Sunday Morning, May 24, 2015
Even though we like
to travel with no set agenda, we still try to formulate a plan for each day,
taking into consideration how far we feel like riding and where we might be
able to spend the night. Because at the end of the day, it’s nice to be able to
clean up, have something to eat, and have a safe and somewhat comfortable place
to sleep. (As much as I enjoy winging it when I travel, I have so far managed
to avoid having to throw my sleeping bag down by the side of the road.) Even
so, any plans we start the day with are subject to change at a moment’s notice,
because you never know what adventure lies ahead.
Here’s an example.
In 1989 we were riding for two weeks in Nova Scotia. Our goal each night was to
stay in either a provincial or national park campground because they tend to be
so much nicer and cheaper than private ones.
This particular day, the closest provincial campground was only 15 miles
away and the next one too far, so we decided we'd have to make a
private campground our destination and planned our route for the day
accordingly.
That morning
the riding was both fun and stunningly beautiful – rolling hills with panoramic
views of green valleys and farms. When we stopped for lunch and looked over the
map, we discovered that we were on a scenic route that looped back to the main road
we had started out on. We decided to stick with it and finished the day
camping at a provincial campground after all - the one just 15 miles from our starting point.
 |
| Bicycling Nova Scotia in 1989 |
So here it is,
the third day of a two-week trip meandering along the Maine Coast with a
hopeful destination of the Canadian border before turning around and bicycling
home to Madbury, New Hampshire. What's the plan going to be today? Even though we spent Friday night at a hotel (celebrating
our anniversary) and last night with our friends Sally and Steve, we have brought along a full
complement of camping gear. I’ll be damned if I’m going to carry all this gear and not use it. We’re camping tonight.
We rode 45
miles on Friday and 77 yesterday. How far today?
In 1980 I
cycled solo from Boulder to San Francisco, by way of the Canadian Rockies. I
spent eight weeks on the road, clocking 3000 miles when I rode over the Golden
Gate Bridge. Some days I rode a hundred miles; if I needed a rest day I’d ride
fifteen. Occasionally I’d take a day off to hike. In the end, my average came
out to 55 miles a day.
But the image
of some beautiful gardens I passed in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, stuck in
my head. I didn’t stop because, at the time, I was just tired of being alone
and thought there was no point in stopping when I had no one to share it with. I
thought about that - and other days when I wanted to rest but had no one to
spend the day with – when I looked back on my trip and decided that, on any
future trip with a friend, 50 miles a day might be about right.
And that’s
pretty much what Rob and I have done. On that trip in Nova Scotia, with no
plans and much spontaneity, we had days when we rode over 90 miles and days
when we didn’t ride at all. After 13 days, we'd ridden 650 miles - exactly 50 miles a day.
So with 122
miles behind us, if we are loosely aiming for a daily average of 50 miles (we haven’t
yet made an adjustment for our advanced ages), we can take it a little easy today.
Sally makes
blueberry pancakes and we sit around the breakfast table enjoying
our coffee and tea and catching up on each others’ lives and no one is in any
hurry to get moving on the day.
We talk about
our problem of getting through Portland without a detailed map. Steve suggests we get the DeLorme Road
Atlas of Maine (delorme.com/mapstore/)
. They make one for every state. “The company is right here in Yarmouth,” he
says. “You can pick one up at the grocery store.”
He shows us his
copy. The state is cut into grids with detailed maps – showing local roads - of
every section, and symbols for every campground and state park. It’s perfect.
Except it’s unwieldy and heavy and we won’t need the whole thing.
I ask Steve,
“How about we pay you for your copy? Then we can cut it up and take what we
need and you can buy a new one.”
Now that we
have a more detailed road map, we realize the challenge of actually riding the
coast of Maine. So many peninsulas, little ones, big ones, you ride to the end
of one – then what? You back track and head to the next one. Clearly we can’t get
to all of them. Not if we are even going to have a prayer of making it all the
way to Canada. So, we pick and choose.
We look for a campground about 40 miles away and discover a route that
takes us partway down one peninsula, crosses over to another, and ends up at a
campground - there's the little symbol - on Orrs Island.
The map doesn’t
show mileage, so we do it the old-fashioned way. I take a scrap of paper and
with the legend I measure two miles on the edge. Then I use it to roughly trace
the route we’ve chosen and come up with 40 miles. I hand the paper and map to
Rob. “Here. See what you get.”
Rob say, “I get
40 miles.”
Perfect.
Steve warns us
that north of Portland we’ll be hitting a lot of hills. But we don’t really
give it any thought, having ridden in Vermont, New Hampshire, California, and
Colorado. We know hills.
Maybe.
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