Biking the West Orange Trail

We have been criss-crossing with our friends Dave and Audrey during our whole stay in Florida, but so far we have had little chance to actually do anything with them. Last week we made a plan to bike on the West Orange Trail on Saturday. Cool!!! Well, come Saturday the weather was less than perfect. The forecast was cool and cloudy, with a 50% chance of rain. What the heck; sometimes you just have to go for it. We made a plan where Dave and I would start on a connecting trail on Lake Minneola and pedal about 8 miles, then we would meet Audrey and Dorcas the County Line Station at Kilarney, the official start to the West Orange Trail. Together we biked another five miles to Winter Garden, "the land of pleasant living", where we lunched in a nice little Italian restaurant. From Winter Garden, Dave and I biked a few more miles eastward on the trail to Chapin Station, while Audrey and Dorcas returned to County Line Station. It was a very pleasant ride and a very nice trail. Winter Garden is very quaint and scenic. The town had converted the area down the middle of Plant Street, the main drag where the tracks had run, into a very nice strip park about three blocks long. While we did get a little drizzle, the weather was not as bad as the forecast. There were several bike shops along the trail that had a number of very unusual bicycle configurations. We saw triple and quad tandems, tandem recumbents and tandem three-wheel recumbents. Dorcas test-drove a recumbent. I don't know if she liked it or not, but we didn't bring it home. We are looking forward to biking the West Orange Trail again.

The weather here has been a bit cooler than normal much of the past week with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s and 50s. Tonight and Monday night the lows will be near 40, but it will warm significantly later next week. We are looking forward to more stereotypical sunny Florida weather.