Day 2: Hills, Wind, and Rain - Bar Harbor to East Orland

The day started out well enough - shoveling complimentary hotel breakfast into our faces as soon as the dining area opened at 6:30 AM to fill our bellies for what we expected to be a challenging first day. And boy were we correct in that regard. We had made it barely just past where the bike broke down yesterday and were greeted by a monstrously difficult hill. We had hoped that our gearshifters  were  all squared away after Pete, the mechanic at Bar Harbor Cycles, fixed up our bike. But sadly we still were having trouble shifting down to our lowest front gear (however, Pete did a lot of really good work on the bike yesterday and its riding incredibly well despite this continued difficulty - he has our thanks for squeezing us in as he did). So, we tried as hard as we could to get up that hill, but it was a no-go. It was just too steep at too high a gear. We ended up hopping off and walking the bike up the last quarter. Once we finally reached the top, Erin manually adjusted our chain so we could access those lowest gears - the de-railer was inline, so there wasn't any issue with the chain once it was in place, but we opted to not move away from the low front until we sorted the shifters out later.

(Me packing the bike up)

Things were much more doable once we got back on, but doable certainly does not mean easy. We had more solid climbs to make and a lot of traffic to contend with just on our way off the island. Then, of course, we had to ride through multiple sections of road work, which was worrying but actually went fairly well once we got past the drivers and were allowed through by the actual work crews themselves (thanks guys and gals!)

During all this there wasn't a ton of time to stop and take pictures. And we knew we were on a timeline, since rain was forecasted for the afternoon. We did see a fox run across the road with a little morsel in its mouth - very cool! We also got our first roadkill sighting (a porcupine, poor thing), but I won't upload that picture...it was pretty gruesome.

Traffic really died down the further away from Desert Island we got, aside from the crazy road riding we had to do in Ellsworth. Road riding in which we took a wrong turn and climbed a veeeerry steep hill only to realize that was the wrong way to go at the crest. We couldn't even turn around and enjoy the decline, though. It was a one-way street!! Ellsworth also had probably the steepest hill we tackled today, and we opted to walk some of it since it was really busy (also a work zone) with some impatient drivers.

(We saw cows! They were very interested in us as we struggled up the hill)

Our day generally consisted of hills, hills, and more hills. The wind was always against us, too, so our declines were slowed so much that we were still pedaling on our way down. One time, we even came to a halt on the downside of a slope. Both of us were very annoyed.

Towards the end we were pretty exhausted. And that's when it started to rain. Gentle at first, but then real, steady rain that was quite cold. Not so refreshing when it's under 50 degrees out. About an hour before our finish, we took a rest stop and were swarmed by some large and hungry mosquitos. There was a moment of map-checking (read: tired desperation) trying to locate where the heck this campsite was that we should have hit already (shoulda remembered to read the map updates we had since our version of the map is a couple miles off) but we ultimately rolled in, wet, starving, and exhausted. A fifty-something mile day, finished by 2:30 PM. I have Erin's word that this was a very difficult  day of riding, but the trailer stayed on and it was a really fun day nonetheless. And now we are in a beautiful campground that had a warm shower and (what luck!) a clothes dryer. We also got a beer, because we earned it.

(Bedragled but still smiling)

The real victim of today was Erin's legs. I don't know many times the pedal colided painfully with her ankle and shin, but she's got some serious brusies and scrapes. All that stopping and dragging of the bike through roadwork traffic really did a number on her. Check out the damage below:

Ow.