The best place to be in December

We arrived Thursday...after a long drive from Atlanta...I-75 was shut down for over an hour, so we literally turned off the car on the highway and walked around for an hour while the accident scene was cleared. We've based ourselves at Eddie's buddy's house in Bradenton, FL, which is full of wide bike lanes so I'm happy!! We're not super close to any mountain bike trails, but we managed to hit Flatwoods and Boyette the last two days when we made our trip north for the weekend. So far we've done 3 rides, it rained twice (but not bad), and we have already seen 2 snakes..close calls both times! Today's ride was actually pretty rough for me...we went to the Tampa Bay Lighting game last night and stayed out a little too late! Jackson has been riding with us, but Porter is still on the injured list after having surgery on his paw last week. I feel so bad for him, he hates watching us ride away while he waits in the car :(

I think we're going to do a road century this week, after we change out my road saddle..I hate it!! It's evil. I'm going to try a WTB saddle since that's what I love on my mountain bike. Anyway, I want to ride from the house out to the islands (Anna Maria Island, etc.)...it will be a big ride (at least for me who doesn't like road riding) but hopefully very pretty. I think I can make it as long as we stop for sno-ice at least once or twice :) I'm not sure what else we're doing this week, except Eddie's doing some bike fittings for some folks while we're down here. Other than that, maybe we'll go up to Santos and Croom for some long dirt mileage before we head even further South for Christmas.