Cycling Trips
-
U.S. East Coast
- The
Edge of N.J.
- Fahrradtour
Canada
-
Skiing Whistler Mtn.
-
Canoeing Wilderness
Lakes
Europe +
-
Exploring Heidelberg
- Bad
Luck In Germany
- Trolley Adventure
in
Milan
- A
Week In Israel
New Zealand
-
Volcanic Vistas
U.S. North
-
Remote Alaskan
Roads
-
Navigating the 1,000
Islands
U.S. West
-
Miserable Hawaii
- California
Redwoods
- High in Albuquerque
-
Omaha Surprises
- Summer
at Tahoe
Even More
-
Recent
Travels
- My Quest For All
50
States
- About Bob
Biking Solo from Maine to Pennsylvania
For two weeks I pedaled alone through New England, meeting people, getting invited into their homes and learning about their lives.
North
Barnstead, N.H.--The pickup truck rumbled past me on the
pebble-strewn dirt road, kicking up a thick, brown cloud in its
wake.
Grimacing, I ducked my head against the dust storm and peered down at my feet on the pedals and at my tires spinning in the loose dirt. My balance wavered and I threw down a leg to keep myself, my bike and my 50 pounds of gear from toppling into the thick, thorny underbrush at the road's edge.
And this was supposed to be my vacation?
I was five days into a two-week, 800-mile solo bicycle trek from Maine to Pennsylvania--and things were not going as planned. I had anticipated an idyllic romp through fragrant meadows and small villages. I hadn't counted on sweltering heat, bugs and dirt roads that seemed to have no end.
So much for idealism.
I approached a small cottage at a dirt crossroads, surprising an elderly woman out watering her garden. She gaped at me, a tall, unshaven, sunburned 27-year-old on a ridiculously overloaded bicycle, bumping along a dirt road in the woods.
"How far to the nearest paved road?" I asked.
"About seven miles," she yelled back.
My heart stopped. Seven miles! I'd die of heatstroke!
"Awful hot to be doing that, isn't it?" she chastised.
"Well, I've come this far," I countered. "I'm sort of committed now."
"If you don't watch out you will be committed," she muttered.
At that moment, the security of the rubber room would have been a welcome relief. That was where most people thought I belonged anyway for undertaking this little excursion.
If
you like adventure
and you're enjoying this article,
you'll
love my book,
Two Wheels and a Map.
I had lit upon the idea of taking a bike trip earlier in the summer after realizing I could fit it into my alotted two-week vacation. Driven by my implacable craving for adventure, I had ignored the critics, stuffed my 21-speed Bianchi into a box, and hopped a Greyhound for Bangor, Maine.
Standing in front of Stephen King's mansion in Bangor, Maine.
Arriving there just after lunch, I took a spin around the small city, climbing steep hills and passing scores of shutterless wooden houses, their weathered exteriors telling of harsh winters. I gazed into the Kenduskeg Stream, flowing, moatlike, through the center of town, and up at the green, copper steeple of the Hammond Street Congregational Church, towering above the city from its hilltop perch.
An art festival had spread across the center of town, with
jazz music spicing up the air and hundreds of artists showing off
the Maine landscapes they had captured on canvas. I paused to
admire the rust-red Victorian mansion of horror novelist Stephen
King and the unique wrought iron fence that encircled
it--complete with a three-headed gargoyle.
As evening neared, I rode about 20 miles to a youth hostel in Carmel (local pronunciation: Kah-mul), operated out of the home of Charles and Althea Nute. They welcomed me into their rustic abode, which had once been the town poor farm, and provided me with a bed and the use of their kitchen. Charles, a retired missionary, told me how he had worked for years setting up churches in remote Maine logging towns where French was the only language spoken.
I rode off in a misty drizzle the next morning, through silent forests of pine. The rustic lure of Plymouth's village store drew me inside where I dried off in the cafe with hot chocolate. Country music drifted through the room as local folks stopped in for Sunday breakfast and conversation. I asked the friendly cashier, an aspiring pilot, about the weather, and for the next ten minutes she and a customer scurried about, making phone calls and spinning the radio dial, trying to provide me with an accurate report.
The
rain trickled off and I continued along hilly back roads, passing
log cabins and dark, secluded ponds. My route was only loosely
planned, giving me the flexibility to explore interesting side
roads.
I camped at a church-run campground on China Lake, the owner of which, Bud Stanhope, knew a friend of mine. In the morning, he invited me to breakfast and I feasted on pancakes rustled up by his wife, Beverly, as she fought back the hordes of demanding teenage campers.
I spent the day climbing monstrous hills, with breathtaking views across the vast, mountainous distance, before plunging into verdant valleys, and diving into cool, quiet lakes that I chanced to encounter.
With no sleeping arrangements planned, I rode until nearly dark, stopping after 73 miles to set up my tent in the woods alongside a quiet road. That night the temperature dropped to near freezing.
I punctuated my long spells of riding with stops in the small country stores that I passed. In West Poland, a 71-year-old shopkeeper told me of a 600-mile bike trip he had taken 50 years ago. His whole group had been arrested in New Hampshire, he said, when one fellow took off his shirt in a rather conservative town.
I reached Limerick near dark that night and, on a whim, asked the pastor of St. Matthew Church if I could toss my sleeping bag down in an empty classroom. To my surprise, he insisted I spend the night in his guest room.
I chatted with the soft-spoken Father Hubert Paquet, a French-Canadian, while cooking up a jar of spaghetti in his kitchen. Two years before, he said, tragedy had befallen the parish when its former church burned to the ground--just one year after it had been built.
In the morning I entered New Hampshire, resisting the urge to
remove my shirt, and toured the quiet village of Milton Mills.
The
peeling wooden houses and churches had a utilitarian beauty
matched only by the red and white village store, its inside
buzzing with the animated morning conversation of the townsfolk.
As noon approached, I found myself following my map up a steep hill that stretched for miles. At the summit, I was devastated to discover that the road turned to dirt. Rather than put all my effort to waste, I continued along the bumpy road, gambling that it would soon become paved. That delusion was shattered two miles later when I met the old woman at the crossroads.
It was only my pigheaded determination not to backtrack that compelled me onward along that seven-mile route. After a mile of spinning my tires in the loose dirt, however, I finally conceded that I had made a horrible mistake. I was so hot and miserable I was ready to call a halt to my whole trip.
The sound of power tools reached my ears and I came upon a group of men building a house. After much zealous pleading, I convinced the foreman, Mike Fife, to drive my bike and I the remaining six miles in his pickup truck.
Hills turned to mountains after that. As I pushed myself upward in the blazing, 90-degree heat, black flies attacked my unprotected back and neck. I spent a dismal, sleepless night near a corn field, sweating and listening to the mosquitoes on my tent's netting, while a pack of coyotes howled in the distance.
Father John Mahoney and seminarian
Michael
Gendren on the steps of the St.
Patrick's Church rectory in
Pelham, N.H.
After riding through the middle of a record-setting New England heat wave next day, I dragged myself into the town of Pelham around dinner time. Drained of all energy, and wary of another torturous night of tenting, I made an impassioned plea to the thin, bearded priest at St. Patrick's Church, again hoping only to crash out on the floor. My pitiful appearance, though, must have won him over for he, too, offered me a bed in the guest room. Then he further perked my sagging spirits by inviting me to dinner.
I entered Massachusetts the next day, riding through classic
New England towns like Westford, with
its whitewashed, 199-year-old parish church fronting a
monument-laden town green. I explored the cemeteries of historic
Concord, rode across the Old North Bridge and visited the site of
Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond. Gone was the sylvan
solitude savored by Thoreau; the pond is now a public beach.
I stayed a night in Acton with Jack and Carol Mahoney, the parents of a college friend. They stuffed me with swordfish steaks and fresh corn on the cob and let me relax in their pool. From there I crossed the state and dropped into Connecticut, stopping to pick ripe blackberries on quiet country roads and nodding at curious farmers as they went about their morning chores.
I had a pleasant evening chatting with Father John Mahoney and Michael Gendren, the resident seminarian, about life in that small town. Father Mahoney told me that he had worked for years as an administrator at Boston College before deciding to become a priest.
Gillette Castle: The actor's stone fortress.
In southern Connecticut, I visited Gillette Castle State Park, where stage actor William Gillette (1855-1937) built an impressive stone fortress in 1919. From its terraces unfolded a magnificent view of the Connecticut River valley, with green, rolling hills stretching into the distance and a little ferry chugging back and forth across the water.
I dropped in on a friend, Bob Trejo, and his wife, Beth,
in Moodus, catching up on old times and going for ice cream in
East Haddam, a quaint riverside village of Victorian homes and a
grandiose 1876 opera house.
The next morning, as I sped down a steep hill in a misty drizzle, a deer leaped in front of me and I came within 15 feet of an intimate encounter. Later, my road petered out and became a rocky footpath; until it reappeared a mile later I was forced to jog next to my bike through the dense, wet forest while vicious biting flies attacked my face. (Read the whole story of this calamity.)
Reaching the city of New Haven, I stopped for lunch in the
town green, near tall churches that had been with the city since
its infancy. I
shared my food with a homeless, middle-aged former school teacher
from Maine named Audrie Lou. She said she had been stranded in
New Haven since her car broke down en route to a job in New
Jersey three months prior. She was planning to write a book about
her experiences, she said.
A rainstorm kicked up before I could leave the city, and I found shelter on the front porch of a house. When the downpour intensified, the homeowner, Elaine Noble, invited me in. There, I learned that the area was under a tornado watch.
Pitying me, the kind woman made me spaghetti, and we talked for hours while waiting out the storm. When the tornado watch was lifted, I thanked her profusely and set off into the drizzle. By then it was nearly dark.
I set up my tent in a clump of trees, still within the city limits, and woke to barking dogs and gunfire several times during the night. When I left before dawn the next day, I realized that I had spent the night in someone's back yard.
That day I passed scores of huge trees that had been felled by the storm, some blocking roads and others crushing houses. I spent a night with acquaintances and entered New York City the next day.
After dashing through traffic for several hours, I was resting at a street corner on the northern edge of the Bronx when a middle-aged man pulled over and asked me about my trip. My mild surprise at this unprecedented New York politeness turned to astonishment when he invited me back to his house for breakfast.
Dr. John Doherty, his wife (right) and sister, after inviting me in for breakfast.
In New York City? Things like that didn't happen there.
I followed him warily, expecting some trick, but I needn't have worried; I had elicited the kindness of Dr. John Doherty, an orthopedic surgeon whose son loved cycling. We ate fruit and Danish pastry in his mansion, and I talked with him and his wife, Ann, about my trip. They were incredibly generous, truly defying the insolent image often affixed to New Yorkers.
I rode through the decaying centers of the Bronx and then
Harlem, passing burned-out building shells on streets lined with
stripped and rusting cars. Small groups of youths huddled on
street corners, glaring at me as I passed.
Just before I left Harlem, my back tire went flat. I wheeled it quickly into Central Park and patched it on the shore of the lake. Then I headed downtown, weaving through an interminable logjam of honking cabs, and onto the Brooklyn Bridge for a magnificent view of the skyline. Later, joined by friend and fellow cycling enthusiast, Andy Tejral, I rode over the George Washington Bridge to Andy's apartment.
Read
the whole adventure...
From there I crossed New Jersey, following the serene Raritan Canal for a while, and slept at the Griggstown Reformed Church, 15 miles northeast of Princeton, with the kind consent of Rev. Dennis Ferguson, after it started to pour. Then I made my way across the Washington Crossing Bridge, through Tyler State Park and up my driveway in Churchville, two weeks and 827 miles after leaving Bangor.
There was no parade, no fanfare--but I didn't need them. What I got instead were the memories of the dozens of kind souls who had poured out their hospitality on me, as I weaved my way in and out of their lives, out on the open road.
This
story first appeared in the Philadelphia
Inquirer.
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