I’m standing atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine, pointing toward a small fishing village called Steuben, where my family lived for three chilly years from 1989 to 1992. This is where I attended kindergarten and elementary school through second grade, when we moved to Connecticut. I didn’t return to the Steuben-area for more than two decades, until this month, and it was eerie to stand in a place associated with so many strange and vivid memories from kid-hood.
One memory: lobster fishing. On Saturdays, an older man from my dad’s church would take me on his small wooden skiff. I sat at the bow, and he sat aft with a hand on a simple outboard motor that propelled us to his dozens colorful buoys scattered around Dyer Bay. It was my job to grab the buoys and pass them to him; then he’d stand and haul up the long rope that connected deep underwater to the lobster trap. Once the trap was on the boat, we’d together reach inside and collect the lobsters, crabs, and fish — some put up a fight. I still have a scar on my right thumb from a crab bite. Gene would refill the bait-sack and toss the trap back into the sea; the heavy brown cord would quickly uncoil and disappear into the water. Neither of us wore life jackets.
I was standing atop Cadillac Mountain because I had bicycled to Acadia from Connecticut, a 500-mile-ride that also brought back a lot of memories of pedaling across the United States a decade ago (which I documented in a short film).
You can’t tell from the photo, but at that moment my quads still hurt to the touch. My neck and shoulders ached. My swollen butt hurt to sit on. My IT band shot electrifying pain up my right leg.
Ahhh, the joys of tour cycling.
Here’s a recap of the trip, and of meeting some classic characters from Down East Maine.
Day One: Woodstock to Gales Ferry, CT ~ 45 miles
The ride began from my bungalow in northeast Connecticut. I bicycled south 45 miles to Gales Ferry, where I met up with trip organizer Rich and his friend Santiago, who had just pedaled 120 miles from New York. We all hit a few troubles.
About 15 miles from Gales Ferry — where we were camping at our friend Ian’s house – I got a flat. I had no pump, no bike shops were open (it was Sunday), and nobody at three gas stations had a pump. Somewhat fortunately, the tire was a slow leak, so I could still roll slowly, although going faster than 10 mph caused my rear wheel to wobble dangerously.
Meanwhile, Rich and Santiago had pedaled smoothly to the eastern tip of Long Island and caught a ferry to New London. But then Rich’s chain broke while pedaling up the steep driveway to Ian’s home. He had no tool to fix it.
When I arrived to Ian’s house at 7pm, he said encouragingly: “You’ve got a flat tire and Rich has a broken chain. You’re off to a great start.”
I found Rich and Santiago in the backyard, pitching tents. We decided to heed the Gospel of Matthew (“do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself”), and went out for pizza.
Day Two: Gales Ferry, CT, to Beverly, MA ~ 132 miles
We woke at 5:15am. Rich’s dad, who was heading to New York that morning for his annual pilgrimage to the US Open, arrived at 5:30am with a chain-fixing tool. As they set to work, I also got to changing my tire with the use of Santiago’s spare tube and pump.
By 7am, incredibly, we were all fixed up, packed up, and rolling down Ian’s driveway.
A mile up the road, a guy shouted: “Where you headed?”
“Maine!” I yelled back.
“Stay on Rt. 12, it’s less hilly than these backroads,” he advised, though not without futility, as there’s no avoiding hills during a 500-mile bicycle ride through New England.
From Rt 12 South we took Rt 184 East into Rhode Island to Rt 3 North. After 35 miles, we stopped for breakfast in Exeter at the Middle of Nowhere Diner. For $5, they served a frisbee-sized pancake and heaping plate of eggs, home fries, toast, and eggs. That much food would normally feel gluttonous, but scarfed it all down without guilt.
Soon later, we connected to the beautiful Washington Secondary Bike Path, a former railway turned into a bicycling-and-running path, which took us into Providence. We navigated through the city and up a steep hill past Brown University.
We stopped in Pawtucket at a Walgreens for Gatorade. A blimp floated over the nearby AAA-baseball stadium. It was now noon, and hot, at about 90-degrees F. We rode north on Rt 114 and crossed into Massachusetts on Rt 121, which connected to Rt. 1A North toward Boston.
Outside the state capital, we stopped at a CVS to refill on Gatorade and water. On the skyline, we could see the boxy Prudential Center and sleek John Hancock Tower. We’d already rode about 90 miles. My shirt was streaked with salt lines from sweat. My face was burned. My butt was so sore that it hurt to sit on the ground.
We had another 40 miles to go through Boston and the rough towns of Revere and Lynn. This was the most pothole-ridden, traffic-lined, horn-bleating, confusing riding of the day, made slightly better by occasionally beautiful views of the Charles River, Boston Bay, and Massachusetts coastline.
At dusk, after 12 hours of pedaling, we rode into my sister’s backyard in Beverly.
“You made it!” she said. “How was the ride?”
“Hot.”
She knew what we needed: beer and lots of food. We showered and unrolled our sleeping bags on her living room couch and floor.
Day Three: Beverly, MA, to Portland, ME ~ 102 miles
I woke on Day Three with two big problems on my ass: saddle sores. When I sat at my sister’s kitchen table that morning, it felt like I was sitting on two squishy balls; they were so large that I could roll forward and backward on them like on a rolling pin. By 8am we were back on the bikes, me grimacing. This wasn’t going to work for another 300 miles.
To make the morning more wonderful, as we were cruising at about 20 mph, my bungee cord broke, sending lose my sleeping bag and backpack onto my rear wheel, which burned a hole through the bag and a new jacket inside. Luckily, I had a spare bungee.
About 20 miles later, we stopped in Newburyport, at Massachusetts’ border with New Hampshire. I found a bike shop and bought the cushiest bicycle seat it sold. My world changed immediately: It was suddenly comfortable to sit on the saddle, which no longer jabbed into my butt bones.
But then another physical ailment arose. Soon my iliotibial band was sending jolts of pain up my right leg. With the new bike seat, my position on the bicycle seemed to have changed, sending something out of whack. At this point, with my IT band worsening and my body generally aching, I thought: “This is one grueling vacation.”
We pedaled up the New Hampshire coast along Rt 1 through the towns of Hampton and Rye. After a short break in Portsmouth, we pedaled across the state border into Maine.
We rolled into Portland at 6pm and found the house of someone from the website Warmshowers.org, which connects bicyclists with free places to camp. Our host gave us showers and a backyard campsite, as well as provisions of beer, snacks, and a ride downtown for dinner. He worked for LL Bean. I’ll always think better of LL Bean because of him.
Day Four: Portland to Waldoboro ~ 66 miles
I wouldn’t normally consider a 66-mile bicycle ride to be easy. But after pedaling 300 miles over the previous three days, only 66 was much-welcome relief to my IT band and generally aching body, which was rebelling against my efforts to get to Acadia.
From Portland, we pedaled 30 miles to Brunswick and stopped for lunch. Twenty miles later, we stopped in Wiscasset (home of the famous lobster shack “Red’s Eats”) and lounged on the sidewalk in the shade of a local cafe, a two-hour break that my IT Band appreciated.
From Wiscasset, we pedaled 15 miles to Waldoboro, where we had a place to sleep at my uncle’s friends’ lake house. To this lovely couple named Tracy and Scott, I will be eternally grateful for their tasty provisions of strong beer from Marshall Wharf Brewing Company, pungent cheese from Eat More Cheese, and a big dinner. It reminded me of the good people that I met a decade ago when bicycling across the continent.
We sat outside until Maine’s vicious mosquitos sent us retreating. Rather than venture back outside to set up camp, we gladly accepted an offer to unroll our sleeping bags in the guest room.
Day Five: Waldoboro to Bar Harbor, Acadia ~ 110 miles
Scott cooked steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, and we rolled out around 8am. I was excited; this was it, the final day to Acadia. Almost there!
I think that excitement got the better of me. After stopping for lunch in Belfast, I set off at a quick pace of 20 mph, which Rich and Santiago responded to by keeping the pace at that punishing speed during a brutal 40-mile stretch along Rt. 1 North that was full of hills, devoid of shade, and lacking in rest stops.
By the time we rolled into Ellsworth at 3pm, I felt on the verge of collapse, dehydrated and withered from the heat.
We found a Shaws grocery store in Ellsworth and, after buying Gatorade and snacks, laid on the sidewalk. A carriage-collecter said we shouldn’t be loitering there. I told him to tell the manager if he had a problem. The manager never told us there was a problem.
After an hour on the sidewalk, we finally had the energy to get back on the bikes and roll through Ellsworth (passing an old Chinese restaurant called “China Hill” that I loved to visit as a kid for their teriyaki beef sticks) and Trenton and over a bridge to Mt. Desert Island. Rich and Santiago charged ahead to Bar Harbor, while I fell behind on the hills, throwing in the towel, relieved to finally have made it to Acadia.
We bought a 12-pack of beer in Bar Harbor, then pedaled another 10 miles south to Blackwoods Campground. It was dusk as we set up tents. We then had to pedal another mile to get to the nearest showers and store, where we bought ice (for the beer), hot dogs, rolls, ketchup, and firewood.
Amazingly, there were no bugs.
Day Six ~ 0 miles
“What’s there to do at Acadia?” I asked.
“It’s kind of funny,” Rich said. “Everyone says how great it is for bicycling.”
Which was the last thing we wanted to do. So we hiked up Cadillac Mountain and down to Bar Harbor, where we ate lobsters.
Day Seven ~ 45 miles
Blackwoods Campground was booked for Labor Day Weekend, so we had to pack out and relocate to Bar Harbor Campground on the north side of Mt Desert Island. Along the way, we took a 45-mile-detour on the scenic carriage roads built in the 1920s by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (son of Standard Oil’s founder, and father of New York’s 49th governor), who donated this park land.
During the ride, we stopped at a post office in Seal Cove. As I went inside to mail a few postcards, Santiago sat outside on the curb to rest. A truck pulled up, stopped in front of Santiago, and then drove around him. A grey-haired driver, wearing jeans and plaid shirt, got out of the truck and looked angrily at Santiago, saying, “Didn’t you see that I wanted to park there?”
“What?” said Santiago.
“That is a parking space, and I wanted to park there.”
“You could have just asked me to move — how did I know you wanted to park there?”
The man walked into the post office, then back out with more words for Santiago: “You’re obviously not from around here. Respect where you are.”
“Hey man, why don’t you respect me!” Santiago shouted back, more angry now. “You’re telling me that I can’t even sit here?”
Rich got between them and told the man we were sorry for interrupting his visit to the post office.
“Respect where you are!” he shouted again, then drove off.
Ahhh, classic Maine hospitality! That was another thing I remembered about living Down East from many years ago, aside from fishing.
Arriving late that night to the campground, we met a German tourist who couldn’t find her campsite, as well as a couple from Bangor who had no campsite because the campground was full. The German girl hopped on the rack of Santiago’s bicycle for a ride to her site (located beside ours), and the Bangor couple followed us in their SUV as we pedaled back to our site, where we let them pitch their tent for the night.
The couple then unpacked: first a huge tent, then a generator, which was used to pump up a giant air mattress and power an electric fan. The dude then unpacked several chairs, a candelabra with six white candles, and a cooler filled with hard cider. Before I could start building a fire, he pulled out a space heater, complete with mock flames, which he set in the fire pit. “There we go!” he exclaimed.
Day Eight ~10-mile ride, 330-mile drive
From the campground, we pedaled 10 miles to Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton to rent a car. Driving home to New York City, Rich and Santiago dropped me in Connecticut on the side of the highway. I pedaled 10 miles home to Woodstock.
My legs felt swollen for days.
