Hey look at that!

Weigh-in #12 – Pictures speak louder than words

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Wheel full 70px It’s a Tuesday Monday again, sorry.  In the rain and fog that descended late yesterday afternoon I didn’t quite make it in to the Waldo County Hospital in Belfast, Maine, where I had planned to weigh myself for the 12th time this trip.

Wheel full 70px But I made it this morning, gave my little spiel to the nice ER triage lady, and before you could say Obamacare I was on a scale.  Goggling at the result.  Gawping even.

Wheel full 70px Holy Mackerel, mama!  That’s down five pounds/2.25 kg from last week and so far into uncharted territory for me that… Well, I just have no idea.  “Diet and exercise, David.  Diet and exercise.”  All my docs and my dietitian told me that over and over for the past 15 years.  Why should I be surprised when the answer turns out to be- diet and exercise.

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Wheel full 70px I am stoked!  Three hundred plus pound me, prepare to say goodbye.  Forever.

Acadia Park Loop Road

Wheel full 70px I biked around the Acadia National Park Loop Road today.  You can subscribe all you want to Ed Abbey’s “Industrial Tourism” knock on roads and cars in National Parks, but in my view this is one such drive that the park would be less of an experience without.

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Wheel full 70px So much for my “no hill taller than 400 feet/~120 meters on the entire Atlantic Coast” research prior to the ride.  Just before the junction with the spur road leading up to the top of Cadillac Mountain you reach, per RidewithGPS, 526 feet/~160 meters above sea level.  The beautiful engineering of the road, though, made the climb seem effortless.

Wheel full 70px A few pics.

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Wheel full 70px I’ll leave Mt. Desert Island for the fourth and probably last time over a 40 year span in a few hours.  I count myself fortunate for each visit- taken together they are almost more than for which one could reasonably wish in a lifetime.

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Back in the U.S. of A.

Wheel full 70px 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.

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Wheel full 70px RidewithGPS says I was that blue dot when I was on the border.

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Crossing the line

Wheel full 70px My first stop is Lubec, Maine, for breakfast after last night’s yummy dinner of

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“Full of meat
Fun to eat…”

Wheel full 70px 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.

Wheel full 70px But I made up for that at breakfast this morning at the Sunrise Cafe in Lubec.

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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.

Wheel full 70px A double order of hash browns, three eggs and a home-made everything bagel with a schmear.

Wheel full 70px Good morning, State of Maine!

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Almost Timely Advice

Wheel full 70px I think I set a personal best speed record yesterday on one of the incredible steep hills I encountered.

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Wheel full 70px 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.

Wheel full 70px 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.

…and a little bicycle shall lead them.

Wheel full 70px 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.

Wheel full 70px 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.

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Wheel full 70px 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.”

Wheel full 70px So after a few minutes, what should come in behind me but about 100 bikes leaving Wharf Rat Days.

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Wheel full 70px 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.

Wheel full 70px Pretty cool, eh?

The Camper’s Friend – NOT

Wheel full 70px 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…

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Wheel full 70px Hey, wait a minute!  What’s this “plip-plip-plip” stuff?  Well…

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The Enemy

Wheel full 70px 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.

Wheel full 70px 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.

Wheel full 70px Lesson learned.

Yesterday’s Ride

Wheel full 70px Just so you don’t think I’m hanging around hotel rooms eating donuts…

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Wheel full 70px I had the best ride of the trip yesterday.  The weather was gorgeous, the wind was reasonable friendly, and the hills… well, two out of three aren’t too bad. I hope to be doing 50 mile/80 km days by the end of the week.

Wheel full 70px I’m going to start checking my tires every other day.  They should run at 90 psi, but each was down to around 65 or so after the last six days.  Full tires really… Duh!… make a difference.

Wheel full 70px I continue to take many photos, of which this is a teaser.

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Wheel full 70px We’ll sit around a campfire soon and I’ll do a slide show.