First of the First:

I moved from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and then back to Kissimmee, Florida.

It wasn’t because I was one step ahead of the law, or even one step ahead of myself. Although, if I were one step ahead of the law, this probably wouldn’t be the place where I’d confess it.

The factors behind the moves were legion. The forethought was not.

The one thing I used to justify each move was what the biking and running scene would be like once I got there. Apparently, this is how mature adults make major life decisions. Some people consider property taxes, healthcare, employment, and proximity to family. I ask, “But where am I going to ride my bicycle?”

After I’d made the decision to leave St. Pete, I was sitting under a palm tree eating an oatmeal-raisin cookie the size of a Buick hubcap that I’d just bought at the farmers market. I watched sailboats drift in and out of the harbor, airplanes come and go from Albert Whitted Airport, and listened to music wafting across the water from the Pier.

And I asked myself:

Am I completely out of my mind for leaving this special little slice of paradise?

Turns out I was.

Nothing beats the Pinellas Trail for bike paths. It runs from downtown St. Pete all the way north past Tarpon Springs and includes some of the most breathtaking scenery you could ever hope to see without paying admission or being forced to sit through a timeshare presentation.

There are at least five triathlons at Fort De Soto, allwith duathlon divisions. The St. Anthony’s Triathlon is world-class, and 5Ks, half marathons, marathons, and entire race weekends seem to reproduce in the area when no one is looking.

Chattanooga was going to have to work pretty damn hard to outdo paradise.

Turns out Chattanooga not only couldn’t care less about keeping me happy, but I’m reasonably certain it has never even heard of paradise and, if shown a map, would point somewhere around Cleveland.

Lucky for me, Chattanooga turned out to be a sports hot spot.

No matter what the weather—and Tennessee works very hard to put the eclectic in weather—people were always running and riding bikes along the Tennessee Riverwalk. The trail runs from Chickamauga Dam, through downtown, and all the way to St. Elmo. And the Chickamauga Greenway is so beautiful it hurts. It's also so slippery with mildew under the trees that it also hurts, but in an entirely different way.

Chattanooga hosts a Half Ironman, George Hincapie’s Gran Fondo, countless 5Ks and 10Ks, half and full marathons, and at least one triathlon. There are no duathlons or aquabike divisions attached to most of these events, but you make do with what you’ve got. This is also the philosophy behind canned chili and most marriages.

I learned a lot about climbing while I lived there, and eventually I got pretty good at it.

I used to take my gravel bike up Lookout Mountain and all over Prentice Cooper State Forest. The only problem with Prentice Cooper was that quite a few weekends each year the forest was closed for hunting.

I suppose this was reasonable.

Apparently, “old man on Trek Checkpoint wearing fluorescent Lycra” is not recognized by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency as a protected species.

The other downside to Chattanooga is that for several months of the year you’re running or cycling while wearing seven or eight layers of clothing. At some point, athletic performance becomes secondary to simply being able to bend your elbows.

The Michelin Man has more mobility.

So when my wife mentioned that she might be interested in moving back to Central Florida, I jumped on the idea like a hyena on a wildebeest carcass.

With roughly the same elegance.

I immediately started thinking about year-round running, year-round cycling, and all the bike touring I’d be able to do.

I was euphoric.

Borderline giddy.

In retrospect, this should have been my first warning.

We moved to Solivita, a 55-plus community in south Kissimmee. The community itself is gorgeous, and the idea of never having to do yard work or exterior maintenance again had me smiling like a man who had just discovered someone else was responsible for cleaning the gutters.

Right off the bat, I started riding around the area.

And right off the bat, I discovered that one of the things absolutely no one around here appears to care about is infrastructure.

The mere suggestion of a bike lane seems to give local planners hives.

For those of you reading this and saying, “Orlando has bike lanes out the kazoo,” I have two responses.

First: Have any of you actually seen Orlando’s kazoo?

And second: Yes, Orlando has plenty of bike lanes.

But you have to get to Orlando to use them.

That’s the tricky part.

I eventually learned that I could ride from my house to the lakefront park in Kissimmee while placing my life in immediate jeopardy only three or four times at major intersections.

So that was encouraging.

I also learned that…

Well, that was about it.

Because Central Florida looks as though God had a fire sale on lakes and dumped the entire inventory here, I essentially live inside that famous geographical paradox:

You can’t get there from here.

There is exactly one road that allows me to ride west: Cypress Parkway.

Cypress Parkway is a two-lane, no-shoulder-having death trap that considers cyclists part of the food chain.

Last year, I rode solo from Jacksonville to Key West and encountered several fairly hairy situations along the way, not the least of which was crossing the Seven Mile Bridge.

So it’s not that I lack constitution.

I am saturated in constitution. At this point I have constitution leaking out of my shoes.

But traffic on Cypress Parkway routinely moves at sixty miles an hour or more. If a driver comes up behind a bicycle while another car is approaching in the opposite lane, the driver has nowhere to go.

Unless you count through the bicycle.

Which I do not.

Trying to go south presents essentially the same problem on Marigold Avenue. Can ride south that way. Absolutely. It’s just that part of your trip may involve being transported by people wearing latex gloves and name tags.

East is theoretically better.

I can get to Titusville or Melbourne by riding north toward Kissimmee and then heading east on U.S. 192. That solves the traffic problem. Unfortunately, it introduces Issue Number Two.

I had forgotten that living in Central Florida is roughly equivalent to living on the surface of the sun. The stretch of 192 heading east offers virtually no shade, no scenery, no gas stations, and long sections where civilization seems to have simply looked at the place and said, “Nah.”

It is basically a paved solar experiment.

I’m planning to give it a try in September. Depending on the duration of my recovery, the trip will probably become the subject of one of my famous sugar-free, gluten-free posts.

Possibly written from a burn unit.