Transcontinental bicycle tour

Wednesday, August 30, Morrisville to Lancaster, New Hampshire

65.02 miles, 9:00. Maximum 37 mph, rating: 9 Map

10:30 AM

Our hosts (believe it or not) overslept this morning. Breakfast (eventually) was ham and cheese omelettes, etc. Only $44 for room and breakfast. Nice place, nice people. It was a cool day, warming up later, with an east wind. It’s partly sunny.

There’s a covered railroad bridge at Wolcott. There are some real hills past Hardwick. Still beautiful country, with green Green mountains everywhere.

1:00 PM, St Johnsbury

There’s another covered bridge at west Danville, this one a footbridge. East of Danville is Lost ridge. It’s not lost now: we found it! Hard work. Most of the little towns are very pleasant. Didn’t think much of St Johnsbury, where we had a mediocre lunch.

Fairbanks Scales (since 1830) started at St Johnsbury. The plaque said Fairbanks experimented with a variety of products before starting to make scales.

Highway 2 is fairly poor, surprising after how good Highway 15 was. Near Lunenburg, some high steep roller-coaster hills.

Just as we came to the Connecticut river, Jacky had a rear tire flat, a snakebite puncture. The cord is showing on the tire. If the patched spare doesn’t hold and we have to take it apart again, we’ll put on the spare tire I’ve carried from California.

We stayed in Lancaster, at Mary Elizabeth’s, a cottage motel at (where else?) the top of a steep hill. $25. Can’t argue about the price!

Jacky cleaned and lubed her chain. Mine probably needs it too, but not today.

There’s quite a bit of autumn color, but you have to look for it. It doesn’t yet dominate the view.

A lady in a Cadillac with NY plates was stopped at a tee junction, right out in the roadway. She wanted to know which way to turn to get to Hardwick. She was thoroughly grumpy at being inconvenienced by a detour – while creating a traffic hazard herself. Nor did she think it necessary to thank me for giving her directions. Stereotypes, eg about New Yorkers, frequently contain at least a grain of truth.

Another day without granny – this is hard work! It’s good country for it, though. Half a mile is a long hill, and there are probably no unrelieved grades as long as a mile. Jacky is also learning to climb out of the saddle. We waved to some people whose dog then chased us. Not very neighborly.

There was a strong wind, mostly tailing. It was clear and bright, with big cumulus clouds floating by. We like New Hampshire better than Vermont; but I think a lot of the reason is the clear sunny day here, versus the cloudy and partly sunny days we had in Vermont.

According to the sign going down, it’s a 12% grade up to the motel. No wonder it’s a grunt. We ate at a Northern Mex restaurant, the first Mexican food since Sioux City. Great. Two beers apiece and an after-dinner drink as well. We zonked at 8:15.

Somewhere in upstate New York, we crossed another national boundary. Clearly, we are now in New England. There are lots of buildings of colonial architecture, and few or no log buildings. New England has a lot in common with Ecotopia. If they were geographically contiguous, one could debate endlessly whether they should be, or could be, distinguished.

Thursday, August 31, to Bethel, Maine

8:00 AM, Lancaster

It stormed overnight. Nice to be under a roof. The patched tire leaked. Jacky replaced both the tire and the tube. We got a late start. Fresh blueberry pancakes at Lancaster diner. Lancaster war memorial lists American revolution, War of 1812, Civil war.

2:00 PM, Bethel, Maine

The White mountains looked black in the heavy cloud cover, but we set off anyway. The sun eventually appeared, and it became a mostly sunny, chilly day with a strong (30 mph) tailwind. A scene I wish I could have photographed: the silhouette of a mountain; behind it, bright backlighted wisps of cloud; behind that, the silhouette of another peak.

We had only a few climbs, fair to good roads, and mostly considerate drivers where there was no shoulder. There were long, sweeping flats through (not past) the forest. The road is frequently shaded by trees, very pleasant.

This is the way it ought to be.

We stopped for snacks at Gorham, whose skyline is dominated by Mt Washington. A fellow came over, wanted an ear to dump into. He said Mt Washington road is private and it costs $20 to go up. He burned out his brakes on one visit, broke a universal joint on another, and he’s never going up again, by Godfrey! Life sure is tough!

There’s a classic bike ride up Mt Washington. We picked up a brochure: the road is 8 miles long, would appear to be mostly unpaved, and the mountain is 6000+ feet high. If the starting elevation is, say, 1000’, that works out to about a 12% average grade. I can see why a ride up the thing might be a classic.

Just west of Bethel, there’s a dowel mill. Then we came upon a sawmill, with lots of the logging trucks we’ve seen all day turning in there. They were watering their logs (remember the California sawmill?). In Bethel, there’s another dowel mill.

Smells: fresh-cut pine from the logging trucks.

New Hampshire has the best scenery – black clouds gave way to sun and strong winds mostly helping us. Gorgeous birches. Antique sleigh on top of a car.

We decided it might be a pleasant change to rent a car in Portland and go some places that we couldn’t conveniently reach within our cycling schedule. Bob had recommended visits to Bar Harbor, Boothbay Harbor, and Freeport.

Again, no granny gear today. Got to Four Seasons Inn at 1:00. Old place with a French restaurant. Nice place! Hostess wears a maid’s uniform. Bethel is a small town, with a picturesque Gould Institute prep school, and some arts and crafts people.

Smells: a clothing store, apples in storage.

We went to the C of C and talked with an older woman about Portland and routes. These accents! We stopped for Dos Equis and nachos at a Mexican restaurant, and got back to the hotel in time for complimentary tea on the front porch. We’re willing to snarf down all the calories we come across, especially in suitably decadent surroundings.

Then we walked around town. All the old houses have names: The Elms, The Willows, etc. We sought out the ruined dam in the middle of the golf course, got yelled at by a golfer who wanted to tee off in our direction and figured he owned the world.

Wonderful French dinner, superb service. Carillon concert with classical music. Ate and drank too much. Great day.

Friday, September 1, to Naples

No granny today, either.

We decided to split the distance to Portland into two days, since we have lots of time. Continental (European style) breakfast at the Four Seasons Inn was cereal, fruit, muffins, fruit croissants.

We went south from Bethel on deserted side roads. It’s mostly easy country, but there was one real grunt just south of North Waterford. There’s a lake at Waterford where we stopped for calories. Maine has lots of towns whose names are borrowed from faraway places.

It was cool and cloudy with one or two raindrops. South of Harrison, we encountered ten miles of brand new road. Great, except for a bit of hassle at the end, where road construction was still under way.

Naples is a pretty town with a nice lake, but very much a tourist trap area. Impressed the waitresses with our ride, had watery clam chowder.

I noticed the cord showing in my own rear tire yesterday, so I stopped at a bike shop to see about a new tire. The only one in stock in the right size wasn’t a baldy, so I decided to risk keeping the old one. We’re almost there.

While I was stopped along the road this morning, an older couple came up in a van. The woman, driving, asked me if the turnoff was the right road to the buffalo ranch. I didn’t know, of course. Then she asked whether I got leg cramps, and I gave her a partial answer about dehydration causing cramping. She said, in that case she would have to start drinking more water! Hey, lady – I didn’t know you were going to take my advice as a prescription!

Although we got a late start, it was a short day, and we finished by 1:00. We stayed at the Augustus Bove house, overlooking the lake, a three story B&B with an attached antique shop.

When we arrived, our hosts weren’t home, so we sat on the porch and watched the world go by. Two guys with a bucket truck were putting up CATV cable. On the lake, a seaplane was selling sightseeing rides. The bridge across the narrows into Naples is labelled a drawbridge, but is really a swing bridge. Jacky saw it swing open while I was at the library getting motel phone numbers in Portland.

When I got back, we were checked into a room on the top floor with a private bath. Four-year-old Matthew, grandson of the proprietors, helped get us moved in and asked an endless stream of questions. Great kid.

Saturday, September 2, to Portland

It rained all night. The roof was directly overhead and it was cozy.

Today dawned bright and clear. The road was dry except in shadow. We had a full breakfast at the B&B. Besides ourselves, there was a neurologist in wild shorts and his professional singer wife, the B&B host, and an electrical engineer from West Germany working in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a company that had been bought out by his German parent company. (That’s probably enough information to figure out what company, if one cared. The parent company sounds like Siemens.) It was a good breakfast, with banana bread left over from last night.

I rode ahead to North Windham to see about getting a new tire. The bike shop advertised in the yellow pages had gone out of business, so I was committed to stretching the old tire yet a little further.

Too much traffic riding into Portland. We rode together. We tried the side roads, but we had inadequate map information and ended up back on 302, which had lots of traffic.

Road signs range from poor to nonexistent in Maine. The numbered highways usually have signs, but other roads usually don’t. Maybe they don’t have names. In any event, it’s easy to get lost, and the only way to get found again is to bound the area with numbered roads you’ll recognize.

We stopped at the outskirts of Portland for a map, then went to the airport for our plane tickets. We failed to easily resolve issues about bike check-in (not until the morning of our early flight) and car rental (no mini-vans available in which we could have stowed our bikes).

We walked downtown, about three miles. Our first sight of salt water! – we did it! This was the trip’s objective! Good for us! A toast for tonight’s pression!

The old port area is great. We were variously reminded of Boston, Philadelphia, England and France. There’s lots of red brick, both in the buildings and in the sidewalks, lots of people out on the street. There are short blocks with irregularities in the street topology that make for an interesting area. If the area has a weakness, it would be that it isn’t strongly integrated with the waterfront. The only real access seemed to be at a private marina, restaurant, and cruise ship terminal.

One of the shops was decorated wtih beautiful black and silver and gold wrought iron. A store called Once A Tree had wonderful wooden things, and we saw an Indian restaurant for this evening. Over toward the old (moribund) downtown, I got a photo of a multi-colored stone building, part of an art school.

The Indian restaurant was great. It’s been far too long! It was in a building that had previously housed a bike shop. The menus were in a little box with a Univega logo.

Sunday, September 3, rest day

Slow breakfast service at HoJo Tony Roma restaurant. We rode to a car rental place near the airport, where we left the bikes and got a little Plymouth. We drove to Freeport and Boothbay Harbor on a wonderful sunny clear day.

Freeport is all stores, anchored by L L Bean. I got a sweater vest and a pair of blue jeans. At other stores in the area, a pair of Rockports and a new wallet. Stopped at Reebok/Rockport/Leslie Faye. Bought jeans, dress, shoes, gift for George and Meredith. Smells from shopping: cedar goods, incense, leather products.

Maple syrup is sold everywhere in New England, including a construction company and a farm supply shop! How come the maple syrup in California grocery stores is Canadian?

Terrible lunch service in Wiscasset.

Boothbay Harbor is very picturesque, but has been thoroughly discovered by the weekenders. Motels, B&Bs, crowds. It’s similar to Sausalito, with a heavy concentration of tourist businesses, including lots of shops selling artsy craftsy stuff.

There were signs advertising parking for $4 and even $5. Too rich for our blood! We drove round and round looking for a place. Just as we were ready to abandon the whole thing and go somewhere else, someone pulled out and we got a 25¢ metered spot.

We ate at a Day’s Inn restaurant in Portland tonight. At first glance, its major virtue appeared to be proximity to our motel. It turned out to be pretty classy. How could I go home from Maine without eating lobster? I had their special: two whole large lobsters, $12.95. Fun watching Dave eat lobster.

Monday, September 4, to Portland airport; from SFO to Palo Alto

We got up at 4:30 and rode to the airport in the dark.

Before we left home, I had tried unsuccessfully to get the pedals off Jacky’s bike, anticipating the flight home. I took the bike in to Wheelsmith, where they loosened the pedals with a long-handled wrench. By now, however, they were once again impossibly tight, and I couldn’t budge them. I ended up pulling off the whole crank on the left side, instead. Hey, did I bring a complete set of tools, or what!

We stowed all the panniers and camping equipment in the boxes with the bikes, figuring that would minimize the baggage check hassle.

The day was clear and cold. We had a good view of the Atlantic and the forested countryside on takeoff.

There’s the legendary American obsession with plumbing. Why is it so difficult? and why do we customers accept it? We saw any number of places with hot and cold connections reversed, or with faucets that turned the wrong direction. [When we got home, Julia pointed out that the hot and cold knobs were reversed in our shower. I pled blindness, and fixed them instantly.]

Abuse of the language, for example the misspelling we saw everywhere, including glossy professional publications. One restaurant, at Bancroft, Ont, had place mats containing an array of little business card size advertisements of the local businesses. The town was spelt Brancroft in several ads. One ad spelt it twice, once correctly, once incorrectly. People can’t even spell the names of their own hometowns? The words its and it’s are almost always used incorrectly.

Is this don’t give a damn? In New England, distances on signs are totally unreliable. By no means unique, one example was a sign that warned of an 8% downhill for 0.6 miles. I rated the grade at 5 to 6%, and at 0.3 miles, we were geared down and climbing again.

Capital consumption. People who don’t give a damn. Not necessarily even at the low price end. Lots of time, the daily maintenance (keeping things clean and tidy) isn’t well done. This isn’t the same as capital consumption, but it’s related. We saw any number of motels in which overspray or leaks from the shower could have easily been corrected, but had been allowed to persist, causing swelling, peeling, and wet rot in the building itself. Maybe the maid doesn’t care, but surely the owner ought to come around and look things over once in a while!

Health and nutrition. We saw lots of smokers. Except in Ecotopia and New England, it was rare for a restaurant to have a non-smoking section. The food is fatty and salty, and the only vegetable matter provided with the default meal is potato (we ate lots of baked potatoes – the baked potato often salvaged the entire meal). Frequently, there are no veggies even available on the menu, and if there were, they’d be overcooked, from a can. We ate lots of salads, too. Chef’s salad was frequently a pretty good lunch choice.

C&W music is popular everywhere. I guess the lovers of classical music stay in the closet. Perhaps the mailing lists of the classical CD clubs would be more encouraging. Certainly a visit to local music stores is not.

It never gets easy. We got stronger, and probably faster, but there are always hills, altitude, wind, heat, cold, and bad roads. There aren’t any easy parts.

On the ground during the tour, we saw three of the Great Lakes and the St Mary’s and St Lawrence rivers. On the plane heading home, I watched out the window and checked out the other two lakes and the Niagara and St Claire rivers. The Niagara falls, river and gorge and the Welland canal brought back memories!

The high Sierra, Logan canyon, Superior provincial park, New Hampshire.

From the plane, I see a layer of clouds with one little cloud resting like a snowball on top – possibly a ball of condensation from a power plant smokestack.

A tandem would ease frustration with pace and strength on both our parts. It would also enforce minimal packing. It might introduce new frustrations, though.

Either camp often or not at all. Although the camping gear was priceless on a few occasions, it seemed like unnecessary weight much of the time. We really aren’t fanatical campers, nor are we sufficiently impoverished to feel that we have to camp for economic reasons.

Youth hostels didn’t do us much good. I expected to exploit them in New England, where the guidebook shows them dense as flies. But we couldn’t locate them; they’re not in the local phone books. And we ended up not spending very long in New England anyway. The one we stayed at in Ottawa was well located and the price was okay, but it wasn’t very comfortable. They gave us twin beds, one of which we shared, but the bed sagged.

Try to get maps further in advance (although in some cases, I’m not sure how we could have). Several times we made decisions based on available information, that we would have made differently in retrospect. Even checking with tourist information before committing to a motel would have helped once or twice.

At Chicago we changed to a 747. They had a 45 minute video on the Tour de France; though we didn’t have headphones, it was well worth watching. Fignon seems like such a natural rider, it’s hard to believe anyone could beat him.

Before we started, several people asked us about weapons. In fairness, one of them was a weapons fanatic (Richard B), and the others were non-native Americans who probably watch too much TV (for example, Samson O). The Canada customs official also watched too much US TV: she asked us whether we were armed – even with Mace!

Even if we had had weapons, we would have had no use for them. The individuals we met were friendly, interested, and supportive. We were chased by a few dogs, but not dangerously. And I can imagine a ridiculous scene, where we might have needed a gun, scrambling to fish it out of the bottom of a pannier somewhere, while the bad guys laughed so hard they couldn’t hold us up anyway.

While waiting for our baggage at SFO, we saw the launch of a Backroads tour. We went out to have a look at the van whose roof was thickly populated with bikes. All Panasonics, all with half step plus granny gearing. Pretty sophisticated, that. We were impressed.

As part of the packing material United gave us, there was a roll of flimsy-looking tape. We figured they probably knew what they were doing, so we used it to tape up the bike boxes and didn’t worry about it. Ha! The tape had burst and everything had spilled out. They shoveled a pile of loose stuff into the special baggage chute; we scooped it together and started assembling it for the ride home. A baggage handler came in later carrying Jacky’s left crank. Nice to get it back. Fortunately, nothing was lost except one air mattress, and UAL delivered that to us the next day.

We put everything back together and rode home, where Julia was waiting to let us in.

Northern Ontario. Partly the road itself, cracked and broken, with few paved shoulders, partly the high level of traffic.

I logged 4246 miles,

Jacky logged 4150 miles.

Technical details, bikes and packing...