Three weeks ago today I started out from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In the past week I have traveled from just outside Yarmouth, easily spotted on the above map, up the Evangeline Coast of Nova Scotia, across the Bay of Fundy, and then down through New Brunswick and into Maine. I’ll be in Acadia National Park on Maine’s Mount Desert Island the day after tomorrow.
Blueberries!
Three hundred twenty one. A little more than 50 pounds since May. Back to where I was in the late 90s.
Sorry about doing this in three photos. Next time I’ll just hand my phone to the nurse. When you are on one of these beam scales it’s just hard to do the pic yourself.
So it does seem that last week’s weight of 332 was an anomaly- a bump in an overall smooth trend of weight loss that has remained consistent into a third month. As I’ll post in a bit, I’m burning somewhere around 3,500 calories a day riding and I can’t eat enough to keep up. That says I should lose weight and, by gosh, it appears that is what is happening.
This morning I crossed the bridge back into the ‘States, leaving the land that gave us Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Of course it also gave us Bryan Adams, but I believe we gave him back.
RidewithGPS says I was that blue dot when I was on the border.
Crossing the line
My first stop is Lubec, Maine, for breakfast after last night’s yummy dinner of
“Full of meat
Fun to eat…”
Yep, good old Barfaroni. Straight from the can. Cold. In the rain. In the dark. That, by the way, is 1,000 calories and about three days worth of recommended sodium. But it was what I had for dinner. Then I cleared off the cans and slept on my Thermarest on the top of the picnic table. Deluxe…just dee-luxe.
But I made up for that at breakfast this morning at the Sunrise Cafe in Lubec.
1,339 wonderful calories according to MyFitnessPal – I’ve been running a deficit of one to two thousand calories a day. Yesterday was over three thousand. I just can’t make myself eat any more than I have been.
A double order of hash browns, three eggs and a home-made everything bagel with a schmear.
Good morning, State of Maine!
But it’s Tuesday, you protest, and you’d be right. As the part of Canada I i’m riding through was closed for the holiday yesterday, or at least it seemed like it, I was not able to weigh myself in as promised a couple of months back. “Every Monday,” I said. “Without fail,” I said. Well, as it turns out what I should’ve said was, “Every Monday without fail except for Labor Day holiday in Canada. Your mileage may vary. Offer void in North Dakota, the Territory of Guam, and elsewhere as prohibited by law.”
I don’t know why I put this pic here. It just seemed apropos. It comes courtesy of my great friend Dave Alexander, who runs an excellent blog mainly about free speech issues.
So I’ve got a line on a place to weigh myself today. It’s a ways down the road, so I better get going. A foggy day today.
I think I set a personal best speed record yesterday on one of the incredible steep hills I encountered.
That’s 400 pounds/~180 kg of bike, rider and loaded panniers in essentially what felt like free fall instead of a controlled descent at just a hair under 40 mph/65 kph for quite some distance.
Oddly enough, I spotted this article [linkie] when I stopped for the night. Good advice, and pretty much how it all went for me. I don’t want to do this very often, but it’s a memorable experience.
Digby, Nova Scotia was the last town I rode through before getting on the ferry to New Brunswick last night. Over this long weekend it was celebrating something called “Wharf Rat Days,” which is apparently like a Canadian Sturgis. There had to be over 10,000 motorcycles in town as I rode through – I’ll do a post on that later with some pictures I took.
In any event, the Surly was the first “vehicle” let on the ferry. I walked into the bowels of the lowest deck and was directed all the way to the front where I wound up locking it to a stanchion in front of half of a spare propeller.
The ferry was cavernous. I don’t know how many cars, trucks and buses they can put on the thing, but my scientific estimate is “a lot.”
So after a few minutes, what should come in behind me but about 100 bikes leaving Wharf Rat Days.
They lined the entire side of the ferry by the time they were all in. And, when we got to the other end in St. John, I led them off up the ramp and out into the city.
Pretty cool, eh?
…of the Bay of Fundy.
It’s big. Very, very big. I wish I could watch the 40 foot/10+ meter tides come in and out, but you can’t have everything.
Oh, and
I’ve ridden this last stretch (on maybe the best laid out road I’ve been on since I started the ride) and am at the ferry terminal. The road just ends.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve now cycled a route I’ve dreamed about for 40 years.
Next stop, New Brunswick!
I’ll be on the ferry across the Bay of Fundy this evening
Boarding is at 5:30. The crossing takes about two and three-quarters hours, so unfortunately I’ll be riding around St. John, New Brunswick tonight as it gets dark looking for a place to stay. But that’s an issue for later in the day; one thing at a time.
I’ll be a bit sad leaving Nova Scotia. At 64 years old in a few days I don’t know if I’ll ever make it back up here again. But you can’t do everything and I’ve been privileged to have done a lot.
Ahh, the delightful sights, sounds and smells of a tent site among the pines in the North Country. The lush green boughs, the wind rustling through the needles, the plip-plip-plip of wonderfully aromatic pine gum dripping onto your barely used MSR Hubba Hubba tent all night…
Hey, wait a minute! What’s this “plip-plip-plip” stuff? Well…
The Enemy
This pine gum is stickier than Crazy Glue and has a particular affinity for ripstop nylon. I used about half of my first aid kit alcohol swabs this morning cleaning the tent, which would have otherwise glued itself to itself in a small red nylon mass had I simply packed it up.
Next time I am at a campground in the piney woods I will find the site in an adjacent meadow. I can go sit under the trees any time I want.
Lesson learned.
b2bbiketrip.com - A 2019 bike trip blog 