5-30-10 Baxter State Park, Maine to Brownsville Junction, Maine.

Man, woke up with some pretty tired legs today – welcome to the club!! So we got it going after some granola and yogert at about 8:30 AM, with about 35 miles of gravel road ahead of us in Baxter. Bill joined me for the gravel portion with Judy saying: “not me!!!” And it was slow going for sure, with major efforts to sustain even 11 mph along the park’s perimeter road - backcountry power climbing heaven! The scenery in this Northern Maine State Park is just awesome, with Mt. Katadin in the background just towering over everything. We saw fox, moose, and grouse for wildlife.

Had the road to ourselves for the first 15 miles of riding with the early start. Then for the last 20 miles things picked up with traffic coming from the south gate, but still it wasn’t’ any major hassle as the road was still damp from the last night’s rain – no dust – and the speed limit is 20 mph. I managed to see a couple of mooses in a river, and Bill had one cross the road right in front of him. Damn, those things are massive animals. You don’t want to piss one of those things off or spook them.

I did notice that I had a right knee cap kind of tweeked this morning, and it kind of got a bit worse as the day went on. I hate to fixate on that stuff on a ride, especially this early on, especially when you can get all these “ghost” pains that float around every so often. So I just took the climbing easy and didn’t hammer the flats. Could be that my Paragon, which I haven’t ridden in a while, is just a tad off of my set-up I did to my Felt 29er, which I’ve ridden extensively over the past few months. May need to just be a bit mellow and the body with readjust to the Paragon positions. Anyway, nothing major to worry about.

We knocked off the park perimeter road in about 3 hours – at an 11 mph pace. Judy waited at the gatehouse and got some cokes and grub out for us and then we got ready for another 18-mile ride south, back on asphalt to the town of Millinocket, Maine. Had a tailwind at our backs and we just sailed down the road, a wonderfully new stretch of highway out of the park. I think we knocked off that section in less than an hour. Then Judy jumped on her bike and joined me for two hours or riding south on Rt. 11, nowhere near as nice as the section that Bill and I road on, but at least there was minimal traffic and a tailwind.

About 5 hrs in I was starting to feel a bit beat. Good thing was that my kneecap was feeling really good, so I could push across the tops of climbs with no problem. Judy did a great job of hanging with me on this stretch of highway that just went forever through nothingness – just bogs and forest as far as you can see. We had about 30 miles of that before the first town we came to – Brownsville Junction. Now I had told them that I was good with another 80-mile day, and it just so happened that we ended up right next to a primitive little campground. I was good with it despite no shower facilities, but Bill and Judy didn’t want to jump in a river to clean off, so we loaded my bike up and headed down the road to a state park with shower facilities.

Have to say that now that we’re here, that warm shower does sound pretty damned good to me. They’re at the shower already as I’m finishing up this blog and then it’s my turn. All in all, great day, with warm sunshine and a very steady tailwind. Forecast for the next several days is pretty good. Will probably take me another 2 days to get through Maine and into Northern New Hampshire. So we’re right about on schedule with 80 miles a day right now. As I get stronger I’ll begin to bump the mileage up and inch up towards that magic 100 number.

Funny, well, not really, but Judy got eaten alive by the black flies, while Bill and I just got a couple bites here and there. At the same time the bulldogs, the horse flies, just go crazy for me, and to Bill at a lesser extent, but they don’t even buzz Judy. I usually have 8-10 of those harpies buzzing me while I’m riding and Judy has nothing? The further southwest we ride the less we’ll encounter this creatures, so maybe a couple more days and it won’t be so bad. Well, that’s it for today……….Pete