Our long delay in updating this site might by explained by going back and reading the Ontario & New York posts first before this one, which is most easily accomplished by clicking in the BLOG ARCHIVE to the right over there -------->
Day 35: Lebanon to Brunswick, NY. 121.1 miles. 8:22 saddle.
“balance, repetition, composition, mirrors”
Those four words were said with ballet in mind, but their importance in cycling can’t be overlooked. As un-cool as mirrors might look protruding from a helmet, our ability to foresee when oncoming semi-trucks would cross paths in time with our own allowed us to step down and ride into the gravel beside us. I can legitimately say it prevented us from getting hit in both North Dakota and Washington.
After Dave and Tim cleared a path through the fallen tree, we had a 15 mile rolling ride back to Highway 20 over a different course than the moonlight one from a few nights before. Dave and I had a fair amount of discussion over our next few moves, because we intended on riding northeast to Lake George to see another great-uncle, take a day of rest, and then cruise further north to ride one final pass through the White Mountains before our descent into Portland. But Dave’s dad, Ev, who we’d been calling daily since day one, and who this trip is essentially in honor of, was on his own downhill ride, unable to follow our conversations fully and reduced to a whisper. Ev wanted us to finish our journey, undoubtedly, but mentioned to Dave to “hurry up if you want to see me again.” So we changed our route to a nearly perfect diagonal line up to Portland, and this change is evident in our lack of photographs and time spent talking with strangers over coffees at truck stops.
When we reached the only American home Dave remembers from his childhood, in Schenectady, he stopped to call Ev and Liz to share in the memory. But there would be no conversation, as Ev was under heavy sedation after taking a significant fall the night before, and Liz had her hands full with it all. So we snapped a picture and kept riding. I can tell when my dad is having a hard time, emotionally, and he channels it into his riding. Learning how to be a support for him has been difficult and I’m always at a loss for words, but a hug or a simple “are you okay” when he finally takes a break is the best solution I’ve found. It was the wrong day to hang around to explore Ev’s alma mater, Union College, so we pressed on to Troy, to meet up with our old friend, Highway 2. Thinking she hadn’t aged well since we last saw her back in North Dakota, we soon realized we were on State Route 2 (not the US route) and we found it was the worst patch of road since the section where we almost died back in Winthrop, Washington. This is why picking roads at random doesn’t work for cyclists.
When we crested a long climb out of Troy, close to the Vermont border, Dave noticed a community sports field, with 8 baseball dugouts to choose from. Since we had passed Cooperstown earlier in the day (the baseball hall of fame sits here), it seemed fitting to find solace in a diamond, and reinforce our earlier discussion that we wouldn't return to such a museum until Pete Rose got his comeuppance.
It’s tough to be nonchalant as we wheeled our pack horses into the complex, but we went straight to the dugout with its back to the houses of the neighborhood, and started cooking anything we could find in our packs; there is no point in saving scraps of goodness at this point. We exhausted our cookware with dehydrated stew, spam, hot cereal, beef jerky, top ramen, and chamomile, and found a spigot shower as the daylight dropped. The mosquitoes came in droves, and if we had packed our face nets we wouldn’t have had to waste time on our tents, but we were happy to give a baseball diamond a try. Oh how I wanted to read. Once again, I slept with a book straining its spine on my chest.
Day 36: Brunswick, NY to Concord, NH. 136.1 miles. 10:20 in saddle.
“I have got some business at the edge of town, candy weighing both of my pockets down”
Our second day to include dark rides, and we were off to an early start. Once crossing into Southern Vermont, you are in the Green Mountain National Forest, an area of small green waves, but hearty climbs as well. The picturesque area is being threatened by wind farming, and I’m still on the fence about whether this is an environmentally friendly venture when it spoils a beautifully intact old growth area. We celebrated the top of the pass with milk, granola, cheese and peppered beef sticks, all purchased at the base of the climb, because we think with our eyes, not a scale. We argued with a tourist shop’s cashier over their water, because they refused to fill our bottles; their tap water wasn’t clean but they conveniently sold $3 twenty ouncers. Returning to the shop wielding a UV sterilizer pen ended the argument and we drank water endlessly.
We hit our halfway point around three, legs already shot from a long ride of elevation fluctuation, and we plotted how far we could make it before our they gave out. Calling ahead to Concord, New Hampshire, we found motel prices to be laughable, but the receptionist asked if we were riding for a cause. Perfect. They get a tax write off and we get double queen sized beds and an extra large pizza from the next door down. But there were 70 miles to tackle first. The next gas station we found had a plethora of gummies, perhaps every variety of Trolli Candy (if I do a similar trip again I will shoot for sponsorship) and we loaded up.
The following 50 miles were once again straight sine waves, temperature still in the 90s with humidity to choke us, until it broke with thunderstorm that somehow encircled us with black clouds, flashing and downpour, but only dropped a mist. I found a blackberry phone on the shoulder, and scurried to find the battery and backing too. Fully functional and worth a few bennies, it had a warning on its screen of being property of the USPS, so we just handed it off to the first mail carrier we saw. The exchange took place a state away from where we found it, but we saved the little guy nonetheless.
And the last 10 miles of riding into a preserved area of Concord, every house centuries old, was making us a tad disappointed that we had no time or energy to explore, but not enough to quell our anxiousness for ending this trip and getting home to support our family in Spokane. The bed was much comfier than a concrete dugout, and the pizza deliciously fattening.
Day 37: Concord, NH to Portland, ME. 90.4 miles. 6:10 in the saddle.
“On a highway. And when they call me lucky for all the places I stay, It's hard for me to not say ‘I can't wait to find home.’”
Dave wanted pancakes. There are days he won’t shut up about pancakes, and his demands started early. So we didn’t hit the road at 7, but enjoyed a hearty breakfast together and he shared with me some thoughts he wrote down about his dad earlier that morning. He opts to always awake at 5 am to wrap his head around the thoughts of the previous day, rather than catch their fleeting escape every evening like I do. It was not the first teary-eyed discussion we’d shared over a short stack along this road.
We were battling some morning traffic on an unsafe portion of country road just west of the border of Maine when we got the call we’d been expecting since, well, Christmas. Dave’s tone is usually business when one of his brothers calls, so I’ve learned to recognize this when he steps off into one of these conversations of tough decisions about his parents. Many times I had to follow him down the road to check if it was the call that loomed. But when his brother Don called– at 6:30 Spokane time- and Dave whistled me to a quick stop in thick gravel, the three “okay’s” I heard him say to his brother before hanging up didn’t need explanation. Dr. Morris Everett Fuller had just passed on, with Liz at his side.
A tough day.
Now, weeks later, I’ve put off putting down words about this, and I’m wondering what’s appropriate, as some people came to this site looking for bicycle adventures. Grandpa’s obituary was a giant column, so I thought I’d write my version, which has a lot of what I said at his incredible funeral.
7 kids, 16 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren. He lost a circle of friends abruptly, twice, early in his lifetime. First as a medic in WWII when the room next to his was bombed, killing most of his regime’s medical team, and again ten years later in Ecuador, when the five missionaries he had been working closely with to start a hospital in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador were speared to death while he was tending to the clinic. When his kids were old enough to need education, he left Ecuador to start a private practice in California to pay for their college tuition, and once paid for, promptly sold the practice to alternate between work in the Middle-East and Ecuador. His wife, Liz, was the nurse that made them a team, and together they left an impression on families all over the world. His final couple decades were spent in Spokane, lucky for the 11 of us cousins in the area (the 5 in Ecuador got to share their childhood with them too – they’re older). He worked part-time until he was 90, and never stopped learning. They started every morning with a filing box of notecards, praying and thinking about the names on each card, one at a time. All their friends that had a last name with the letter “S”, for example, were discussed, and then they moved to the countries that needed prayer, maybe Sudan, but probably not Switzerland. That’s the shortest, butchered version of his life I can think of.
The rest of the day was a blur. We downed coffee and water, tried to push on with occasionally blurry eyes, and spent a fair amount of time on the phone. We hit the beach in Portland by 4 pm, snapped a few pictures, and then met up with a couple of generous board members of Maine’s Hospice Council who wanted to take us out for dinner. Lobster seems to be the thing to eat in Maine, and we talked often eating it along the road as we gnawed on hardened bread and sweating cheese. It was the treat we figured we deserved, having never cracked into one, and although we made it clear we wanted to pay for our extravagance, Kandyce and Tom wouldn’t allow it. A hot evening on the Pier, digging into the crustacean’s liver mush with our fingers was blissful. We conversed about careers, the state of hospice, and how one makes decisions about both topics; time passed quickly. When they said to “tell us about your grandfather” it opened up some story time that took away the sadness I had been feeling all day; it was quite a life to celebrate. Thinking about living a fulfilling 92 years and being prepared for your death is a blessing.
Although I had set up an interview with the local newspaper, they must have lost interest in what I hoped to talk about – hospices in Africa – and Dave’s cousin arrived to load up our bikes and drive north into the heart of Maine, to the small town of Peru.
Day 38: Peru, ME to Boston, MA.
“just say you’ll come see maine when the snow falls”
So it finally set in that our trip was over. 33 days of riding, 4 days of rest, and we made our goal for the trip; we averaged 102 miles per day, according to Dave’s tally.
We woke up to pancakes with blueberries picked before the coffee was on. Steve is the son of Curtis from a few hundred miles back, and his wife, Marcia, share a gorgeous home with wide acreage. The house is “New England style,” meaning the building gets older as you move through it so you pass the indoor swimming pool that emulates current until you’re sleeping in a 200 year old room. Still exhausted, we had a relaxing day of getting the bicycles shipped, reorganizing everything into duffel bags for the flight, and enjoying the company of a couple who have been riding their tandem bike throughout our country. I guess it’s in the Fuller blood (Curtis was a bicycle commuting anesthesiologist back in the day, and shared trips with Steve long before I came to be).
We wandered through their back property, picking blueberries and raspberries as we walked, and took a drive out to swim under an old covered bridge and a viewpoint along a crossroads of the Appalachian Trail. Seven moose were spotted along the short ride, which might be a record, and we stuffed ourselves with home-cooked glory, thanks to Marcia. Climbing up a ladder into their barn, we didn’t expect to find a large skateboarding park in the upper level with quarter pipes, rails, and piles of shattered decks, but there it is, on a remote farm in Maine.
We definitely felt rushed there at the end. We had purchased our tickets from Boston to Spokane the week before, thinking we’d get to see Grandpa one last time, and now we were packed up and leaving before we realized we were there. New England was a blur, and I look forward to returning to it someday, renting a bicycle, and looping around the coast and White Mountains, perhaps with my second cousin. On the way to the Portland bus station we got pulled over for driving with the running lights instead of full-beams, each of us with an open can between our legs – of coffee, and caught the 3 am bus to Boston for an 8 am flight home. We have too many so many people to thank that I don’t want to begin the venture unless I can thank them all.
It’s the end of the trip.
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