I dunno. I'll be in Palm Coast, Florida, next week visiting family, and my 11-year-old daughter and I are taking our bikes (both mountain bikes). We have blinking red lights on the back, but not much else in the way of reflective protective stuff except that her jersey is bright orange with butterflies on it and I usually wear a white or hot pink tank top. I'm also picking up a hot pink helmet on Monday. Hers is lime green with pink cats on it. We should be visible, but the roads I'm thinking of training on will be shared with Southern boys driving really, really big trucks.

Anyone familiar with the Old Dixie Highway near Flagler Beach and Ormond Beach? That stretch. Lots of people pulling boats to go fishing, lots of people heading to the beach from parts inland, and so on. It's marked at 25mph, and it's a twisty-turny, back country two lane road that skirts a salt marsh. It has a few flat bridges, and it's a really, really beautiful drive, especially if you like old growth forests of oak, pine, and bay laurel and sighting the occasional manatee in the shallows.

There are cycling signs and share the road signs. There's a smallish bike lane through a good bit of it, but it's hardly more than the shoulder of the road. I've seen lots of what I took to be very experienced cyclists based on their physical condition riding there, but the thought of it makes me nervous. Still, it's a beautiful stretch of road through a little patch of protected Old Florida, something I'd like for my daughter to appreciate. It's all very flat and should make for an easy ride - the closest thing to a hill is the bridge over the Intercoastal and the overpass over I-95.

Is there something I could do to keep us safer? More blinking lights? A high-viz yellow vest?

I also want us to try out the Gainesville-Hawthorne trail. It's a 17-mile path through Payne's Prairie between Gainesville and Hawthorne in Central Florida. That's Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings country - Cross Creek, The Yearling, and so on.

I need to stock up on bug spray and sunscreen. And blinking lights. <g>

Roxy