For 2010, my message is simple. Become your own hero. After a year of fallen heroes, you know how not to behave and you already know your own flaws. Beach life provides many ways to enjoy our own heroic efforts.

No one needs to be overweight or sedentary at the Beaches. A pair of walking shoes can set you on the "road" to heroic behavior. As the weight drops off, you will have a body ready for new heroic forms of play that can make you into that exciting person you should be.

Even without losing weight, a nice bicycle can take you on heroic journeys all year long. My personal Christmas present was a new Giant carbon fiber Defy road bike. It easily exceeds my actual needs, but I have already used it rolex fake to explore an old highway friend, Florida A1A. Such trips can bring out the hero in each of us.

My brother, Steve, helped with the cost and also gave the gift of personal time with his annual pre-Christmas visit. Our three trips prove that there is always something new to discover at Florida's many state parks. (An unpaid endorsement!)

We biked to the Mayport ferry and then to Nassau Sound. On my last ride north in October, a stop at the ranger station at Little Talbot Island State Park produced a park map.

Black Rock Beach Trail on the north end of the park has an intriguing name. I had missed it because I got the map on my return trip. The half-mile-long trail is wide and even hard-packed enough for bikes. It ends at a wooden ladder that drops onto the "beach."

The view easily exceeds the definition of "spectacular." We looked out across Nassau Sound as it meets the ocean. The native Mocama people may have stood on this same shore and seen the same black "rocks."

Fallen oaks have been molded into the rocks after years of stretching out into the sound. The smooth rock surface is indeed black and has the look of rocks eroded smooth by years of heavy surf action. I scraped at the edge of one, which too easily broke off. It had a familiar heavy sandy look.

I took a loose golf ball-sized piece for identification later by two knowledgeable young rangers working in a picnic area. The young lady called it "mariposa" and "hardpack." It is organic matter that has been compressed between the surface soil and the limestone base rock. If we wait maybe a million years, it could become a coal deposit. That fascinating find became part of a 38-mile bike exploration of "Old Florida," wholesale colthing a heroic journey made by two older cyclists.

Steve and I prefer "Old Florida" over the post-Disney Florida. The next day, it was off again for another visit to San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park near Alachua. Just 92 miles from my house, it is an eon away from typical Florida.

"It looks like a meadow in Yosemite," Steve commented as we slid along what I call the "back slope" of Mount San Felasco. He knows; he's been there. We saw 11 deer in the first hour. The total was 18 for the day with one wild hog and three hawks. We traversed the gentle limestone ridge and biked into two ravines. We found a trail that we had missed a year earlier that is now marked Soggy Bottom. We climbed out of the ravine on a sweet switchback trail and on to the newly opened Red Bug Loop trail, which leads to Pine For You Loop trail.

These well-marked and -maintained trails gave us almost six hours of great riding pleasure. They are quite smooth. Real rock provides a solid base and enough of a challenge to make a trip a personal heroic journey. A half-mile downhill run starts one back to the p

Bookmark: