02/12/2025 ICW Day 43 : Docked and confused

Another day where the weather prediction was pretty wrong. We crossed the first inlet safely and calmly, having resisted the temptation yesterday to continue on with a following current (the sacrifice for calm seas was that we would have to pedal harder up-current today).

We were excited to arrive at the Butter Bean boat ramp where Mike Neil gave us the lock combination so we could store our boat inside his chain link fence… only to find that the tiny area was… already filled with kayaks! In a bit of desperation, before I knew it, Janet was on the stoop of a sinking house with a porch - asking if we could leave the boat there. Janet had met Renee, who reluctantly (at first) considered maybe helping us. As the discussion continued, she warmed up to the idea, making it clear that she couldn’t promise it would be safe. We were pretty desperate, so we agreed to all that (and left several hidden AirTag trackers in various places). We took apart everything; it is easy enough to, but still a big commitment getting everything out of the water. I’m glad that Janet asked Renee right away because she was on the verge of leaving for the day!

Now we had to get to the hotel - 6 miles away. I briefly tried putting everything into the bike bag and balancing it on the rack. Could we carry Janet too? This seemed pretty dangerous- especially considering that the causeway had lots of traffic, narrow lanes, no shoulder, and Southern Drivers who probably aren’t too accustomed to cyclists (I strongly get the feeling that cycling isn’t as popular here as it is out West - mostly due to the lack of safe routes).

I saw a young woman feeding cats in the parking lot and zoomed over to offer her $50 to take Janet to the hotel. Kristen agreed quickly. Janet meanwhile was downloading the Uber App, but she downloaded the “Uber Driver” which would have been a little funny if she started getting ride requests at this point.

I figured Uber would cost about the same as we had offered Kristen, but when we got a chance to download the correct app, I discovered it was only $16.79 for that journey. I’m not too Uber-savvy because we always have enough bikes!! After talking to Janet (who conversed with Kristen on the drive) it ended up sounding like it was money well spent; she was a 20 year old student who was on break from work. She is studying set design and seems to work hard. Plus, she was trying to care for these random cats in the parking lot.

I asked the guy at the hotel, “what is the total price we are going to pay?” (Because they had charged part of it on booking already). He told me a number, and Janet asked me, “is that the right amount?” I told her that I didn’t know, and the guy behind the desk says, “why you askin’ the price when you don’t even know how much it s’posed to be.” You know, Southern Hospitality? 🤷

Then it was off to get quarters and detergent for the laundry. I thought I was so smart. There was a coin-op machine at the hotel. I rode the bike a few blocks away to a laundromat to buy a little box of detergent and get quarters. Only problem is that you need to buy a $20 card - no quarters are used anymore! So after that failure, back to the hotel, only to find that at the bottom of the soda vending machine they sell little boxes of detergent. Doh! Not only learning things at sea, but also on land.