June 7, 2015
9 – We Were Supposed to Be Alone
It's another ideal day for riding through Western Maine: cool but not cold, the sun looking down on us from the cloudless sky, groundhogs crunching unseen in the woods next to the road, and a king-size Milky Way for breakfast.
Soon we rejoin the Northern Tier route, which we'll follow through the rest of Maine, all of New Hampshire and Vermont, and across the border of New York. We don't need the map; we can find good routes and places to stay on our own. But the act of poring over the position of the highways and towns ahead, looking at the elevation profiles, and wondering what might wait for us down the road — the ritual of doing that each day brings a kind of comfort and perspective we can't find anywhere else. Something about it just feels good.
As we crank up one of Maine's eight-thousand steep hills, we pass a house where a kid stands in the driveway watching his dad replace the headlight of the family's Jeep SUV. When the boy notices us, he turns around so that his shirtless chest faces the road, and then a moment later his arms drop straight down by his sides. After that he stays frozen in place, staring in a state of open-mouthed wonder about the apparition pedaling past him. He holds this position until our panniers and trailer disappear behind the yard's farthest line of trees eighteen seconds later. That's the response we get from most people now; the adults have just learned to hide it away better.
Walter continues to settle in to life on the road. Most of the time he's content to sit down and watch the world pass by through the mesh windows that surround him on three sides or the clear plastic window over his head. When a strong smell fills the air we can hear him sniffing in with great force and watch as he presses his nose against the mesh until it won't stretch any farther. If he's hungry or thirsty or needs to get out to water the local plant life, he whines. But this only happens once or twice a day. And no matter how much he might want to get out, as soon as we hit a fast stretch of downhill he sits up so that he can feel the wind push his snout fur backward and shoot straight up his nose.
I'm the only one out of six people in line at the mini-mart near Naples not buying both cheap beer and cigarettes. I can't help but think that the centuries-old quaint little towns with the brick buildings and grassy squares are about to become fewer and farther between, or maybe that we've seen the last of them. As if on cue we start to pass through lakefront areas where the picket fences and painted shutters shift shapes and become lifted trucks, tank tops, dirt bikes, awful tattoos, and pontoon boats.
Not far out of the modest town of Bridgton we come to the top of a hill. We know this half on sight and half because of the wooden sign posted in the shade of a tree that says "Hilltop". The sign also has two hand-carved placards below it, one that says "Water" and the other that says "Welcome." In the sprawling yard beyond, a slight boy of about eight years old who wears a Moxie Cola baseball hat while cleaning leaves out of a pond with what looks like a fishing net spots me.
"Hey, there's water here," he says in a kind voice not much above a whisper. "It's open to anyone. You can have some if you want."
As if he's the agent at some unmarked border crossing, it's here that the character of the countryside changes again. Beyond the crest of the hill sits a country club flanked by homes better described as estates. Their grounds are groomed to perfection, like they've been pulled from the pages of a high-end lifestyle magazine. The distant hills show the outlines of winter ski runs.
Yet only a couple of miles later a narrow winding road sends us into the kind of woods where you could dump a body with minimal care and still no search team would ever find it.
Hills that feel more like walls lead me to pouring sweat and Kristen to pushing as the afternoon wears on. The rollers drop us into the little town of Lovell and a store called Rosie's. It's a place that sells the elusive combination of IPAs from Northeastern craft breweries and vanilla soft serve ice cream cones almost as long as my forearm.
We try to camp down the road near Fryeburg, but as we ride down the gravel driveway to the campground listed on the map, nothing about the place feels good or safe. The office is a tiny shack. The phone number listed on the door has been disconnected. We see no tents or RVs, just one tired travel trailer that someone seems to use as their home. Black and orange No Trespassing signs appear every fifteen feet, nailed into the trees next to each campsite.
We turn around and leave. Then we cross back over the river to the east and head up the driveway that leads to a different campground. This one isn't listed on the ACA map, and for good reason. A sampling of reviews for the place go like this.
Review one: Hope you like techno and bros. Lots of bros. This place is basically spring break, during the summer, in Maine. The beach is littered with garbage and broken glass, so don't even think of walking around barefoot. If you have to go to the bathroom there are two options: you can wait until the little convenience store is open and use the ones in there which are actually semi-clean, or you can go outside. I know there are port-o-potties, but even Joe Rogan wouldn't try to get you into one of them.
Review two: I am writing this review from my phone at 3 in the morning. I can't sleep because of the loud music, douchebags screaming at the top of their lungs and the trumpet — yes someone brought a trumpet — blaring. Music is cranked full blast. You can't get in touch with the campground after 5 p.m. so don't bother trying to complain. The place is a huge frat party and shit show.
Review three: My experience at Fiddlehead Campgrounds will forever be referred to as "The Camping Incident of 2014" and is never to be mentioned again in my household. To start, this is NOT a family campground. This is where underage high school and college students go to get piss drunk, make poor life decisions and shoot fireworks at one another until 4 a.m. It's filthy (urine, vomit, cigarette butts, etc.), loud, unsafe for women and completely unmanaged. Honestly, I have no idea how the State Police let this establishment fly under the radar. This campground should be shut down immediately before someone is killed.
But it won't matter anyway. A few hundred feet up the driveway a car approaches and then stops. The two young guys inside tell us that we can't stay here. They were just about to shut the gate and go home because the place is closed during the week. They don't know of anywhere else to camp nearby either.
And so we turn around, backtrack to the end of the driveway, and stand over our bikes trying to figure out what to do next. But when the car with the two young guys comes by after closing the gate, it stops again. The passenger-side window comes down.
"Alright guys," says the one behind the wheel. "We're leaving. But if you're gonna be outta here by eight in the morning, if you're gonna be gone by then, then as far as I'm concerned the place is all yours. Just don't screw with the store and we're all good, okay?"
Okay.
And so we turn around again, swing open the gate, wheel the bikes in, close and chain shut the gate behind us, and pedal into a deserted campground. The roads feel like something out of the Third World and blood-hungry mosquitoes descend from all angles. Nothing about the place feels safe or welcoming. But we're here and darkness will be soon, so we set up on a rocky flat spot near a pile of derelict picnic benches, not far from a rundown fifth-wheel and a camouflage-colored ex-Army transport vehicle that looks like it's a holdover from the Vietnam War era.
And then we hear the crunch of truck tires on gravel.
We were supposed to be alone.
Fuck.
A minute later the truck draws close enough for us to see. It's a ten-year-old Chevy, black. I see the outlines of two people inside. I know we're in a strange spot: given permission to be here, but not by the person who owns the place, the person who has the real power to give that permission and to deal with trespassers. And so I decide to be proactive, to try and get in front of what could be a tense situation involving two strangers I know nothing about. I wave at the truck and start to walk toward it. I tell Kristen I'll be right back.
When I get a dozen feet from the driver's door I see a normal-looking middle-aged dad and his normal-looking nine-year-old son. He asks if we're camping for the night, and then offers to go get the check-in paperwork from the office. I tell him that's okay; I'll walk up and meet him there. And in the end he seems like a nice, reasonable guy who takes my cash, gives me a detailed receipt, and more than anything just wishes his kid would stop asking for one of the candy bars that sits on a nearby shelf in the office.
But Kristen has no way of knowing any of this. All she sees is the black truck driving to the office and me following. And so when I come back to the tent ten minutes later I find her crouched outside next to the door talking to Walter, who sits just on the other side of the mesh.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"I was waiting," she says. "If I heard a gunshot I was going to run into the woods with Walter and call the police. And if the guy came out of the office but you didn't, well, I was going to run into the woods with Walter and call the police then, too."
Somehow it makes sense. I get it. There wasn't anything about the situation that signaled active danger, but then again there wasn't anything about it that didn't either.
Almost two hours after buying them, we sit down cross-legged in the tent and drink our beers. We eat a modest dinner and unroll our air mattresses and sleeping bag. Then we try to go to sleep. But we're all alone in the middle of an empty, rundown campground in the back woods of Western Maine with the popping sound of nearby gunfire filling the air and Walter growling at something in the trees beyond that we can't see or hear. There isn't anything about it that signals active danger about the situation, but then again there isn't anything about it that doesn't either.
Today's ride: 50 miles (80 km)
Total: 274 miles (441 km)
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