “Eat, Sleep, Ride”. To that we would add “Smile, Laugh, Enjoy, Discover and Persevere.” It’s been one heck of a ride for us and we feel most fortunate.
The next two days were spent reconnecting with friends, meeting a host of new and fascinating folks at the “reception” that Kate and Bill arranged, and sightseeing in the New Smryna area. It was another great interlude, and although we could have stayed longer, both of us felt the pull of the road. Mounting Olga, we bid a fond farewell and proceeded on.
We rode along A1A for a few miles or so until the maps indicated a turn onto a road that paralleled the main highway on the Halifax River side of the island, affording us some protection from the wind. We rode about 8 miles through some upscale housing areas and then crossed the intracoastal once again into the town of Ormond Beach. Turning left on Beach Street, we stopped for a second to review the map and noticed a mound and historic marker on our right. We had unknowingly taken our “mini-break” right beside one of the finest and most intact Native American burial mounds in eastern Florida, known as the Ormond Mound.
Native peoples lived in and around modern day Florida for many centuries before the birth of Christ. The St. Johns cultural period (as it is called) spanned two thousand years, lasting until the arrival of European explorers around 1500 A.D. The populations of this period practiced the same pattern of living developed by Archaic peoples centuries before, including shellfish harvesting, hunting, fishing, and plant collecting. It was also during this period that domesticated plants, mainly corn and squash, were used for the first time. The St. Johns people occupied two major regions of Volusia County: the St. Johns River basin to the west and the environmentally rich estuaries of the Halifax and Indian Rivers on the east coast. Abundant resources in both areas allowed prehistoric populations to grow and expand throughout these regions of the county, establishing permanent villages as well as ceremonial and political centers at locations where food was most plentiful. Some archaeologists believe that St. Johns groups made seasonal rounds from coast to river and back again to most effectively exploit food resources which were available at different times of the year. Both the river and coastal regions are marked by enormous shell mounds and the remains of prehistoric foods: snail and mussel in the freshwater environs and oyster and clam on the coasts, all of which served for centuries as the staple for the St. Johns diet. In particular, shell mounds on the east coast, such as Turtle Mound in Canaveral National Seashore and Green Mound in Ponce Inlet grew to colossal proportions. These coastal sites represent the largest shell middens in North America. The largest of these sites, Turtle Mound, has been estimated at one time to have reached 75 feet in height.
The Ormond Mound, however, is a burial site where it is estimated that more than one hundred individual burials remain, most dating from the late-St. Johns period, after A.D. 800. Associated with the Ormond Mound was a charnel house used to store bodies before burial. The St. Johns people used such structures to prepare corpses (mostly of prominent people) for the afterlife. The dead were laid out on wooden racks and allowed to decompose, with attendants--usually high priests--carefully removing flesh from the bones. After the bodies dried away, each charnel house priest ended up with sets of cleaned, separated bones that were then bundled individually and interred with special ceremony. This method explains the great number of skeletons found in burial mounds. It seemed incongruous to be straddling our bike in front of a 1300 year old grave yard located smack dab in the middle of a rather affluent housing development, but there it was. We began to more fully appreciate the rich and varied cultural legacy there is in Florida, and that it didn’t begin with the arrival of the Europeans in the 1500s.
We continued to ride along the rivers edge towards Daytona Beach. The homes and neighborhoods started to change in Holly Hill, becoming smaller, older, and in various states of disrepair. Crossing the city line, we passed through an industrial section of Daytona that was definitely not featured in the Chamber of Commerce’s literature. It could best be described as run down, neglected, and not a section of town that we would feel comfortable being in after dark. Cycling along, we noticed a number of signs on the marquees of bars or restaurants proclaiming that “Bikers Are always Welcome”.
Gee, we thought, it’s always nice to be wanted, but from the looks of it they were appealing to a different type of “biker”. And as we got closer to the downtown area, we fully realized that we were strangers in a strange land. For Daytona is the self proclaimed “Motorcycle Capital of the World” (At least that’s what the guy at the Harley dealership told us). We were amazed to see one motorcycle shop after another selling bikes of all shapes, sizes and description. In fact, we learned that we had just missed out on “Biketoberfest”, when hundreds of thousands of bikers nationwide follow the sirens call and head to Daytona to do whatever it is bikers do when they get together. Daytona Beach Bike Week is the largest of the major Florida motorcycle rallies. It started in 1937 with the inaugural running of the Daytona 200 and since then has grown to be a 10 day event. We know that the annual Sturgis rally in South Dakota is somewhat of an “unrestrained” affair, and could only imagine what it was like to be in Daytona during Biketoberfest. And darn it all, we were too late to take in the annual coleslaw wrestling matches (use your imagination)! But we did get to see the Holiday Art Show in the cordoned off streets of downtown Daytona and had an enjoyable time strolling with Olga and BOB through the crowd.
We stopped and chatted with a number of people who inquired about our trip. Interestingly, we both found ourselves answering a question that we weren’t being asked. People wanted to know where we were heading, but we felt the need to tell them where we came from. With our journey’s goal just a few days away, it was starting to sink in that all of this was soon to end. It was something we were going to need to get accustomed to.
We continued south along the outskirts of the city and then rode on a short section of US1 to New Smyrna. We had ridden a good distance on US1 in Maine, and had been crossing it a number of times since the trip began. And here we were, 2500 miles from our starting point and back on the same patch of asphalt. Passing the New Smyrna airport we turned onto a road that once again paralleled the Intracoastal. Our friends had asked us to call them when we got near so they would be able to come out and greet us. We would be spending the next two days with Kate and Bill Garner and Karen and Pete Ringsrud. Kate, Karen and Pete are childhood friends of Mary Ellen from Minnesota, where Karen and Pete still reside. During the course of our sojourn, they had cooked up a plan in which we would converge on New Smyrna and share some time together. We had been looking forward to this day for the past two weeks, and were thrilled to see them cheering us on as we neared their home. What we didn’t expect was to also be greeted by a reporter from the local press. Kate and Bill had apparently made arrangements to have us interviewed upon arrival. It really was quite unexpected and a bit overwhelming. Ever since departing Bar Harbor, people had asked us if we were being interviewed by TV or newspaper reporters. Frankly, we never even considered it a newsworthy event. Matt, who works with reporters on a regular basis in Montana would say that our trip would only be an item for “a slow news day”. But in this instance there was a good hook... with old friends getting together for an overdue reunion...and the reporter was most inquisitive, asking excellent questions. We spent 30 minutes or so with her, posing for photos, and responding to her inquiries as best we could. The reality of our trip nearing completion was starting to sink in. With merely 5 days left of relatively easy cycling to reach Boca Raton, it all would soon be coming to an end. The reporter asked us how we felt about that, and we had a difficult time responding, as it was a question that we really had not yet considered to a great extent.
We recall meeting a young man near Williamsburg VA who was two days out from the end of his TransAm bike trip. He had started in Astoria Oregon and crossed the country riding solo in about 60 days. We asked him how he felt, what his thoughts were at the time and his response was that he hadn’t thought much about it, other than the fact that he was tired. As for us, we certainly weren’t feeling tired. The rhythm, pace and routine of bike touring were much to our liking. There’s an old bicycling mantra that sums up bike travel quite succinctly... “Eat, Sleep, Ride”. To that we would add “Smile, Laugh, Enjoy, Discover and Persevere.” It’s been one heck of a ride for us and we feel most fortunate.
The next two days were spent reconnecting with friends, meeting a host of new and fascinating folks at the “reception” that Kate and Bill arranged, and sightseeing in the New Smryna area. It was another great interlude, and although we could have stayed longer, both of us felt the pull of the road. Mounting Olga, we bid a fond farewell and proceeded on.
posted by Matt and Mary Ellen | 6:16 AM
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