The annual Labor Day Maine Event had arrived, but the weather looked awesome for quite a stretch so I decided to add a couple days on to the front end and knock off a couple of things from my like-to-do list.
Wednesday night, stayed a bit late, headed to Wolfeboro, stopped in at the Wolfe's Tavern and slapped an ALR decal onto the bottom of my mug.
Thursday morning it was up early, and winding my way along scenic roadways, to the Mount Washington Auto Road. $16 not only got me into the park, but also got me one of those "This BIke Climbed Mount Washington" stickers...which of course will not make it's way to my bike.
Very scenic on the way up!
This was not unlike some of the roadways in the Alps, which made me very nostalgic! I'm hoping to get over there again next year...
Damn...clouds are moving in. This was the wall that was waiting for me at (I forget what) elevation.
Arrival! And not a thing to see in the distance!
I didn't even realize they had an old hotel on top of this mountain, way back in the day. Talk about rustic!
The dining area was pretty big, which didn't really make sense...
Since the sleeping quarters only fit about 8 people. Maybe they had large day-parties or something.
I loved all the rock stacks all over the place. They were stacked up along the edges of trail paths. The way they looked like silent sentinels reminded me of Morder from Lord of the Rings somewhat.
These were at the summit...
You know the wind gets bad when they have to chain the buildings down.
Many of the rocks had a very interesting green lichen on them.
More silent sentinels...
...leading off into the mist...
I was on a tight schedule, lotsa miles to knock out, so I didn't stay too long, unfortunately. I definitely will go back, it was amazing, even not being able to see much.
Again, the weather was calling for clear skies and warm sunshine the whole stretch, so I wasn't too thrilled when a monsoon swept through and soaked me entirely.
I asked a guy what the deal was with the rain and he said it was heading north. Huh. I'm heading north...maybe I should scrap the next leg of my plan and just head to the clearing. Maybe I'll check my weather radar...
WTF...it wasn't moving north, it was moving south. Which meant I could keep going with my plan.
It also meant after about an hour, I was back to skies that looked like this...
After a good long stretch of amazing scenic byway, I arrived at my destination; Fort Kent, at the northernmost tip of Maine, right at the Canadian border.
It was getting late in the day and I hadn't eaten anything all day but a couple of protein bars so I was pretty starving. I found a Subway, shoved a foot-long down my throat (leave that alone, it's way too easy), and started gearing up for the ride down to the Clearing.
A guy in the parking lot noticed my ALR vest and commented that he belonged to the local Legion as well. He noticed that I was tossing the gear on kind of rapidly and asked where I was headed. The conversation went like this;
Me: To be honest; about 6 hours south of here.
(Him, looking at his wristwatch in shock and then back at me); Do you know what time it is?!?
Yes (it was 6:30)
It's gonna get cold!
Yep, that's why I'm gearing up.
No, you don't understand.
When that sun goes down (motioning to the sky), it's gonna get COLD!!!
Yep, that's why I'm gearing up.
There's MOOSE on those roads!
Yep, I saw the signs (there were signs all over the place, warning of high impact rates).
No, there's moose everywhere - You Don't Want To BE On Those Roads!!
I understand, but that's why I'm trying to get going as soon as possible. I'm not trying to be rude, but I gotta get rolling.
He shook his head, wished me luck, and with that, I was off.
Rte 11 is amazingly scenic and I would have loved to have enjoyed it and stopped to take lots of pics, but I wanted to roll up as much of that black carpet as I could while there was still light in the sky.
I was doing about 20 over the speed limit until the last vestiges of light finally vanished from the sky. Now, with nothing more than my (seemingly far too yellow and dim) headlight to guide me, I dropped it down to 10 over and kept scanning the sides for any large movement.
Fortunately, no moose came charging out at me, but one stupid-as-fcuk raccoon did. He shot out from some tall grass like he had a death wish he wanted to carry out with my front tire. I gave a not-terribly-manly cry of surprise and managed to avoid him at the last second, and we both were able to continue on our way, unimpeded.
I finally arrived at the Clearing, and it was only 11:30 so I'd managed to shave an hour off of the ride time...but it was still quite dark out. I'd been hoping to find Dave awake so that I could have a drink with him, but the camper was dark and nobody was around, so I headed over to the clearing and set the tent up.
It was the weekend! Time for the official "thing" that is the Maine Event!
People were going to be arriving soon so that meant we had preparations to make, and that included grabbing some picnic tables.
Charlie and his tractor made the job quite easy...
A sad note to this year's event; our friend Garv had passed and wanted some of his ashes to be spread up in Maine. Some would be spread in the clearing, and some would be spread on top of "Moby Dick". I had no idea what Moby Dick was but it's a huge rock in an inlet that the Olean crew used to go and sit on late at night and wait for the tide to come in. Here are some pics of Moby, of the inlet, and of the dirty bikers.
You can see the container that Garv rode out in, in King's hands. It's Garv's travel Yahtzee container that he took when he went on trips
King said some words, Andrea read a poem she'd written, and we all toasted to the memory of our good friend Garv. Another one gone, far too soon.
The inlet was quite beautiful...
So why is this rock called Moby Dick? I'm told that Dana, many years ago, was riding by, glanced over (it must have been low tide), saw this rock, and proclaimed it to be Moby Dick. Why? Because if you click on and open the pic, you'll see an indentation near the top (that was it's lidded eye), as well as a cross-shaped crack in the side of it. Dana said that was where Captain Ahab's harpoon had struck the mighty whale. Sounds pretty good to me!
One last lineup...
A few of us hit The Slipway just outside of Thomaston center for the obligatory mid-day meal. I found a beer on the bottled beer list which sounded enticing so I figured I'd give it a shot. I wasn't a bottle, but it made up for it by having funny sayings on it...
I then tried a bottle...but shoulda stuck with the can. This porter wasn't very good....
Sunday brought the lobster fest, which meant it was a very bad day for these guys...
They had steak tips for us non-sea-spider eaters!
And more tips...
And marinated pork!!
Spiders and corn...
A couple of random pics of the attendees. It was a very small group this year, but we still had a fantastic time.
And the weather couldn't have been better...
We held the Sunday night ceremony, introduced the knights and ladies present, as well as knighted Tim and Ladied Steph and Ally. We remembered those of our crew who aren't with us any longer, and toasted Life before kicking back into party mode for one last evening.
The next morning would see me on the road quite early so I didn't stay up too late (not too far past midnight), before turning in.
The next morning I was up and on the road even earlier than planned, which lent itself to a quick ride home; only 3 hours. Not shabby at all considering the amount of LEO speed patrol that was out (5 staties in a row at one point, all had people pulled over).
It's crunch time at work now (budget season) but I wish I were back out on the roads. I'm getting quite tired of this working for a living thing. Life goes by too quickly, and there are too many miles out there still to be had. Maybe I should quit the rat race and just go ride
Too bad beer and food cost money. Otherwise I'd quit tomorrow.
Ride Hard, Take Chances.
No comments:
Post a Comment