Slow Roads and Slower Towns

Ten tombstones, their owners sent to heaven;
As tired as Charlie is, will he become eleven?

July 15 — HAINES CORNER CEMETERY, Maine

I bicycled out of Gorham under sunny skies and skipped off the main highway, crossed the Androscoggin River and followed the North Road, which parallels U.S. Highway 2 but is a small, shady road with almost no traffic. The woman at the visitor center also said I would have a better chance of seeing moose. I saw a woodchuck.

The Androscoggin River meanders southeasterly, the same direction I was going and it means that my path is downhill on the whole, but there's only 700 feet to lose between here and the coast, so it's not like I'm on a superslide.

I quickly passed the Maine border and eventually reconnected with U.S. 2 at Bethel. The legs are firming up and pedaling seemed to go well. Like usual, my shoulders still suffer, but everything else seems good.

I had planned to stop at Rumford Falls for the night. There was a motel on the west side, well before the downtown of the city, so I kept going thinking surely I would find a hotel or motel closer to downtown. No luck. I kept pedaling assuming I would find a hotel at the next large town, Livermore Falls. No luck again.

Both Rumford and Livermore seemed to be built upon the lumber industry. The smell of paper mills was the same as what I had encountered in Pine Bluff and Nashville, Ark., many years earlier.

I kept going. I rode through Mexico and Peru. Really. I kept on until I was too tired to keep going. I pulled over and pitched the tent between a vacant house and a graveyard.

And I fell asleep after eating a Quaker Chewy Granola Bar.

Comments

[Dave Edmark]

I thought you had to be in Missouri to go through Mexico after first passing through Cuba,

[Betty Arambel]

you could have seen a woodchuck in mom's backyard! It's sounding great!