Back in the late 1990s and early naughties for my friends and I, the only way to listen to music was on minidisc. Digital, compact, easy to use and re-writeable it was the answer to our problems in the pre-mp3 player days. The discs were about 3 inches square and could be bought for peanuts. I read the wikipedia article on minidiscs and from its comments regarding success of the format I can tell it was written outside of the UK. I have kept all my minidiscs in the garage, and somewhere in there is a purple minidisc Alan gave me. Now Alan has some interesting and eclectic music tastes, but one song in particular on this disc resonates with me. I had actually had to look up who it was by and it turns out its Wilco - Monday. One of the lyrics I remembered was: "He must be down in Pensacola hiding from the snow"... So that's why I am in Pensacola, and hence the title of yesterdays blog.
Last night I walked to downtown which was just a few blocks away. I did enroute manage to get propositioned a couple of gay guys who wanted to know if I wanted to come and have fun with them in their car. I politely declined this opportunity! Pensacola is a bit of a party town for the gay community - I'm guessing they have fled from other less accepting areas of the deep south. The downtown area was very pretty with historical buildings, but being a Monday night it was pretty quiet. I'll be cycling through tomorrow and will grab some photos then.
Today my only mission was to get my bike fixed. I went to cycle sports at lunch, they are a real great bunch of guys in there. I was treated to a free lunch whilst I was in there with prawns (shrimp), potato and corn on the cob accompanied by hot and spicy mustard sauce which is a great condiment. Now that's what I call service. It turns out Tom who was behind the counter had not only completed the trans-america ride, but he had also cycled all over Europe many years ago too. They also gave me a map to help me plot my next moves across Florida. The bike came out after an hour or so and I am happy to announce I am rolling around and back to normal. I've got the same hub and disc as before. The rim isn't quite as good as my DT that I had but it is double walled so is pretty tough.
I'm really looking forward to tomorrow as I'm going to see this beach which everyone is ranting on about - apparently the best beach in the US. I'll be judging it by Barbados standards, which are pretty high ;) I've also had a nice suprise; Rick Mick's girlfriend's (Allie) family are staying in a beach house 50 miles down the road were I will be staying tomorrow night. I'm planning to make an early start so I can get some beach time in the afternoon and avoid some of the scorching heat hitting the southern US.
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