The Worst Speed Bumps may be in Florida!

Alligator Alley (Interstate 75) crosses Florida at the bottom of the state in a near straight line from Napels on the west coast to Weston on the Atlantic Coast.  It was first given the moniker by the American Automobile Association in 1969 due to the fact that real live alligators congregate along the roadway and occasionally make the mad dash from one side to the other, sometimes without success.  It is possible to ride your bike along Alligator Alley but not recommended due to high speed traffic and other dangers.  (See picture and you will understand).

Alligator Alley crosses the flat and watery swamp known as the Everglades.  The State of Florida has no record of the alligator population in the Everglades but each year a hunt is permitted to control the count while other nuisance gators are put down.  The Everglades was made a National park in 1947 and it’s significant for its wild species of animals, grasses, plants and its overall beneficial ecosystem.  The Everglades is home to the most exotic species of fishes in the United States and when all exotic plant and animal species are counted it is the greatest concentration of such in the world.  In 1971 Florida began to see an increase in the number of invasive species adversely affecting the Everglades.  The region’s close proximity to Miami International Airport meant easy access for foreign plants and animals to reach the ‘Glades.

Today the greatest threat to the Everglades is the Burmese Python.   The python came to South Florida as part of a legal exotic pet trade.  Many, after only a few weeks or months of ownership were released into the wild.  They have since exploded in numbers.  They eat just about anything from small rodents to white-tailed deer and even alligators.  In parts of the Everglades where the pythons are prominent the mammal population has dropped 90%.  There are to date, 39 endangered animal species in the Everglades and pythons feed on every one.    The state began a program to catch the big snakes in 2007.  That year they captured 600.  Some park naturalists estimate there are 150,000 pythons living in the Everglades.  And they can ruin your bike ride.  Pythons average about 13 feet in length and weigh well over 200 pounds.  The snakes are tough to maneuver around, they present one of the more challenging speed bumps a bike rider will ever encounter. 

Last week the State of Florida announced the "2013 Python Challenge," a Burmese python hunting competition, sponsored by the state’s Wildlife Conservation Commission.  It is a month-long event which encourages hunters to gather as many snakes as they can. A $1,500 reward will be given to the hunter who catches the most pythons, (the SBT crew can’t wait, we know we are capable of dragging in a least a dozen!) and a $1,000 reward will be given to the hunter with the longest python (we won’t touch that one but “longest python” makes up giggle).  The picture of a python and alligator wrestling shows how big the snake problem has become in South Florida.  They are even attacking big gators.  These are two creatures the SBT crew would like to avoid on our bike rides.

Please visit our website for more road cycling information, www.stickybottleteam.net.