Sitting aboard a ferry right now, below deck, on the way to Port Kent; if tonight’s lodging has internet, this’ll go up soonish; if not, you’ll read it when you read it, but your today will not be today. We’ve started to settle into a rhythm, which is nice, but it also means that the days blur together a bit. The beginning of the trip was a bit like adolescence — ultra-heightened … not emotions, exactly, but something similar to emotions … super aware at all times that the routine was not a normal routine, and Every Moment Is Interesting. With all the good and bad that an adolescent outlook provides. Now it’s more everyday. Sort of a shame.

Yesterday was a pseudo-off day, which meant we left Middlebury a bit after 11, and once we arrived in Burlington, either (a) went and saw District 9 (Caroline’s smart, smart, smart move) or (b) hung around outside strip malls in parking lots while Sara and Tracy browsed sporting goods. Which I guess implies option (c), but that one was for other people. I’m not bitter or resentful, mind you — I just wanted to watch some South African Alien Genocide. Or whatever the film was about — I wouldn’t know! I haven’t seen it.

Which brings us to today’s theme — things have settled into pace, and we get along rather well, really. Everything is running smoothly, and I’m pretty sure that kindness and fellow feeling abounds. But there have been a few bits of prickliness, and mostly submerged antagonism (see: adolescent attitudes, two P back) … and if this were any other sort of blog, I could write about it, in DEPTH, and there’d be some real entertainment for our public. A reality show where the morman-nee-baptist gets along easily w/ the ex-street-walking-transvestite-dancer isn’t much of a reality show. There must be misunderstandings, and there must be bruised feelings. And there have been, if only small’n’s. I acted a delightfully whiney shit for a half hour in the cambridge brewing house (or whatever the place was called) when it was announced that we’d be getting up at 6 the next morning … there were mitigating factors, but I was a truly pissy shit. And others weren’t thrilled, but did an ok job of not making it an issue. So that’s an example of mild crumminess, which I can set out publicly, as I was the villain … it’s only a shame that I can’t type out more.

But: smoother sailing now, and really, we’re all quite happy, etc & etc.

NH had good street signs, but VT may have even better ones. They preface no outlet, residential streets w/ ‘pvt’, which produced this gem — ‘PVT GOBBLER RD.’ Most hilarious thing my 8 year old self has seen in a couple days. They also use very realistic silhouettes to indicate potential obstacles — cow, horse, horse w/ human, tractor — only the human in the horse w/ human is stylized, a stick figure w/ a perfectly circular head, atop a horse that has each hair detailed. Iconic universal stick figures stuck in a real world. Sort of wonderful.

Also, the classiest license plates that we’ve seen. There’s probably another state out there that still uses white text on a flat color, but I can’t think of it. They do a couple things right up here. I’ll be sad to leave the covered bridges. The landscape merged smoothly from prep schools (exeter, andover, etc) to covered bridges, and then hilly farmland which would be wisconsin only with (cute little baby) mountains in the distance. Mountains — wee or no — improve a landscape.

keep on keeping,
a.

Sept 7th and 8th

Day 8 Andover NH to Bridgewater Corners VT, miles ridden 68

Day 9 Bridgewater Corners VT to Middlebury VT, miles ridden 54

The last few days feel long they have flown by and yet when I look back at 2 days ago (when we woke up in Andover at the amazing B & B) it feels like ages ago.  Riding in NH was good, lots of rolling hills.  And it seems pretty at the time, but that was before we crossed the river into Vermont.  There was a great moment on day 8 (Labor Day) when we were 35 miles in, and we stopped right next to a freeway on-ramp to check in with each other.  We were all pretty wiped out and looking forward to getting some food and beer and sleep.  Tracy said “well… only 13 miles to go” so I did a quick iphone check and it said it was only 9 miles.  Yeah!  But then Anders wisely said “did you type in Long Trail Brewery or just Long Trail?” And then I searched again for Long Trail Brewery, only to find out we were actually 27 miles away, not 9, not 13 but 27.   Everyone’s stomachs sort of sank at that moment I think.  For me, it was a make or break moment.  Right before then, I wasn’t sure if I could make it another mile, but stopping wasn’t really an option because we were in NH, no where near anyone we know and with no place lined up to stay for the night.  So I broke out the secret weapon – headphones.  Caroline had been pumping tunes for days and flying but somehow I had it in my head that if I was listening to music I wasn’t enjoying the experience.  But I figured if there was any way I was getting through those next 27 miles, it had to be with tunes.  So thank you Franz Ferninand, Lady Gaga, Sara Barielles, and so many others for getting me to long trail brewery well before closing and feeling pretty pumped.   I think the lesson is, I can get rid of everything I own, but in my previous life, I listen to music nonstop for 10 hours a day, and that’s a lot harder to let go of.

So that day ended pretty well.  We took the self guided tour of Long Trail, had a few beers and begged around the bar for a place to stay.  When no one offered us a bed and breakfast to stay at, we finally broke down and set up camp right there at the brewery.  They didn’t officially say we could camp there, but they didn’t seem to mind when we used the picnic tables in the back to make dinner.

We woke up in the morning and prepared to face our first mountain, Killington.  I decided now was the time to start mailing home the non-essentials – mainly extra tee shirts (as the breweries keep giving us more!), my running shoes, which I’m clearly not using, and travel scrabble… since its gotten no use…

The mountain was tough, but we did it!  And then we got to go down hill for another 5 miles!  Despite starting late (again) at around 10:30am, we managed to make it 35 miles to lunch in the cute town of Brandon where we had some KILLER sandwiches.  We probably shouldn’t have waited that long to eat (we’d only had oatmeal for breakfast) but the food tasted all the better for our hunger.

After lunch, it was a short (ha!) 19 miles into Middlebury, beautiful rolling hills and amazing green mountains in the background.  It was pretty fabulous.  Again, we didn’t have a place lined up to stay, until we were 3 miles away from Otter Creek (our next brewery) when Tracy got an email from one of the riders from her last cross country tour who said he had a friend in Middlebury who could hook us up with a place to stay.  So I am writing this the morning of day 10 in pretty fabulous loft apartment, overlooking a farmers market and a waterfall.  We had a whole extra (*unfinished) apartment to set up our sleeping bags for the night.  Last night we visited the Otter Creek and Wolavers Brewery, where they were SUPER nice.  They showed us how to ride around on a mini bike and for the first time on any of our tours, they were actually in the middle of making beer.  Caroline got to add a bucket of hops to a batch and we all tried many, many samples of beer.

The night ended well, we missed out on A & W drive in, as they’ve moved to fall hours, but we had a great dinner at the Bobcat Brew Pub (and got another tour!) and then took a quick dip in a local river.

We are off to Burlington today, a flat 40 miles away.  Feels like a treat.  But then, what doesn’t?

-sara

pictures to come

Farewell to Chris and Michelle of the New England House (click image for more photos from our New England House stay)

Click this image to see more images from our ride through NH.

Click on this image for more from Long Trail Brewing Co

Click here to see more image from our ride through Vermont

Click on this image to see more photos from Otter Creek Brewing Co

Click on this image to see more photos from Bobcat

Click here to see more photos of our stay in Middlebury

Vermont, which clears out new england, for me. I learned this morning that their official motto is ‘Freedom and Unity,’ and I more than fully approve of this. Built in dramatic tension, in three words. Or two, if you use the ‘&’ which occurs in the official seal.

We’re camping out semi-legitimately, behind a brewery and beside a stream. Ate couscous & canned lentils and prosciutto, cooked over a camp stove, and it was delicious — better for sure than the (very decent) pub fare eaten a few hours earlier. And it’s chilly, so sleeping bags will be necessary. Perhaps it’d be nicer to have a fluffy pillow and a bed, but it’s good to justify gear — shit’s heavy, for one thing. Or really, that’s the only thing. Shit’s heavy, and heavy is bad. Warm food, though, is way more good than any sort of heavy.

Bathed this evening in a public bathroom using Dr. Bronner’s, running between the stall and public space while covering my junk w/ hands in order to soap up one set of towels while wetting another. Certain people would call me a filthy fucking hippy, and though the accusation doesn’t quite hit, there isn’t a whole lotta defense.

New Hampshire is done, which means that two road signs may well be also through — first, the three lines at 120deg from each other, w/ an arrow off of one of the upward pointing ones (indicating there’s a road abutting the main road, as it curves) and the sign saying ‘densely settled’. Leslie, a temporary rider for Saturday (and would that it were longer) said that as a kid, she’d always thought that this meant the pavement was thick. I heard this, and thought: ‘what else could it mean?’. No ‘densely settled’ signs in MI, y’see.

9:16, and I’m rather boozey on three beers. Up is down in these parts, y’see.

WELL then,
a.

Eliot, ME to Andover, NH

68 miles

The hardest part of embarking on Day 7 was not the prospect of daunting hills, but rather the regret of having to leave such a gorgeous part of our country and the company of our amazing hosts. Megan and Eric—we don’t know really how to tell you how thankful we are for your hospitality, and more importantly, newfound friendship!

But, the show must go on, so we packed up, pumped some fresh air in our tires, and hit the road.  It was our first day that we did not have a specific end point. We just knew we had to get as far as we could, so that Day 8 would be as “easy” as possible.  We chose Andover because Tracy had stayed here on her Bike & Build trip and it had left a great impression. Andover is not a large town (~2,000 pop.), and we were hoping to find just a safe place to camp by the end of a long, hard day. We tried a new approach to attacking the terrain—each individual (with 2 pairs staying closer to each other) would pound out as many miles as possible and than reconvene at a specific hour down the road. Some weight was adjusted to make things easier on the hills for our camp cook, Sara (who packed an entire kitchen), so Caroline took on some extra pounds—penalty for bragging about how light she packed and what a great minimalist she is!

Hours flew by, and soon enough it was time to find a place to sleep.  While waiting at a meeting spot, Caroline and Tracy realized this could be tougher than anticipated. But, someone was listening to silent prayers, because when Caroline flagged over a truck to ask about nearby campgrounds, she was greeted with two of the friendliest faces in the world, not just Andover, NH. Michelle and Chris, the owners of The New England House Bed & Breakfast (a mere 1.5 miles down the road) said that we could  camp in their backyard…with a heated swimming pool! PERFECT!!! We set up camp, took a brisk dip in the water, then cozied up for a delicious and generous meal with Michelle, her parents, and Chris in the beautiful home.  All in all, Day 7 affirmed the theme of this trip: Be the twig.

Next, it is on to Bridgewater Corners, VT and the Long Trail Brewing Co.

Happy Labor Day to all!

~Caroline

Click here to see more images from our New England House stay with Chris and Michelle

We are FINALLY about to head west today. This may be our last day with wifi for the next couple of days – though we will still be tweeting and updating our position to the map. 

Wish us luck as we begin the hills/mountains section of the trip and check in again soon!   Also, if you’ve been following our map, please note that we’ve made a few small changes (a little more time in the midwest and a route OVER the rockies instead of around).  All is subject to change of course!

And remember, it’s always best to read our posts while drinking a fine craft brew

72 miles of riding

quote of the day: “the tandem is the bike of love”

Day 6 pretty much unanimously voted the “best day yet”.  We woke up at 6am in Cambridge and the Rosa family home, and Sara finally got a chance to cook, making custom omelets for the crew and stirring up some left over French fries into hash browns (some ideas work better than others….).    Well, to be honest, Sara, Anders and Caroline woke up.  Tracy didn’t show any signs of movement until almost 7, when she realized she’d set her alarm for the wrong time.  Ooops!  Thus far we haven’t had much of a schedule because, well, its our trip, we can do whatever we want (as the mantra goes) but on day 6 we had some very special guest riders – Matt from 7 cycles in Boston and his wife Susi, and their friend Leslie, who has also biked from Brooklyn in the past week, small world!

After eggs we hopped on the bikes to Matt and Susi’s house in Malden MA, only 5 miles away, fully loaded with gear for the first time in 3 days.   It was somewhat slow going, and we managed to take at least 3 wrong turns but we arrived at their “Tutie Fruitie” house (their moniker) only 20 minutes late (but at 8:20am, which really isn’t that bad…).   Two things made the day especially awesome: the first was that Matt grew up in the area we were biking from MA to Maine, and so we avoided pretty much every major road and were the most beautiful scenic route we could possible take.  The second thing was, Matt and Susi were on a custom tandem bike!  They told us some great stories about touring around the country on their motorcycle and on their tandem.  One especially good story involved a bike ride with hundreds of tandems, plus one guy with a tandem but no partner.  He spent the entire trip asking people to join him on his bike, to no avail.  Too bad he didn’t meet any of us, because we would have hopped on!

We could go on and on about how much we loved the day, and the fact that there we relatively few hills, which made riding with our stuff again very manageable.  Plus, when there were hills, they were rollers, where we learned that riding with an extra 50 pounds adds some EXCELLENT momentum on the down.  Bonus.  Thanks again to Matt and Susi for being our guides through this beautiful part of the country.

Our goal for the day was to get to Smuttynose Brewery in Portsmouth, but we realized they were not open on the weekend. BUT we lucked out because the family we hooked up with to stay with (Megan and Eric Ross, who’s brother Peter is a friend of Sara’s) happen to be friends with Peter Egelston, the owner of both Smuttynose and the Portsmouth Brewpub.  Peter went out of his way to meet us at the brewery at 4pm on a Saturday and gave us very fun and informative tour of the largest operation we’ve seen thus far.  Our very first large scale bottling line!  However, he was also nice enough give us many samples of beer so by the end of the tour we were not that interested in biking the last 11 miles to Eliot Maine.  Lucky for us, the Ross’s happen to have use of a large truck and picked up us and our stuff and took us to their house for a fabulous home cooked dinner of salad and brown rice and tofu.  After two nights in a row of pub food the vegetarian feast was more than appreciated.  Peter had also given us drink tickets for the Portsmouth Brew Pub, but after that long day and settling in at the Ross’s we decided that we were happy to stay in for the night.  Who knew that we would ever turn down free beer???

Click on this image to see more photos from our bicycle parade day!

Guest Riders Leslie, Susi and Matt!

Click on this image to see more photos from Smuttynose Brewing Co

Riding: sara and anders 20 miles, Caroline and Tracy 12 miles (I thought this was a day off?)

On Friday we woke up at the house in Cambridge house at a nice and late hour.  Caroline started her day off with some reading at the local coffee shop, Anders and Sara slept until 10:30 and then hit the coffee shop and the grocery store for provisions.  Tracy slept in the amazingly late hour of 11am.  Good job Tracy!

From there, the group broke up.  Tracy and Caroline when the 7 Cycles Bike factory on invite from Matt O’Keefe, one of the managers there who found US on Twitter.   How cool is that?  Then they went to check out Tracy’s brothers new bachelor pad in Brookline.  They loved the place (especially the hot tub they are installing on the roof!) but were pretty happy we decided against staying with him and his 7 college roommates.

Anders and Sara took the train out to Framingham and then a short bike ride over to Holliston to visit Sara’s 85 year old grandmother.  She was very impressed with their physical fitness, and once we got her up and running, she was very adept at manuvering through our website.   She is impatiently waiting for this update.

The group met back up at the Cambridge Brewing Company for a few drink, some awesome nachos and pizza and a pretty fabulous tour (especially given how busy the place was) from owner Phil Bannatyne.  He asked us what we wanted to see and we told him “anything that makes your brewery special” and he was like “oh, I’ve got special – we will go to the basement!”   It was there that we saw many, many barrels of beer that they are aging.  This industry is getting fancy!  We also got more free tee shirts.  Sweet!

A few places we didn’t visit while we were in Boston – The Boston Brewing Company (Sam Adams) and Harpoon.  Starting off the trip we had every intention of going to both places but after 4 day of riding, we decided that having a day to see family and to go running (Caroline) and just generally sleep was worth more than the chance to taste more beer.

Click here to see more images from Caroline and Tracy's trip to Seven Cycles

Sara and her Gram

Pete's Apt has heated bathroom tiles.

Phil shows us around the Cambridge Brewing Co

The 4 of us woke up in Tracy’s parents lovely home to clean spandex, hot coffee and fresh blueberry pancakes.  Talk about spoiled!  Once again, we had most of our gear transported for us to our next destination, so we we’re free to take on lofty goal of a 98 mile hilly ride into Boston as light at possible.

We were hoping to get an early 8:30am start but you know what they say “best laid plans”… Instead, we got off at about 9:30am, well fed and rested and ready for some beautiful riding.  We’ve been so lucky with the weather, nothing but sunny and low eighties.   Plus, Tracy’s mom packed us two and a half sandwiches a piece, so we didn’t have to worry about lunch.  Why didn’t we think to bring a mom on this whole trip?? 

It was a pretty uneventful day.  We did a lot of riding, getting into a pretty good groove as far as our pace goes, and we finally got used to the fact that we need to eat a lot EARLY in the day so that we’re not starving in the end.  It made all the difference.  We made it 75 miles with pretty much no trouble.  However, as we got closer to Boston, we ended up on Route 9, which was pretty much a commuter highway, at 5pm.  It was smelly and horrible, and possibly unsafe (commuters do get a bit feisty around 5…) so we decided to pat ourselves on the back on our great ride and then hopped on the commuter train into Boston.  We arrived in Cambridge at Sara’s good friend Peter Rosa’s parents house where our gear had been dropped off by Tracy’s parents (thanks AGAIN!) and then we went out to a “real boston pub” – O’Sullivans – for some Harpoon and some great food.  Did we mention how hungry we get biking every day?

BIG BIG BIG thanks for the Rosa’s for letting us stay at their historic Cambridge home.   Having a place to crash right in town was key.

PHOTOS TO COME!!

Riding: about 75 HILLY miles

Caroline: found 21 cents on the ground, which she decided was good luck because it is her jersey number and Roberto Clemente.

We woke up on the yacht! (the Cymbidium) which was  first for sara, caroline and anders (tracy wasn’t impressed, she’s plenty of nights sleeping on boats, but they thought it was cool.  ((she WAS impressed by the view)).  While we loved spending our first night at a brewery, we slept quite a it better without the sound of compressors in the morning.

From the boat, we hustled over to Orient to take the ferry to New London.  Yeah!  Our first new state: Connecticut.

In New London we picked up our first guest rider, Tracy’s uncle John.  Also, Tracy’s dad packed all of our gear into the car and chauffeured it up to Northern Connecticut for us.   Which was awesome, because it was our first day of hills!  Anders, Tracy and Caroline did some good muscling, but Sara decided she’s going to have to get rid of some stuff before we get to the mountains. 

After 30 miles, we made a midday brewery stop for lunch at the Willimantic Brewing Company.   It was a beautiful space, converted from a post office in 1994 and voted this month in Connecticut magazine as the best brewery in CT!  Good thing we made the stop.  Their general manager Kim gave us the history of the place and then the assistant brewer Jake showed us around the brewing operation (which was a very efficient set up).  The head brewer David was out of town brewing up a special batch/limited release brew at Sierra Nevada, which we are hoping will be ready by mid October we when get to Chico!  As we were leaving the brew pub, they loaded us up with a growler to go, know that we couldn’t drink much as lunch.  Talk about thoughtful!  We were also joined for lunch by Sara’s aunt Carol, who lives in Storrs.  It was great to have so much family near by these first few days.

After lunch, we punched through another 30 or so miles and we stopped in at Uncle John’s firehouse in East Hartford, CT.   Then off to Tracy’s Grandma’s before staying the night at Tracy’s parents.  Even though we were only 3 days in, it was pretty amazing to have a home cooked dinner, a hot shower and our first chance at laundry (yeah for clean spandex!).

Also, we got our bike and brew cards and post cards, so our media blitz can finally begin.  Sweet.

Please click this image to see more from Day 3

Please click on this image to see more photos from Willi Brew

It’s been a good long time (well, four days? something like that) since I’ve typed anything, and after a very brief period enough nonsense accumulates that the sheer mass overwhelms and the idea of writing anything at all begins to exhaust. Which is stupid, and sad. Because things deserve writing, and if I miss something, it really isn’t any sort of loss. So here’s random crap, and I’ll assume that the rest of the entries either give it some sort of context, or will soon.

Wee lil Claudia did of course seem damaged already at six, but I found her much more sympathetic than maybe I would have if she’d punched me in the gut. I particularly would like to remember that she planned on cooking green sticks for her dinner, and that after a lot of back and forth, we determine that green sticks were in fact celery.

We’ve ‘cheated’ a bunch, so far — a few brief stints in vehicles, two (lovely) days without baggage, courtesy of Tracy’s folks, another bit where we mysteriously teleported from somewhere 15 miles outside of boston into cambridge, avoiding 45,000 commuters who wanted to smear us against an on-ramp — and I’m pretty much mostly completely happy with this. I feel very weird about justifying these stints, or at least I don’t like justifications which center on ‘earning’ the privilege, but I sure am thankful for the conveniences which folks have gone out of their way to provide. And I apologize for not shouting out particulars, but I’m sure that’ll appear elsewhere. If it hasn’t already.

I slept on a boat for the first time, which was pretty great. The SNL skit of course comes to mind, but even w/o, it’s pretty awesome. And I’ve been in three new states, these last couple days — MA, NH, and ME. We didn’t think we’d get up to Maine, but we did. We’re there now. Our hosts have prepared dinner, and I’m off now to get some. People really are way way way too kind.

And regarding people being way too kind: I’ve been noticing lately how much people actively & sincerely like to help out, and it makes me feel awfully good about the world.

Dozens of public recognitions are in order, but only one comes solely from me, so I’ll neglect all the other worthy folks, and just say that Papa Wheelies is a fantastic bike shop, and they did me far better than I would ever expect of a bike store that I entered as a stranger. If you’re in the Portsmouth area, you’d do well to stop by.

xo. we’re off to a brewpub, in a bit, maybe.
a.