SEBRING — "I like it, don't get me wrong. It's something different.... This is like the '50s." Lourdes "Lou" Gil of Deerfield Beach has been biking since she was 18, but the stout 53-year-old only went to three bike rallies before Sunday. She had some fond memories of those three, though, especially one in Key West. "Everywhere you go, they had a different thing going," she said, describing how wild the women were and how the bikers were all with them. It wasn't sexual, she quickly added. Many of the bikers there wouldn't use their stereotypically salty language to describe the Run to the Heartland this year. Words like "nice," "friendly," and "laid back" were the phrases more often used, but that calm that left Gil dreaming of Key West was just what several other bikers came for during the past weekend. "I enjoy coming over here, it's not crowded like Daytona or Leesburg," said Danny "Free Bird" Holt of the Ft. Pierce-based Reflection Riders. "You get a lot of places where you can't even walk, there's so many people." ...more

October 8, 2007

Looking like Noah's Ark after the flood, a sleek, 158-foot yacht driven aground by a hurricane lies just offshore, mired for most of the past two years in a dispute with the government over how to free it without doing too much damage to seagrass. ...more

October 7, 2007