May 31, 2015
2 – Team Meatballs
Over breakfast Kristen spills a few drops of peanut butter onto the paper campground map we were given when we checked in. When Walter discovers them, all others concerns of life disappear. He licks and licks and licks until both the peanut butter and a chunk of paper diagramming half of the A camping loop are on the way down into his stomach.
Acadia is one of the rare national parks that allows dogs on most of its trails. We make the most of it by setting out early in the morning on a hike through the surrounding spruce forest. We climb over broad mounds of pink-tinted granite and across wooden walkways that take us over the low-lying areas where swamps form during the wet season.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
"Watch out for those toe-grabbers," I say to Kristen in a dad-like voice as she's in the middle of tripping over a tree root, in the way my dad said the same to me back when I was six years old.
Bird calls echo out in full clarity in the peace and quiet of the woods. They distract us from the hungry mosquitoes — each about the size of a cargo bike — who descend and threaten to carry us away if we stop for more than three seconds. We're alone in the early hours of Sunday morning and we feel a smug sense of satisfaction about that. We can enjoy the woods at our own pace; we don't have to rush back home tonight so that we can wake up early and go into an office job in the morning.
Rain falls as we return to the campground. We resign ourselves to the fact that it's going to stick around for the rest of the day.
Today Team Hawthorne becomes Team Meatballs. Every half mile or so I take a grape-sized dog treat shaped like a meatball out of my pocket, bite off a tiny chunk, then pull it out of my mouth and reach back to give it to Walter. Although he's more at ease than yesterday, the business of traveling by bike isn't yet comfortable enough to keep him from whining when he feels weirded out. Nothing reminds him that everything will be okay quite like meatballs that it turns out taste like baked chicken sauced with room-temperature Dr. Pepper soda.
We're also Team Granny Gear. These Maine hills are no joke. But because it's a Sunday morning before the busy season out here we head back into the park on empty roads, the only people around to look down into the cold clear stream and foot-high waterfalls just off to our right. A narrow canyon of cedar and spruce trees line the way forward and help distract from the fact that it's fucking cold. Yesterday's sun is gone but the strong wind has stuck around. Now the air feels heavy and wet and angry.
Soon we discover where all of the visitors are: at the park's only restaurant, stuffing French toast and scrambled eggs into faces with blank expressions and buying maritime-themed coffee mugs, tucked as far away from the chilled weather as they can get. Their smug sense of satisfaction comes from the fact that they aren't us.
The farther we go, the worse the weather turns. It gets to the point where the cold makes all of my neck and shoulder muscles turn tight. I shiver whenever we stop. Snot drips from the tip of my nose without end. When we exhale through our mouths we can see our breath, not in pale outlines but in thick clouds of white that blow back over our faces and leave them warm for the shortest moment before the cold charges back in. By the time we leave from a lunch made beneath the cover of a ninety-year-old stone bridge we're decked out in rain jackets, rain pants, and gloves. The perfect summer-like day that guided us along the same carriage paths less than twenty-four hours ago is nowhere to be found.
Farther on we ride on quiet back roads, past old barns and lilac bushes in full blooms of purple and white. Wood smoke pours out of every chimney in a not so subtle reminder that sitting inside in front of a fireplace is a wonderful thing to do on a day like this. We make it only twenty-one miles before the cold and wet win.
Bundled and huddled in the tent with the rain falling in sheets outside, we spend half an hour looking at a series of weather forecasts and Doppler radar images. We try to figure out if there will be even an hour or two in the next couple of days where the rain won't fall. This is not what we thought we'd be doing in the first week of June.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Night finds the head of the sleeping bag cinched as tight as it can go, with Kristen and I both dressed head to toe in the warmest clothes we can find. Walter tucks himself as far down into the bag near our feet as he can. The weather forecast calls for an inch and a quarter of rain tomorrow and a high temperature in the upper forties. We might stay in this exact same configuration for the next thirty-six hours.
Today's ride: 21 miles (34 km)
Total: 41 miles (66 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 3 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |