Road King Blog

Fort Christmas

Headed out for a ride this morning, with no particular place to go or time to be there - just me, the machine, and the road.  I had decided earlier to head in the general direction of East, along Route 419 out of Oveido through Chuluota and beyond.

The town of Oviedo is an interesting place.  The downtown area, such as it is, has a healthy population of free-roaming chickens.  Oveido was first settled in the late 1800’s, and like most communities of the time the primary avocations were farming and raising livestock.  Today, there are approximately 30 chickens that call Oviedo home, and the town has adopted them as mascots of a sort.

Leaving Oveido and passing through the town of Chuluota, you enter an area dominated by farming and ranching.  Most people don’t associate Florida with cattle, but there are over a million head of cattle (mostly beef cattle) in Florida.  As you motor sedately along Route 419, you’ll see one rancher’s large fence banners proclaiming “Beef - it’s what’s for dinner!”.  The cows seem rather unfazed by the traffic flowing by, as the calmly go about doing whatever it is cows do between being born and being dinner.  This is truly the Road King’s element, purring along at 2200 RPM in 4th gear, in the “sweet spot” where the engine vibration is at it’s smoothest. 

Turning off of Route 419 onto Lake Mills Road, you pass along quit, tree-lined roads bisecting large fields of cows and horses.  From here, North Fort Christmas Road takes off to the Southeast, leading you toward the town of Christmas.  Along the way, you encounter Fort Christmas Park.

Fort Christmas was one of many outposts build in the early to middle 1830s during the Second Seminole War.  Today, a replica of the fort stands as a historic park and museum, along with examples of period dwellings.

Leaving Fort Christmas, a short trip down Fort Christmas Road leads to State Route 50.  Turning East on Route 50, I headed into Titusville, along the banks of the Indian River.  From Route 1 in Titusville, you can look across the Indian River and see one of the largest buildings (in terms of enclosed volume) ever built - the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral.

The VAB

 Built as part of the Apollo project in the early 1960s, the VAB is currently used to assemble the Space Shuttle Orbiter / Fuel Tank / SRB “stack” for Shuttle missions.

The VAB is 525 feet tall, 716 feet  long and 518 feet  wide. It covers 8 acres, enclosing 129,428,000 cubic feet.  The space is so large that it has it’s own weather - NASA employees say that on very humid days, “rain clouds” have been known to form near the ceiling.

The doors in the VAB walls are the largest doors in the world, standing a staggering 456 feet high, and taking almost 45 minutes to open or close.

From Titusville, I headed back in Route 50 towards home.  Stopped and picked up some lunch for the sweet, wonderful, tolerant wifester (who puts up with me taking off on the bike).  The total ride was a little over 75 miles, which is by far my longest effort to date.  A great day, and a great ride.