Tour de Maine: The Blueberry Adventure Day 1

The first thing I said as I saw the Maine countryside through the window of the plane was, "It's full of trees!" I've never seen so many trees, but the lush surroundings come with a price: humidity. It's humid, bit not hot enough to be too uncomfortable, about 85 degrees. The hurricane is off the coast a little further south, but we didn't see any sign of it today. It was lovely.

From the airport, we dropped of our wheels at a bike shop to be trued (straightened and the spokes adjusted) and checked into the hotel. The bike shop called us and said they were done earlier than we thought, so I drove back to pick them up. And got lost. I found the bike shop all right, but it took me about an hour to get back to the hotel. The roads in this town are crazy! Half of them don't have street signs! I even stopped and asked for directions and still was completely clueless.The bright side is I got to see a lot of Portland, which is an old, quaint, hip, laid back town. We didn't think we needed a GPS on this trip, but now I'm reconsidering.

We went out to dinner at a French restaurant called Evangeline-- the last nice dinner we will have for a couple of weeks. We had duck prepared in a duck press. If you have never heard of it, google it. Prettty bizarre. Of course, we took video, so we will post it soon. Our busboy was from Sudan and this was his last night working. He's starting at the University of Maine on the 28th to study medicine.

So far, no big problems. The bikes got through the flight all right, and seem to be in working order. Rob put them together while I was driving around lost. We will know more when we start riding.

Tomorrow, we drive to Bar Harbor and check into the hostel for the night. We won't start riding in earnest until Monday. Rob spent a lot of his childhood in Bar Harbor, so it should be nostalgic for him.

Now, for a good night's sleep.