Day 70. Brunswick to Rockland/Rockport, 70 miles

Though rain was promised starting around 4 a.m. and continuing through tomorrow evening, it’s still dry, if very overcast, when I get up at my usual 5:30. I’m ready to go by 7 and decide to leave to get a head start on the rain, even though it seems silly with a 55-mile day. What I think is a 55-mile day. *ominous music*

It is a climbing day. Lovely, wooded, relatively quiet roads that snake up hills at alarming angles. Lots of the time you’re riding and see something high on the horizon and think “that can’t be the road—it’s too … vertical.” And usually it isn’t. It’s a roofline or the like. In Maine it’s the road. The road really does that.

The rain holds off for the morning, which I appreciate, but The Mood is still with me; as I was texting with Wendy and Emily, I really want to love riding in Maine, and right now I hate riding in Maine. We theorize that the universe is helping me prepare emotionally to be done with tour, but this is, of course, not how I’d like to feel wrapping things up.

It is old. It is cute as all get-out; Cape and Victorian homes abound, and the setting is arboreal in the utmost. It is nostalgia-inducing. Sea air! But it is, excuse my language, hilly as fuck, and I am not charmed.

Late morning I run into another cycle tourist headed in the opposite direction, and we stop to chat. His name is Andrew, and he’s doing a year-long tour around the U.S., having started in Minneapolis. We talk shop, and I share some green beans that were free at the side of the road yesterday. Side note: This is a thing I’ve noticed since Vermont or New Hampshire, I can’t remember which. People leave items or boxes of items at the side of the road or have a sign saying “Free Stuff” pointing into a shed or outbuilding. A vacuum cleaner, fans, children’s toys. I haven’t noticed that elsewhere.

As Andrew and I are parting ways, a light sprinkle starts, and then it rains on and off—mostly on—for the rest of the day. I ride through rain over hills. I am not happy about any of it, including meta-unhappiness at my unhappiness.

For the first time on tour I sample the selection in the hot case at the gas station, and the beef and cheese empanada (taco trucks on every corner!) warms me briefly. Did I mention that it’s also not warm? Maybe low 60s, low enough that, damp from sweat and rain, I feel unpleasantly chilly on my short, fast downhills. WHINE. The hills don’t exceed 350 feet at any point, but they are constant. And it rains, and I pass through lovely coastal towns that I hate.

Mid-afternoon, I arrive in Waldboro and pull over for a dry-off at The Narrows Tavern, where I order fried cheese curds and a PBR and contemplate my options. Which turn out to be not great. When I split up the final days, I was probably moving a little fast because I wanted to, you know, hang with Andrew. And I’m guessing I used Googlemaps as a rough mileage guide, rather than doing the work of adding up the mileage sections from the map, as I usually do. Well, this is a section where Googlemaps (which is always wrong as against any other bike route option) and the ACA route are in about 25 miles of disagreement, not in my favor. I thought I had maybe 15 miles left, and it’s more like 40, and I don’t know that I can do that today. And also it’s going to be raining. I find a motel closer than my original campground destination whose price makes my eyes water enough that I can’t commit to booking it. And then I move on.

The headwind intensifies, as does the rain, and the climbing continues unabated. Checking the map (from inside its ziploc, where it and my phone have lived all day) I see that there’s a spot between Thomaston and Rockland where the route jumps off US 1–which it’s on from time to time—and onto back roads, adding 15 miles to the route, and I’m sure it’s a beautiful and pacific way, but I’m kind of miserable and don’t care. And it’s RAINING. Also headwind. The shoulder on 1 has been wide and clean, and though the sound of cars whizzing by incessantly is even more maddeningly loud in the rain, I go for it. Which, just to preclude any concerns, is fine and a good choice.

Outside Rockland, I stop at a gas station to cave and book the motel, but the listing is gone, so I call, and there is one room left, and it’s now $180, and I swallow hard and can’t do it. I say I’ll call back and yank out my phone and start looking for any option. And there, just a few miles ahead of me—not on the ACA map because I’m off route—is a campground.

I call the Megunticook Campground, get myself a site, and get back on the road for my last five miles of rain and climbing.

Amazingly, it stops raining for a while right as I arrive, and I’m able to set up my tent and walk to and from the showers not in the rain, which is huge. It’s too dark to make dinner by the time I’m organized and showered, so I crawl into my tent for a call with mom.

Today was rough. There was my foul mood, but there were also real circumstances the waves of my mood crashed against. Rain, my miscalculation (mistakes that are my own fault are the worst), and what turns out to be over 5500 feet of climbing, the second climbiest day of the whole trip. Including Washington Pass. I mean.

So that was hard, and I adjusted and coped and got myself where I needed to get. And I’m dry in my tent talking to my mom before bed and seeing Nate and Laura tomorrow and Andrew in just two days. And I suddenly realize it’s my last camping night of tour, and that is a wild thought to fall asleep with.