Cycling beach trip

We made the four hour drive today down to Pensacola Beach, Florida for my last stage race of the year this weekend. This was a great race last year, and I’m looking forward to the road race tomorrow morning and the criterium on Sunday. I’m not looking forward to the time trial, but it should be fun anyway. Here’s some pics from my beach pre-ride today.

Pensacola is the cradle of naval aviation and home of the Blue Angels flight squadron. I had my camera out to take pictures of the beach as I was riding when this large plane came flying right next to me.

Cool, clean bike path through the dunes next to the road

The road and the dunes

This section of the national seashore was closed due to damage from Hurricane Isaac a couple weeks ago

Welcome to Pensacola Beach

Rolling across the dunes on the bike path

Sand blowing into the bike lane

The Fort Pickens part of the national seashore

Looking towards the bay bridge from the mainland to the barrier island that Pensacola Beach is located on

Some pretty high dunes along the beach

The huge ferris wheel next to our hotel

Rolling dune on the bike path

View of the ferris wheel and the sound from our hotel room

Dauphin Island Ride

Yesterday I took two of my programming students to the University of South Alabama just west of Mobile for a programming competition. The competition involves a 5-hour session where we cannot make any contact at all with the students. What is a biking professor to do for those 5 hours? Well, let’s see, I’ll go for a bike ride! Here’s a topocreator.com map of the route I took from the university down to the coast and across a 4 mile long bridge.

I started out heading due south on Hillcrest Road which was surprisingly hilly with some 5, 6, and 7% grades. It was a very wide 4 lane road, but there was a bit of traffic. Eventually, I made my way down to Carol Plantation Rd which took me for the next 14 miles south towards the coast. This road had much less traffic, but it was a narrower 2 lane road with a speed limit of 55mph. The road was very straight so most cars passed on the opposite of the road. I had a pretty strong side-headwind to battle so my pace hovered right around 20mph. It was very windy once I made it to the bridge. The middle of the bridge rose up very sharply with a maximum grade of 7%. Just to the right of the white line was about 18 inches of smooth, debris-free shoulder which allowed me to ride the bridge without being in traffic and without worrying about getting a flat tire. The actual shoulder was probably 6 feet wide, but it was quite debris-strewn past that 18 inch mark. It didn’t matter much though because there was hardly any traffic.

Dauphin Island itself was a great place to ride with low speed limits, and wide smooth roads. I rode to the easternmost point of the island just past the ferry which is a 45 minute trip across the bay to Fort Morgan. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time for me to ride the ferry across, so I turned around and headed back with a strong tailwind. I was able to average much closer to 25mph for large sections of the return trip, except for the portions of the route which turned northeast since it was a strong southeasterly wind. It was an awesome change of pace from my normal riding in Birmingham.