Day 4: Powered by Pancakes

The bed was great, but the breakfast was better.

Day 4: Belfast to Rockland, via Camden

The wonderful proprieters of the Harbor View Inn -- two animated sisters who can't quite believe they're running a business together -- cooked us a gift of a breakfast. They knew our miles ahead and wanted to guarantee we were stuffed silly. The first course (?!), gingered nectarines, was among the tastiest dishes I've eaten all year, and this from a person who, as a rule, would sooner eat a wet sock than cooked fruit. They followed up with banana-pecan pancakes and two crisp strips of bacon for me (an extra pancake for vegetarian John). Perfection.

We had some of the most scenic riding of the trip, 42.25 miles by the end of the day, following country roads out of Belfast on a cool, foggy morning that gave way to blue skies and sunshine. We went miles and miles before seeing a car, and found ourselves claiming entire lanes instead of hugging the perimeter. After congested Route 1, we drank in the calm.

I haven't reflected much on the physical experience of this trip, averaging 42 miles a day up and down some pretty punishing hills (at least for a Chicago flatlands rider like myself). But I've probably never had an experience that so clearly exposed the body as machine as this one has. On a trip like this, food is fuel. Calories matter dearly as units of momentum. Hunger doesn't come out of boredom or suggestion. It comes when the body needs renewal, and stomach pangs are a message best listened to.

When the tank is empty, the engine won't go, except for that brief, delirious period when you're literally running on fumes -- the legs moving more of intertia than any palpable energy.

I've 'bonked,' as John likes to call it, a couple of times, the most deflating on the stretch between Searsport and Belfast, which seemed to get longer the farther we rode. It's the worst kind of rock-bottom imaginable: a contempt for all the world's geography and all the body's frailties, a sense that forward movement simply isn't possible.

But you get through it, refuel, and understand first-hand the necessity of filling the tank. And while these car metaphors seem misplaced on a trip like this, there's really no other way to describe it.

These were the thoughts that carried me from lovely, rolling Belfast into slightly antiseptic Camden, where we ordered ice cream cones from a place we learned was run by a Republican state senator with a name like Skip or Chip or Picket, who promises to "regulate government spending" (apparently through butter pecan). We washed down the sour aftertaste at a cafe with a cute barista and some incredible photography on the walls.

After a park-bench picnic, we headed on to Rockland, which is half fishing village, half boutique tourist attraction. German travellers and New England bluebloods mix with downtrodden folks who stagger their way down the street. Some major industry must have abandoned this area recently, leaving a heap of bad luck in its wake, all of it buried under the brushstrokes of "downtown revitalization."

Maine's Farnsworth family seems to have rebuilt the town singlehandedly. A museum you'd expect to find in a much larger city, including a self-contained Andrew Wyeth annex, takes up a sizable patch of land adjacent to the downtown strip. We were actually sorry to have missed the museum -- could have been a nice way to kill some time, especially since the only real alternative (a non-alternative for us, but seemingly the only game in town in these Maine tourist burgs) is shopping.

Instead, we wandered about trying to find lodging, including a stop at the local police station to get clearance to pitch a tent in the public park. An officer explained, sadly, that this was against a city ordinance -- enacted, no doubt, to keep those same down-on-their-luck locals from sleeping on the immaculate sidewalks.

We ended up at a depressing motor lodge at the end of town, but once the rain started we were grateful for the roof and warm beds, not to mention the cable tv that broadcast a Cubs game.

Aside from a dreamy dinner -- fried clams and onion rings at a tavern with its share of regulars -- Rockland was no great shakes. But we left on a high note, popping into the local coffee roaster for morning mochas, served up by an award-winning professional barista who'd just given up her car for a bike-only lifestyle. On our way out of town, a woman in a station wagon shouted "Happy trails!" and gave us a big thumbs up, so the town left a fine last impression.