Gator XII 2008-2009

With Gator XI now history, it’s time to start thinking about the Next Adventure. And that will be, as always, on 28 December through 04 January. We use the same calendar dates each year; this time around, it will be a Sunday-through-Sunday tour.

I am going to be doing some minor tweaking of the Day 5 and Day 6 routes for 2008. Specifically, I plan to make Day 5’s destination Clermont, a scenic town nestled in the rolling hills of central Florida. We’ll still keep the Day 5 route intact to Minneola, where we have the second SAG, and then do a mandatory loop over Sugarloaf bfore riding back through Minneola and Clermont to our host lodging.

For Day 6, I’ll need to add some miles, since we will have lopped about 16 off the existing route from Winter Garden. To do this I’ll alter the last fourth of the route to stretch south of Hwy 60 to Alturas, and then enter Bartow from the south. This entry to Bartow is actually the same route we’ll use the following morning to leave town; it is also the same route we once used on the original route. And truthfully, we have also used the Alturas section before on some of the “ancient” Gator tours, proving once again there really isn’t anything new under the sun.

The net effect of all this will be negligible in terms of total miles ridden, but it will allow us to add some improvements along the way. I view a bike tour route as a continuous work-in-progress, never really done, and always able to be improved upon. The paint never really dries on a tour.

Registration info for Gator XII will be posted soon on the website.