May 30, 2015
1 – Songs of Pathetic Whimpering
In the early morning we hitch a ride into downtown Bar Harbor with the campground host. There we pick up the bikes from the only bicycle shop in the area and grab the handful of supplies from the hardware store that it'll take to finish setting up the bikes as cross-country touring machines.
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
By 9:30 the town around us fills with tourists looking to rent bikes, locals running Saturday morning errands, and three-dozen retired guys in Corvettes driving their high-powered sports cars not one mile per hour over the speed limit. It's a place we're anxious to leave not only because if we stay it'll empty out our bank accounts on ice cream and crab cakes and craft beer, but because we're ready to charge out onto the twists and turns and bends and fall of the roads that lie ahead.
Well, not quite. We still have to install my rear rack and the crate that goes on top of it. Fenders and bike computers and water bottle cages have to be bolted and zip-tied into place. There's food to buy, gear to pack, a toilet to clog, and bug spray to apply. Morning turns to afternoon at speed. I wonder if by the time we're done preparing to ride that there won't be daylight left to do it.
But some time after 3:00 we get there. We realize that we don't have anything left to do but pedal. And in that moment the door that had been holding back so many emotions opens.
Oh my god, it's real.
This thing we've been talking about for more than a year is here, right now, right in front of us.
We're headed to the West Coast.
I can't believe it, we're really going.
We stop every half mile or so to talk to Walter, to rub his belly, to let him know that he's a good dog, and to try and reassure him that the world isn't coming to an end despite what he must be thinking. Although he had a chance to ride on the back of the bike in Los Angeles, he always started and ended in the same place. There was a kind of routine and comfort and familiar feeling that no longer exist out here in Maine. All he knows is the structure of his life has changed in a dramatic way. There's no way for him to tell what this new adventure will look like.
But by the time we reach the Acadia National Park visitor center five miles down the road, the anxious yawning and whining that guided us out of the campground and onto the highway has softened. Soon we leave the roads and highways behind in favor of the smooth crushed granite carriage paths that wind their way through the middle of the island in tunnels of trees that cast long shadows in the late afternoon light. Fifty-seven miles of the paths were built between 1913 and 1940. Although they were financed by John D. Rockefeller, they've always been open to common people like Kristen and me. Today they give us a chance to escape from the cars and the drivers who have no patience for anything because they're late for their dinner reservation.
The steep grades send us down into our lowest gears. But despite the fact that we've done nothing in the last three months that even the most optimistic person in the world would call exercise, we've managed to carry over a decent level of fitness from the six months we spent riding in New Zealand and Australia this winter. We share the paths with only a handful others. The smooth gravel carries us past granite outcroppings covered in a blanket of pale green lichen and deep gullies that stretch toward Frenchman Bay and reveal the mountain peaks that loom to the north.
We rest in the shade of the birches and aspens and oaks, looking out on a creek that zig-zags its way toward the bay through the granite just as it has for the thousands of years that passed before our traveling side show wandered by. As the cold water rushes past I feel the tension and uncertainty of the last few days sliding away alongside of it. It took far more effort to reach the starting point of this trip than for any of the others that came before, but now that work is behind us. In front lies America, the summer, and adventures so wonderful there's no way for us to conceive of what they might be.
We continue on next to wind-whipped lakes so pristine that no one's allowed to boat or fish or swim in them. Walter's whining comes and goes in waves as he deals with the competing emotions of excitement and anxiety. Although he's one of the most adaptable dogs you'll ever meet, his first reaction to any strange new situation that doesn't involve food or another dog is to quietly cry as if he's dying. This goes on for minutes or hours or days until something clicks inside his adorable head. Then he realizes he'll be fine and life charges ahead toward thoughts of squirrels and his next meal. And so I know he'll adjust to life on the road soon enough. I also know that it's not happening today.
Songs of pathetic whimpering guide us up the toughest hills we've faced since riding in New Zealand almost seven months ago. My quads bulge and my hamstrings ache. If I stand in the same position for more than about twenty seconds my hip muscles start to cramp. (I didn't even know I had hip muscles until right now.) It's a hell of a first day. But we're on the road again, traveling at our pace, surrounded by spectacular country. I can't find a single thing wrong with that.
Across from us at the campground sits a site filled with five or six half-drunk bros. Within twenty minutes of us rolling in they've already showed off their skills at frisbee, stuttered laughing, listening to terrible Red Hot Chili Peppers songs, and making inane pop culture commentary passed off as brilliant insights about the world. The chance to think we're anywhere other than a national park campground disappears before we even have a chance to put up the tent. But it doesn't matter at all. What matters is that we're back outside, back on the road, back in our sleeping bag with a happy dog curled up at our feet, back where we want to be.
Today's ride: 20 miles (32 km)
Total: 20 miles (32 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |