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.

Maine Tour: Countdown

We leave tomorrow evening for Maine, where we will be bicycle touring for two weeks. We fly into Portland, drive up to Bar Harbor, stay there for four days, and then bike back to Portland. I think preparations are going well:

• Fitness: when we were visiting my brother, we took a 3-hour ride and did 40 miles on the flats, so I feel pretty good about that. The third hour was tough on my arms, neck, and back, but my legs were fine. Yesterday we did a 70-minute ride in the hills that took 90 minutes when I first started training, so I am definitely stronger. There should be some hills on our route, but I'm not sure how many or how steep they will be. I think CA hills should prepare me for just about anything, though. Rob's fitness is not a problem. He can blow by me up hills with his bike loaded with gear. I'm the slow link.

• Bike Gear: We have broken down and put the bikes back together (they are Ritchie Breakaway frames), and everything has been fine. We did a one-night camping trip at the beach and our tent worked fine as well. My gears are slipping a little bit, so we need to adjust that. We will get the wheels trued in Portland before we drive to Bar Harbor.

• Weather: I need to buy a couple of warm, thin layers for the cold mornings and we need some rain jackets for showers. We already have rain protectors to go on the outside of our panniers, and Rob is buying a dry bag for our electronics, so we should be able to handle a few showers. What we can't ride in, however, is the HURRICANE that is expected to blow by when we get there! The hurricane looks like it might blow through while we are in Bar Harbor though, so the worst case is that we have to hunker down for a couple of days and read instead of cycling around the island. At least I hope that is the worst scenario- here is the projected path:
  

It should make things a little more unpredictable, so we'll see what happens.

• Electronic Gear: We will have a little netbook so we can check email, download maps, etc. We will also have a camera and a Flip video camera, so I hope to update pictures either during the trip or shortly afterwards. It would be nice if I can blog day by day.