Playing Survivorman in O'Leno State Park (Gainesville, FL)

After touring Gainesville, Florida (which looks like a pretty cool place) I travelled to nearby O'Leno State Park to camp for the night before heading west on the Gulf towards New Orleans.

It was hot and sticky humid when I arrived and I had no idea what kind of park this would be. O'Leno turns out to be a woodsy area near a river that starts above ground, sinks underground for a couple miles and then re-emerges. It's a Florida thing: part of the maze of sinkholes and caves that millions of years of heavy rain have created.

When I arrived I found that mountain bikes were allowed on some of their trails, so I made this plan: Go biking for about an hour, from 4:30 to 5:30, then get a shower, setup camp, eat some dinner, read a book, then go to sleep and move on in the morning.

I parked the car in the day-visitor area near the start of the trails. Because it was a weekday and there were only a handful of other people there, I started the process of packing the car up. This means moving electronics to the trunk, hiding valuables, etc. Then I grabbed my phone, my camera and a single bottle of water, jumped on the bike and headed out on the biggest trail.

Weather in Florida is hard to predict and I wasn't bothered by the clouds that looked like they were on about one third of the park: the other two-thirds were clear, bright, sunny skies.

So I started riding on a single-track trail with dense vegetation on all sides that filled the area with natural green and brown colors. Along the trail I took these photos. The first is Jug Lake. It's surface is covered in a plant whose little round green leaves float on the surface and make it look like it's been painted by Seurat. The second is a close up you can click on.

I rode on until I reached a lake with a sign warning of Alligators and took a picture or two of that. Just then, it started to rain. I put the camera and the iPhone away in the Tamrac camera backpack and started riding on.

Then it started raining harder. And harder. And harder.

Its at this point that I had flashbacks to the TV show Survivorman where Les Stroud puts himself in a position like this: You're riding in a jungle, it starts to rain, you get a flat, what do you do to survive?

I wasn't prepared for this. No jacket, no rain poncho, no umbrella, nothing. Not even a hat. One bottle of water and no food. I started thinking of what my options are and the idea of finding a bus shelter popped into my head as wishful thinking. I quickly skipped over that bad idea and set out to complete the trail in the rain and get back to my car and a hot shower.

I kept on riding on the trail when it seemed to fork to the right and turn into the red trail. The red trail would have taken me farther into the park, so I kept going on the route I was on.

After about 20 minutes of riding in the rain like this I noticed the trail seemed to be mostly the tire ruts of a truck and not the type of trail I'd been riding on. It was still pouring and I was soaked with water and covered with specks of mud kicked up by the tires.

I rode on for another fifteen minutes hoping I'd magically arrive back at the parking lot when I noticed I'd been riding parallel to a county dirt road separated by a barbed wire fence. I was tired of riding on tire ruts and an opening in the fence gave me an opportunity to cross over and ride on the road. So I cross over and carefully pulled out the iPhone to use its GPS and map to figure out where I was.

The iPhone is protected by an Otterbox Defender case that should prevent raindrops from getting to the phone, but I cupped my hands and bent over to try to keep the heavy raindrops from soaking it, too. The iPhone was able to tell me I was on the southeastern side of the park on a little road. It looked as though I could go north/northeast and pickup a different trail into the park. I put the iPhone away and started riding.

Twenty minutes later I stopped, still being soaked by the heavy rain and listening to occasional thunder nearby. Checking the iPhone again revealed that I'd been riding in the wrong direction for the last 20 minutes. That's ok, I'm fine. Put the phone back and turn around.

About thirty minutes later, I stop to check again and I notice the soles the hiking shoes I'm wearing are soaked with water. Rain's been running down my leg, soaking my socks and getting into my shoes.

The iPhone says I'm on the right course but I don't see the park anymore. I'm surrounded by little rural homes and a few small farms. Nobody is around and only rarely does car speed by on the muddy dirt road.

Finally I get to the point on my map where an intersection makes it look like I can re-enter the park. It's been about an hour and a quarter since I got stuck in the rain. There is no entrance to the park, just some more rural homes and a private dirt road in the direction I thought was the park.

It's stopped raining hard at this point, at least, and I stand by my bike, muddy, soaking wet, considering my options. What I really want is some country person with a big pickup truck to come by, see this poor, lost, soaked tourist and offer a ride for me and my bike in the back of his pickup truck to the entrance to a park. Instead, a woman with a nice, clean, expensive looking minivan drives by. There's no way she's going to let me inside that thing. I wouldn't.

I decide the only option is to turn around on the muddy dirt road and start riding back towards where I came from. If I can find where I exited the park onto the road, maybe I can get back in and back track to get home.

As I ride on roads I know I've already been on, I motivate myself by thinking about food. I have a can of tomato soup in my car and if I can get back its mine to enjoy. In Florida it was so hot and humid I questioned why I even brought any hot foods with me, but biking in the cold, soaked by the rain, it's all I want.

After a while of riding I find a gate to the park on my right and a trail leading into the park. The bike is light so I lift it up and over and then climb the rungs of the metal gate to get myself over. Mosquitoes are swarming all over me so I have to keep moving to avoid being harassed and bitten.

This trail is different but I see red markers on the trees occasionally leading me to believe that I'm on the red trail in O'Leno. I ride for ten minutes when the trail forks to the right with a numbered sign saying 27, but I keep riding forward. Then after five minutes another fork and a sign saying 26. Then another fork and a sign saying 25. I stop, pull out the iPhone and discover I'm much farther south than I could have been in the park and I'm probably not in O'Leno state park but a nearby wildlife preserve. The forks and markers are probably trails to sites with plant experiments. This isn't where I want to be, so I turn around, again, and head back to the muddy dirt road.

At this point I've told myself that there will be no camping tonight. After all this time and effort, I deserve a motel. A hot shower, soft bed and some cable television. The motivation keeps my spirits up as I climb over the metal gate onto the road.

I've exhausted my own efforts to navigate home, so I use the maps function on the iPhone to find out where I'm at and let it pick a road based route home. It picks the route that seemed natural in the shape of a U I need to go south, west, then north. It's going to be another 10.5 miles. I have no choice.

The dirt road is mostly flat but when it does have hills, I can't really enjoy them. I'd love to race down them and use their speed to avoid pedalling as much as I can but the road is slick with mud and I can't afford have an accident now. I don't think about breaking a leg, I thinking about getting gashed on my leg, bleeding blood mixing with brown muddy slime. So I brake a lot down the hills, and pump hard on the pedals to make as much distance as quickly yet safely as I can.

When I get to the point where I'm supposed to break west and cut over to the main road that takes me north, I can't find it. I back track a bit and look or it, but it's not there, just dirt driveways on farms. I stop to ask a nice lady walking her dog about this and she says there is no cut-through because the road on my map is a private road for a boy scout farm and that I'll have to go through town. The town detour adds approximately 4 more miles to my trip and I have no choice.

The town road, at least, is asphalt, so I can go faster, more easily and when there is sidewalk available, I take that to be safer. At the half way point I'm in town and I meet up with the main road that goes north. I take a right and look at the Hardees staring me in the face. I have no wallet. Why would I need it in the jungle on an hour long bike ride? Note to self: put a $20 in the camera bag for occasions like this.

Now I'm on the road that I remember driving on when I arrived at the park. I don't recognize it at first, but then see a run down Dollar Store and a motel that give me confidence I'm on the right path. And I recall, it wasn't that long after seeing these things that I arrived at the entrance to the park.

So I keep riding ignoring the fact that my clothes are soaked, my energy is draining, my legs are hurting, and I'm flithy with mud from head to toe. But I'm close, so it's ok. Until I see the sign that says "O'Leno State Park: 5 Miles". One mile would have been hard enough but five is painful. I have: no choice.

At this point my motivations of food, motels, and television are not working. At this point I'm going to the next phase of desperation where I'm aware all I can do is just keep pushing on. I pass farms, an old gas station that someone has turned into their home, and the occasional interesting sight but I'm too exhausted to get out the camera and take pictures.

Finally I see another sign and think I can see the entrance to the park in the distance, but it's a tease that says "O'Leno State Park: 1 mile". I have no choice.

As I get closer to the state park entrance, now in sight, I feel a surge of energy that lets me propel the bike forward much faster. If I can just keep going at this pace, I'll be at my car, warm clothes, hot food, and sugary snacks in no time. But then I recall that from the entrance to the day visitor parking lot is another mile. Again, no choice. I slow down and start to pace myself.

Ten minutes later I arrive at my car, pull up and let the bike rest on the ground. I walk around to the back side, unlock it to get something to eat when I discover that I'd made a terrible mistake hours earlier.

When I'd packed my car up and relocated valuables, I'd placed my XM radio, Archos mp3 player, and TomTom GPS unit in a plastic box and temporarily placed them on the roof of my car. I must have forgotten about them and not noticed them between the roof and the cargo rack -- things just blend in up their. "FCUK!" I realized what I had done and quickly realized that I had not only left them out in the open where they were unsafe but I had left them out in the open in a rainstorm. I looked closer to see they were all sitting in about an inch of water.

I was frustrated only for a few minutes with this. I needed to get food and drink so I stopped thinking about that and ate a quick lunch of whatever I could easily find in my car: 3 fruit cups, a ham sandwich, and some chocolate chip cookies.

I reconsidered the damaged electronics. I'm on a journey and I've already covered over a thousand miles of travel and experiences. My car is not damaged, I am not hurt and, well, my camera and my beloved iPhone are not damaged. The XM, GPS and Archos can be replaced. I will survive and this is all part of my journey.

I am convinced this will make a hell of a story.