Biking Maine

Sunday 9:30 am

                So ok. Here we are in Wells Maine in a little café. We came here to get internet access since L has none at her house. Or rather she sometimes can, but couldn’t this morning. Only we arrived here, bought our coffee/tea/goodies and then found out that their password does not work. Bother. But who needs internet? I can still write and then I can post it later.

                And more so ok. Yesterday we busted our butts with the bike ride from Hell. Well not really but it turned out to be much much farther than expected. We biked Kennebunk to Portland. I had figured Wells to P-land would be 33 miles; L suggested we bike to P-land, then take the train back down to Wells with the bikes. But I called Friday and found that the bike spaces were all taken on the train. How the hell much space does a bike take? Well anyway. So we figured if we started instead from K-bunk it would be about 20 miles and we could then bike back. Only when we got to the elementary school parking lot and started off on our ride I was rather concerned to see a mile marker: “28 miles.” Was that 28 miles from Portland? Oh dear. Well it was. Not too bad going but coming back was a bit of a bitch.

That was our day. Well except in reality that was only the second part of the day, the first part being getting up, feeding buns, loading the car, attaching the bike rack, loading the bikes, driving to Maine (traffic traffic traffic), finding L, getting things together and getting to the trail start. So we did not start biking until 12:30. About half of the ride is on very nice trails, interspersed with road biking for which you have to pay close attention to not miss the signs. Was very familiar. They took the road routes on small out of the way roads to avoid Rt 1 which is very busy and kind of nasty.

We finally arrived in Portland over this lovely and very long bridge with a dramatic view of sailboats and sparkling water. And then we went to the old part of town (lots of brick or cobblestone roads there), parked our bikes and walked straight to a pub for lunch and beer. Well, “lunch” “supper” whatever as it was 3:30. We found a very nice place w/ an obscure foreign sort of Bier Garden kind of name and it was great with a huge array of beers each with its own detailed description, and a sort of tapas like menu of little portions of delicious cheese. And pretty reasonable. $4 for the MOST delicious goat cheese brie.

We ate, we drank and then it was time to bike 28 miles back! Ugh. The first part seemed shorter – having been over the route before meant landmarks appeared sooner. Then in Biddeford we decided to skip the little pleasant roads and just plow through on Rt 1. It was (as expected) kind of nasty but shorter and probably faster except that we got a bit confused and lost track of L our guide so there was a bit of going back and forth up, down and back up a steep hill until we got back on track. Well, the final 5 miles or so I could have certainly done without. K plowed doggedly ahead; I was really lagging. But we made it.

Then we had to load the bikes back on, and we had to go to our campsite (a very basic, “cozy” place where the tent sites have room for a tent, the car, a picnic table and that is it, and they are lined up side by side, no trees, not what one would describe as terribly private. But then privacy was in rather short order on our NY bike trip, so again, it seemed familiar and was fine. We set up the tent, then decided to hit the big ice cream place on L’s recommendation. Well, funniest thing ever, when we turned into the place, the crowd looked like fans lined up for a rock concert. It was packed!! Lines and lines. I have never seen such a thing, at an ice cream store! At 9 pm. We bailed on that one, took L home instead and K stopped to get a burger at McDonald’s on the way back to the tent site. And we fell into bed. And managed to sleep in spite of the traffic, the trains, the bathroom light blaring into our tent. Whatever and who cares, we were beat.

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