Day Nine: Maynard, MA

October 2: Portland, ME to Maynard, MA

miles: 137

time: 2.5 hours

Slept in for a while on the Aerobed in my old room. Called Katie to make plans for lunch. First thing had to get some oil, the sight had been looking lower and lower, so I headed up to Street Cycles in Falmouth to buy a couple quarts, one for now, another for later. Came closest to dropping the bike by taking it off the center stand on some uneven pavement. Fortunately I was smart enough to stand on the side I thought it might tip and saved it. Took the boulevard in near Deering to meet Katie and Bill for lunch at a Chinese place then an episode of NCIS: LA... Chinese was good, new NCIS not so much. I called it NCIS meets Saved By The Bell. Weird. Finally took the last leg back home. Even had time to wash my bike before the rain came in.

Now the unpacking starts.

Fin.

Day Eight: Portland, ME via The Cat

October 1: Kejimkujik National Park of Canada to Portland, ME

miles: 125

time: 3 hours


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We boiled up the last of the original water I brought for oatmeal- the water I got from the camping area this morning looking awfully yellow for my taste, then packed up our camping stuff to hit the road. On the ride out of the park I saw the porcupine I had seen last night a mile or so from where we had seen him before. Still eating grass but this time he rustled toward the bushes when he heard us coming.

Turned out to be a cold day. Temp on my bike hung around 53F but it seemed more biting than the other days. We stuck mostly to rt 1 when we could and took 101 when appropriate. It turned out to be a little challenging finding a place for lunch this time of year, many places are closed for the season already but we did find a good diner to warm up and get a couple lunches.

The Cat Ferry was easy to find, just follow the signs when you get to Yarmouth. We even had almost an hour to spare before loading onto the boat. The ride itself was pretty nice, we saw a couple porpoises and maybe whales, nothing really jumping out of the water so it was hard to tell exactly what you were looking at. On the boat there wasn't much to see, a bunch of older people on a tour. The best view was out of the back of the ship, seeing the rooster tail and the wake. From the front the seem doesn't seem very fast. The sound of the casino though nearly drove me insane, we didn't have the best choice of seats since we had to secure our bikes once we made it on and bikes were one of the last groups to be loaded.

Once we got to Portland we found our bikes made the trip without incident even though the ride wasn't exactly calm. It is a quick jaunt to my parent's house after getting through Customs at the ferry terminal which was good because it was getting to be a chilly night.