vacation land

I'm in Lincoln, New Hampshire. We left from Portland, Maine on Sunday June
2nd. Some of you might be saying, "hmmm, weren't you supposed to leave on
SATURDAY from BAR HARBOR?" well...yeah. We (ok, not me I was in the back
seat) ended up driving straight through on rainy friday night and crashed in
a motel at 5 am. The next morning I woke up and asked, "what town are we
in?" Melissa said, "Portland!" I replied, "oh, I thought we were leaving
from Bar Harbor, that's where my maps start." Melissa said, "I thought we
were leaving from Portland." Looking back, every time we talked about the
launch we said Maine and never discussed the actual CITY. funny stuff. No
problem, we ended up on the adventure cycling maps two days later.
Also, we woke up on saturday and it was raining. I mean pouring. Both
Melissa and I said, "THIS is not how I pictured our first day. It's
supposed to be sunny and happy." It got worse with us not being able to
find the IHOP for lunch and Mac's car (who drove us) had the engine light go
on. So, we took these as signs and said let's leave tomorrow instead. Then
Mac, Travis and Patti - the kind souls who agreed to drive up with us -
decided they would stay too, so it was the perfect send off party with lots
of shipyard beer and pizza in Portland saturday night.

The actual launch was perfect, no rain and we dipped our rear tires into the
Atlantic ocean with lots of surfers behind us. First night was in Standish,
ME and second night we stayed in Conway, NH. The area up here is absolutely
beautiful and the people are so nice. The motto the first two days was - "I
love Maine!" But, it's hilly. I mean really. There are these mountains
called the Appalachians up here that are killer, you might have heard of
them. We travelled yesterday on the Kancamungas Highway. At one point we
got off and read the history of who Kancamungas was - "an indian chief who
had a violent temper and would unleash the furies of the gods on his
opponents when he went to war." yeah, he unleashed the furies of the gods
on my quads. The motto that day was "We've GOT to be almost at the top." For
23.3 miles we weren't. I explained how the day went to my parents, and they
said, "leigh, that was a really good strategy stopping to take breaks and
eat every 100 feet while you were going up the mountain." I"m thinking,
STRATEGY??!! it was necessity!" I wasn't going to make it straight
through. At least now I know what it's like climbing 2,300 feet in elevation
in one day. It was quite fun going down the other side of the mountain (for
the 10 minutes it lasted)- got up to 28 mph (of course we were going about 4
up the mountain).

Last night we were going to stay at a campground, but when I called I got
this on their answering machine, "Hi, this is Earl. If you have a question
about the campground please leave a detailed message with your address and I
will answer your questions by post card." Looks like Earl's son bought him
an answering machine one Father's day and installed it, but forgot to teach
him how to use the phone. We took that as an indicator not to bike the 2
miles out there to check it out. So, we stayed at the Lincoln motel last
night and after Melissa blew out 3 tubes in the parking lot when we were
trying to leave today we decided to rest our tired mountain climbing legs,
stay an extra night here, and find the public library to catch up on email.
very good decision because we have another 2,000 feet in elevation to climb
tomorrow.

Hope everyone is doing well. Thanks for your emails, it's nice to hear
what's happening back in your world.
cheers!
leigh