Daytona

We were minding our own business outside of a wonderful little country sub sandwich-tackle-taxidermy-tattoo-gas station, laughing about the guy on oxygen who was mad we ride our bikes on the wrong (however correct) side of the road, after all "how the shit yous goona see who runs yous over?", when a couple of the locals at Schweggs roadside chitlin and gizzard specializing cafe came over to size us up. Three large guys, we still aren't sure if they were just hillbilly nice or perhaps interested in 'borrowing' everything we own forever, two of them did not have a full set of teeth between them and the third guy seemed alright. after asking us the usual questions these strange new questions came up... and this really is true;

Q does anyone know your on this trip?
A hahah yes
Q how many people know where you are right now?
A um... well, i guess all of them we have gps tracking (as if they know what that is)
Q how much money you bring with you?
A seriously? cash? why? you plan on killing us and dumping our bodies in the everglades?
(bj starts using a large knife to fidget on his bike, they just keep
looking at me)... long pause... none we definitely do not carry any cash.

They just look at each other and then the smart one goes, well yeah they do all this kind of thing on credit cards (they have no idea that their credit is actually better than ours). After we got the formalities out of the way we started asking them how much further to Daytona. They quickly replied that Daytona is too dangerous for us to go, and that carries more weight coming from a shirtless toothless hillbilly drinking old milwakee 22 oz cans at 11 am, but if we really had to go through it we would know we were there when we started to see the hookers on the side of the road. Moving on down the road, about 65 miles down the road, we stop at a bike shop and ask if there are some good hotels in Daytona. The bike shop guy tells us that there is not anything good in Daytona anywhere and we shouldn't even pull off to the side of the road, we will know when were there because there are hookers everywhere, if we absolutely have to we can stay in an area outside of Daytona, but whatever we do if we absolutely have to go through Daytona DO NOT go there at night and DO NOT stop in Holly Hill. So we get a cheap hotel (slurpee owned) in Holly Hill, wait till it gets dark and then walk down the street to a biker bar. Of course it sounds like a bad idea, but cmon, I already told you the adult left days ago.

So there we are the week before Biketoberfest just outside Holly Hill sitting in a bar with a disclaimer on the door about injuries in or on, yes on, the premise and we met some really nice folks in there (sorry Boston people I forgot your names already, I think there was a Larry, but if you logged in don't forget to sign our guestbook). They asked what the hell we were doing in the bar we needed to go back to the hotel and make sure nobody was stealing our shit, oh and make sure you sleep by a video camera because they could film a new episode of COPS in the parking lot of our motel every night. So we go. Nothing happens, everyone we met was nice, no one robbed us, no hookers anywhere, it looks clean, and it even smells better than the rest of Florida. Apparently when your baseline for 'bad neighborhood' is Detroit, well you get the picture.

On a bad note we both woke up this morning sick, some sort of chest problem, we agree that it was from the motel. The motel was the dirtiest grossest thing on the planet. as soon as we are able to post pictures there will be some of the inside of the motel. disgusting.

This morning we decided to make today a day off and rode 5 miles to the beach, where we find a decent area by lots of bars, movie theatres, a boardwalk, the beach, restaraunts, and motels that were cheaper than the ones in Oak Hill... So thanks Bike shop guy, thanks for telling us where the cheap hotels are.