East Machias, Maine

Or, TWO DAYS AND WE ARE IN CANADA!!!!!!

No cell service yesterday, and the B&Bs mostly have no internet access for their guests.  Something is also wrong with my p.c. and it is no wonder with all the different unsecured networks we have tied into along the way.  My son, the p.c. guru, will have a chance to clean it up when we are home this weekend.  In the meantime, we have cell service today, who knows about tomorrow, and we can access our mail but cannot load pictures over the cell connection.  Too bad, really, we have some extraordinary photos over the past few days, including a Maine coast sunset over Frenchman's Bay (Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park).  We arrive in St. Stephen on Friday, July 29th, day 96 since we left our home on April 25th, we stay over night and on Saturday the 30th, day 97, we start the long drive home, meandoring through coastal Maine with a car, look out, the only thing that will probably save me from loading up too much is the limited space we have to add anything to the car.  There will be three people, one dog, two bikes, and all the luggage, but I'm sure we'll fit a few things.  We should arrive home late Saturday night, then Sunday will be our first full day home and day 98 since we started on this mad adventure.  It is hard to believe, very hard to believe.  We will keep posting through day 100 and we will have lots of photos to upload which I don't expect we will get over to the net while we are in Maine or Canada.  We will continue to leave the web site and the blog and photo albums up for at least the coming year.  It will be strange not to be keeping a journal of our day to day life.  In the past two days, I have taken the time (since I could do little else) to review photos we have taken since we started the trip and it was a bit overwhelming, I can't believe all the wonderful photos we have and I often thought along the way that we were not taking even half the photos we should be taking.  Well, I am ahead of myself again, as I have been the past few days, thinking of the end, thinking of transitioning back into my life, but what about the past two days?

Yesterday was a scorcher of a day and hilly, of course.  It was a short ride, just under 30 miles, and we nailed it all the way, averaging just over 11 miles an hour, our second best average speed, go figure.  We pushed to get to our destination in Columbia Falls, Maine, a lovely town, before it became unbearable, and we collapsed on the front porch of our adorable Dream Catcher Bed and Breakfast to cold glasses of orange juice, shade, and the company of our lovely hosts Jack and Marueen who really went out of their way to make us comfortable.  Peter will fill you in on more of the past two days when he gets to do his blogs for yesterday and today.

The towns we have been passing through are all about two miles from beginning to end, then open road again for miles and miles. There have been a few larger towns, but larger here would be a postal stop in Connecticut.  We have been traveling along the coast of Maine in Washington County.  Washington County is considered around here to be one of the last places where "you can still yield to that bit of pioneer blood left in your veins and live completely out of sight of the smoke from your neighbor's cabin, if you want to." (Maine's Washington County, Calais Press Printing Company) "... from the town of Danforth in the north to Steuben in the west is further than the distance from Boston to Albany, N.Y. With its two cities, 44 towns, and 33,900 population, Washington County is larger in area that the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.....  1.68 million acres of land, ... 1.47 million acres are forested.... 133,000 acres of lakes and ponds.  Ten rivers travel a total of 412 miles from their source to the sea..... Washington County is 85 percent woodland; eight percent lakes, four percent bogs and swamps and three percent cropland and pasture."  In other words, you can get lost up here real easy if that is what you want.  There isn't much here but good old fashioned untouched and uninhabited Maine woods and miles of gorgeous coastline.

There is so much to organize when we get home, financial issues to resolve, house projects to attend to, and most important a book to write.  Somehow, I need to put in about five hours a day for the first month just to get as much of the details organized and a rouch draft knocked out before I am too removed from the experience.  That will be a challenge since one or both of us needs to go back to work and soon.  I also have a literary press that I am selling after 11 years, and we are putting our house on the market by the spring of 2006 if not sooner, a lot to do.  But there I go again, getting ahead of myself. 

At the moment, I am enjoying a lovely room at the charming Riverside Inn in East Machias, Peter is snoring, I have cue sheets to write up for the next two days, and they will be the last cue sheets I write up for a while.  We have dinner reservations at 7 p.m. (the Riverside Inn is owned and operated by a chef who also operates a small restaurant attached to the inn - talk about convenient - the same chef who treated Peter and I to a lovely river side on the deck lunch since the nearest place to eat is 3.5 miles away.  Rocky did offer us his car and we thanked him and declined and he then offered to make us lunch since he was in the kitchen anyway - again, we are treated to unexpected generosity).  When we planned this trip, we planned to spend $10,000.  We did not have $10,000 sitting around and how we came to aford this trip is another story in itself which culminated in our receiving a near $10,000 check two weeks after we were on the road and we have lived off that, and we have exhausted that.  We are now living off our bills money, but we are so close to the end and it doesn't matter, this trip has been worth every penny we robbed from Peter (pun intended) to pay Paul.  We will have spent about $15,000 when all is said and done, but if it were not for so much generosity along the way, we would have spent $20,000.  We will eventually recover from spending so much money on this adventure, and we'll recover sooner because of so much support along the way than if we had spent $20,000.  Yes, we could have bought a car, we could have paid our mortgage for a year, we could have put the money away for retirement, we could have done a lot of things, but we did this, YES!!!!!!!!!! 

Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting 'Holy Crap, What a Ride'" - I don't know who this quote is attributed to, but it is perfect.

One more thing for today.  I am interested in book titles.  At the moment, I am considering calling the book "See you on the road...." - please send along your ideas, and if your idea becomes the title of the book, you will get a free autographed copy of the book and a great big thankyou in the list of acknowledgements.  The book will have a lot more story than the blog and web site, though not all the photos, we will have to be selective with the photos and keep the photo albums up online indefinately.  Thank you to everyone who has written us of late to say you cannot imagine not reading this blog every day, we are tickled pink to have shared our adventure with you all and to have you share your comments and support with us.

See you on the road.......

Comments

[Laura Lee]

Faith, I know this is so selfish of me, but I'm so dreading the end of the ride. I really do think I'll have withdrawal symptoms when there's no new daily blog posting to check out. But I know this has been a tremendous undertaking for you and Peter, and surely you will be glad to be back to your routine and family. Take care...we're all cheering you on these last few miles!!!!

[Anne-Marie]

i join all of those people that hate to see this end! I will miss your stories. Hey Faith--how about "it is what it is"?? lol stay cool

[Mary]

Keep going! There's lots to see in Canada:)

title ideas:
"Share the Road! Share the Ride"
"Bike Shorts Are Important"
"Cycling with Luggage"
"4 Wheels, No Backup"
"You Draft for Me, I'll Draft for You"
"Spinning Out of Our Hub"
"A Big Bike Ride"
"Picturing an Odyssey"
"Three Months 'til Home"
"Ready, Crankset, Go"
"Shifting Gears"
oooooooo.... that last one is pretty good:)

[Mike A. Schwab]

Touring the East Coast Greenway