Day 5. 43 miles.

We ate some oats, dried milk, and fruit for breakfast and got on the road at a little past 10am. Again, the morning roads were flat and we made good time. The afternoon was a bit more hilly. A motorist yelled at us: "Get off the f*%$ing road!" But only Adam heard this remark. I only heard: "oFAAouw..," as the truck zipped by. Sometimes it's nice to know that most interactions with angry motorists are incredibly brief.

For the most part, motorists have been incredibly generous on this trip, moving to the left and leaving plenty of breathing room for us. Every time a big truck passes courteously, Adam and I breathe silent thank yous. It is a bit disconcerting to hear a giant engine closing in behind me, unable to know exactly how much space I will have between my body and the metal exterior of an automobile. It is a relief to know that most vehicle drivers are generous in passing.

We arrived at Adam's folks' house in Huntington, Vermont by mid-afternoon. The place was beautiful--surrounded by mountains, woods, apple trees, and a garden. We will stay in Huntington for the next few days, which will give my sore rear end the opportunity to take a sigh of relief.

Day 4. 52 miles.

We woke up to sunshine. I spent a couple of hours reconnecting with old teachers and students. We ate enormous omelettes with homefries and french toast with coffee. We left at about noon, heading through Littleton along Route 302 west. The shoulder was wide, the sun was out, and the grade was spectacularly flat. We rode along the Ammonoosuc River for awhile, and crossed the state line to Vermont early in the day.

Somewhere in the early afternoon, we passed another cyclist on an old blue ten-speed. After another few miles, he passed us. As Piper and I painfully crawled up hill after hill, we kept catching glimpses of the cyclist ahead of us, casually plugging away.

At the top of a huge hill several miles away, the cyclist finally pulled over. I crested the hill and stopped to say hi.

I was greeted by a frail 70 year old man, with a single tooth protruding from his lower jaw. He wore a flannel shirt and a pair of ratty loafers that were ripping at the seams. He didn't have a helmet, but instead wore a white sun hat with a big floppy brim and enormous glasses.

"Man, you smoked us!" I exclaimed, still puffing from the hill.
"What's that?" he asked, in his nonchalant New England drawl.
"You totally beat us up those hills."

Adam pulled up alongside us. I snuck a peak at the old man's bike chain, which was unridable by many cyclists' standards, gunked up beyond belief.

"Well, I'm out here riding for about five hours every day," he replied, "Where did you folks come from today?"

"Ah, we started in Littleton," I replied.
"Well I have you beat. I've already been to Lisbon and back this morning."

Burn. We just got whipped by a 70-year-old man on a crappy ten-speed.

As we rode away, I turned to Adam and said, "I would be honored to be half as cool as that guy in 50 years."

Adam agreed.

Day 3. 54 miles.

The morning was lazy. We made pancakes and sat by the river. Around noon, we rolled out of Jackson with a third cyclist--Chris had the day off from work and decided to tag along on his hybrid for awhile. (Note: "tagging along" actually means kicking our asses on the climbs, where Chris enjoyed the advantage of hauling no gear). After awhile, Chris turned around to go home, leaving just Piper and me to tackle the White Mountains. But it wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that we tackled the Whites; rather, it would be more fitting to say that the White Mountains slaughtered us. But then, what is beauty without suffering?

We chugged along 115 until we entered the little town of Bethlehem, New Hampshire, home of the White Mountain School. This school of less than 100 students served as my home for four years of high school. I lived on campus and spent a lot of non-academic time in the great outdoors. The White Mountain School gave me my first taste of riding a road bike.

I arrived on campus and it immediately began to rain. It was a Friday night, and the campus was dead. Most students and teachers were attending a White Mountain School student theatrical production in town--The Laramie Project. I gave Piper a tour, showing him the apple trees I planted, the sugaring shed I worked in, the garden and composting center I helped to build, the mural I painted, and the dorms I once lived in. But we were very tired from the long day of climbing, and went to bed early.

Day 2. 41 miles.

I awoke to birdsong the following morning. My throat felt raw from breathing in road dust the day before. The sun was out, and the tent was dripping with dew. After packing up the tent, Piper and I stopped for a bagel and a cup of coffee. We threw on some sunscreen, did a few stretches, and continued heading west along 302. We hit New Hampshire at about mid-day. Coincidentally, this was also the point at which we lost our shoulders and gained continuous bumps and potholes. We rolled into Conway shortly after, where we adjusted the tension on Adam's new spokes and sat down for lunch.

We reached Jackson about 10 miles later, home of Piper's snowboarding buddies Chris and Kirsten. Tucked into the woods on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest and a babbling brook, I changed into some non-bike clothes and happily retreated to the living room. We feasted on spinach salad, corn on the cob, chips and guacamole, burgers, and beer. A couple of carloads of young people drove up from Portland to join us. And just before 11pm, I lay comfortably tucked away in an empty queen-size bed.

Day 1. 52 miles.

The day began with two broken spokes--but don't fret Larry--for it was not Speedy who suffered from this ailment. It was Adam's 4th broken spoke in a period of a few weeks. Adam took the wheel to a bike shop to have it re-built with new spokes, and we went to the coffee shop where our friend Kris works to kill a few hours. To our simultaneous excitement and dismay, several friends walked in and witnessed the fact that we were still sitting in the Old Port, hours after our scheduled departure time. Embarrassment aside, I felt myself growing increasingly fatigued. I had only been able to sleep for a few hours the night before, in a sleeping bag on the floor of my empty bedroom. I got up at 5:30 am, where I was met by my room mate who had not yet gone to bed after a long night of bartending. We walked to Marcy's Diner together for a big greasy breakfast of eggs, toast, and homefries. It was supposed to be my morning bike fuel, but ended up serving as my mid-afternoon bike fuel.

At 2:30pm, Piper's rear wheel was back on his bike and we were riding to the East End boat launch in the pouring rain. Trying to dip the rear wheels of two fully-loaded touring bikes by guiding them down a steep plank of wet seaweed proved to be excessively challenging. We opted for simple photos with the Atlantic as a pretty background image instead.

Somewhere along Forest Avenue, the sun came out and the rain jackets came off. We rode west on Route 302 (along beautiful, wide shoulders!) until about 7pm, at which point we pitched a tent and pulled out my camp stove. Soon we were eating pasta shells and cheddar with sauteed broccoli and garlic. At about 10pm, we finally went to bed.

BIke Swap

The scene was chaotic and beautiful. A grungy warehouse with a couple of boats and miscellaneous engines laying to the side had been transformed into a giant celebration for bicycles. People were everywhere. The jumble of voices enlivened the room. Sculptures made from old rims tied together with bike tubes extended into the sky, marking the entrance to the Portland Bike Swap.

I arrived right around 10am. I hopped off of my '83 Schwinn Le Tour (lovingly named BlooDoo or Dewey), locked up, and headed inside. I spotted Fred immediately, adorned in his very decorative Bicycle Coalition of Maine hat. He gathered the volunteers for a round of introductions, and we all set off to work in our various stations. I constructed a valet bike parking facility, complete with a couple of recumbents and unicycles available for test rides. A few feet away, some kids from the Bike Shop played chess on a checkered board glued to the inside of a bike wheel. All of the chess pieces were made from bike parts, painted black or silver.

The atmosphere was bright and energetic. What started out as a substantial collection of bicycles overflowing from multiple racks at 10am, ended with just a small handful of remaining bicycles at 2pm. It was awesome to see so many people excitedly leave the Swap with their new-used machines.

I had acquired a snazzy new machine the day before. I rode down Congress until I hit India, where I took a right, then a quick left into Cyclemania, where my bike trailer was waiting for me. I swung my leg over the side of the bike and wheeled it through the door. After a quick adjustment, I was off again—this time pulling behind me a piece of equipment that will carry everything I need to survive for my upcoming months on the road.