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.

Sponsor List

Here's a list of some of the wonderful women, men, and local businesses who have contributed to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine behalf of my trip thus far:

Jeff Saffer
Albert Remington
Jane Self
John Balicki
Maggie Warren
Nancy Grant
Larry Rubinstein
Mark McAfee
Jane Lopez and Chris Wright
Chris and Georgia Prickitt
Emily and Brien Davis
Thomas and Margaret Hamilton
Katie Diamond
Joe Frechette
Adam Piper
Matt Swanson
Kris Austin
Paul the Pony
Andrew Davis
Adam Whitehead
Eileen Burke
John Bronson
Brian Simpson
Sam Frankel
(many others!)

Rose Bike (Orono)
Longfellow Books (Portland)
Cadillac Mountain Sports (Portland)
Something Fishy (Portland)
Cool Jewels (Portland)
Nomia (Portland)


Thanks, ya'll!

Bike Grease is Sexy

"Hey, you have flyers. Let's trade." A tall, young man walking with a fixed gear bicycle handed my friend Katie and me a couple of mini-flyers for a local musician's performance. We handed him a poster for a weekly bike repair night.

The sky looked like a postcard. Katie and I were taking a break, soaking up some sun next to the industrious lobsterman statue in the Old Port. Familiar faces passed by, waved, stopped to chat. The city responded to the beginning of the warm-weather season with delight.

Katie and I set out to look for local business support on behalf of my bike trip. Strolling through the downtown district and down Exchange Street, we were met with incredibly positive responses. Longfellow Books handed me a gift certificate to contribute to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine's silent auction in May. Something Fishy and Cool Jewels offered merchandise for the same event. One employee asked, "Can I come too?"

In between stores and talking to friends on the street, Katie was busy posting flyers for the Women's and Trans' bike repair and maintenance night that I host on Tuesday nights at the People's Free Space. She held a stack of flyers in one hand and held—not a staple gun—but what I would more accurately describe as a staple sledge-hammer in the other. kaCHUNK. Hmmm...I don't think capitalizing the phonetic call of the tool can really do it justice.

But regardless of what sound the staple sledge-hammer made, the message is most important: Come learn how to fix your own bike. I began leading this night two weeks ago, after the opening of the Rusty Chain, a bike room constructed within the People's Free Space. The tools and parts were donated by the Bike Cycle and individual supporters. Volunteers hang out in the space and help people fix their bikes. The service is entirely free and open to the public. Although we lack space for bike storage at the moment, there are visions of a future create-a-commuter program, where individuals can learn how to build their own bikes (at low or no cost), and can then practice sustainable transportation lifestyles in the city of Portland.

In the meantime, we'll just hang out and play with bike tools. After all, they say that bike grease is pretty sexy.

A Casual Bike Screening

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. The vaguely bizarre, frog-like electronic noises emanating from my backpack let me know that I had an incoming phone call.

"I'm locking my bike up right now. I'll be up in a second," said the voice on the other end. The voice belonged to Adam Piper, the brave soul who agreed ride a bicycle with me for 3,500 miles this upcoming summer. A minute later, a tall man in his early twenties walked into my friends' apartment. It was about 6:30 on Saturday evening, and Adam had just ridden his bicycle into Portland from his apartment in Westbrook. "How's it goin', Piper?" I asked, hands and arms covered in white ink. Newspapers lined the floor, and several feet of dark cloth lay sprawled across the living room. I was busily wiping excess ink off of my stencil-cut silkscreen with a clean rag. Images of chainrings, old Schwinn Stingrays, road bikes, and the word "velorution" were sprinkled across the expanse of the cloth. A couple of paintbrushes, a squeegee, and a tub of white ink sat to the side of the cluttered production. The room mates—Katie, Brian, and Eileen—were content and engaged in their own individual projects. Katie sat at her computer, trying to finish her weekend homework. Eileen sat on the couch knitting a sweater. Brian took a nap.

"What's this?" asked Piper, mildly intrigued by the whole production.
"I'm making bike patches," I responded, "I'm going to give them out in exchange for donations."
"Well, I'll certainly buy one," said Piper. "Me too" was the general consensus in the room.

Figuring out new ways to further the cause of better biking conditions in the state of Maine has become one of my new pastimes. Last week, I sent request letters to friends and family. The week before, I designed and carved a linoleum block print of a bicycle and made hand-printed cards. The week before that, I participated in a phone interview for the Portland Press Herald; the story ran later that week. A few days ago, another news station contacted me with a request to run a piece about the trip.

All of this work and attention surrounding my efforts to raise money for the Bicycle Coalition of Maine has been, well, inspiring.

Yes, inspiring. It has been amazing to see how many people are in total support of what I am doing. People I don't even know and didn't even ask have sent donations to the BCM on behalf of my trip. Fellow board members have offered their advice, financial contributions, and extensive bike gear to help me on my trip. I've already been able to raise several hundred dollars for the Bicycle Coalition of Maine—an amount that I would not be able to contribute on my own.

"Hey, guess what," said Piper, leaning forward in his seat.
"What's up?" I asked.
"I bought my new panniers today. I spent about four hours online trying to find the perfect match, and I think I found them."
"Yeah, what are they like?"
Piper's eyes widened with excitement, "They're black, front and rear bags, with a capacity of 3,500 cubic inches. When is your trailer supposed to come in?"
"Sometime next week," I replied with a smile, putting the cap back on the bucket of ink and folding up the newspapers.