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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.
by Bob Neubauer
 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.
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.
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Standing in front of Stephen
King's mansion in Bangor, Maine.
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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.
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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.
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Father John Mahoney and
seminarian
Michael Gendren on the steps of the St.
Patrick's Church rectory in Pelham, N.H.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Dr. John Doherty, his wife
(right) and sister, after inviting me in for
breakfast.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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This story has appeared
in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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