Ben's Adventures Across America (and a bit of Canada too!)

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Introduction and FAQ

Welcome to this newly resurrected blog! I’m Ben and below is the FAQ I originally wrote 3 years ago when I biked across the US. Now, as I prepare to bike from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, you can find more current news about my plans here.

Day 3: Bath, ME to Damariscotta, ME… and back 😞

Well, this trip didn’t go how I was hoping. Despite a very comfortable bed last night I slept miserably again thanks to my runny nose. So I was still feeling quite exhausted when I got up. At least having splurged for the Hampton Inn I got a nice hot breakfast out of the deal.

Lingering over breakfast gave me time to think about how I wanted to approach the day. I decided that since there were towns at roughly 10-mile intervals heading east from Bath, I’d evaluate how I was feeling at each of them: First Wiscasset, then Damariscotta, then Waldoboro. Waldoboro, being 30 miles from Bath, would be my last possible turnaround point for catching the last train to Boston, since that would then be 40 miles back to Brunswick for 70 miles on the day. If I went past Waldoboro I was committed.

Day 2: Saco, ME to Bath, ME

I hate being sick, I hate headwinds, I hate hills, and I definitely hate any combination of the above.

Let’s start with the first. Remember back before COVID-19 when people would get colds? Couple days of a sore throat, no fever, and it would slowly progress to a runny nose? Well, I have one of those, and my nose has been a faucet the last couple of days. Unfortunately this meant I didn’t sleep very well last night. So even sleeping in, I didn’t feel very rested.

But let’s digress to more pleasant things for a moment. I got to start off the day biking the Saco-Scarborough section of the Eastern Trail. No, it’s not the Scarborough where the fair is. But it does have an impressively large marsh, and the view from the bike path crossing the marsh is one of my favorite views from any bike path I’ve ridden.

Day 1: Cambridge, MA to Saco, ME

Gotta start out with two photos for crossing two state lines today!

Here goes nothing

As I mentioned at the end of my last post nearly two years ago, my next long-distance cycling goal is a bike trip to Nova Scotia. And while I don’t feel remotely ready for it, my plan is to leave tomorrow morning.

Day 35: Herkimer, NY to Schenectady, NY

Okay, I realize this post is rather delayed. Fact of the matter is, when I finished my ride for the day I then had to get dinner and drive back to Cambridge, and when I got home at 10:30 I was way too exhausted to write the post. Then it was the work week and I was too busy to sit down and write, the following weekend was Rosh Hashanah, and well, you get the idea.

So here I am writing this all a month later, but still with good memories of how the day went.

Day 34: Syracuse, NY to Herkimer, NY

Well, it happened. I don’t know how it happened, considering I didn’t train at all this time and just did the trip on a whim, but it happened.

Back in the Saddle Again

I bet you probably didn’t expect to see a post on here after a year! But here I am, getting ready to make up for skipping the stretch from Syracuse to Schenectady.

RIP Arcadia Ales and Mystic Brewery

Over the past week I learned about the closing/impending closing of two of the breweries I featured on my ride: Arcadia Ales in Kalamazoo, MI and Mystic Brewery in Chelsea, MA.

Appendix: Breweries, etc.

This is probably my last post on this blog. I thought about whether to continue writing about my visits to breweries by bike (e.g., I biked 25 miles around southern Maine on Sunday and hit 3 breweries in the process), but it feels like the purpose of this blog was really to chronicle my cross-country ride. If I decide to start another blog just for the purpose of critiquing breweries I’ll post a link here. And if I someday do another big ride (Vancouver-San Diego? Miami-Boston?) I’ll reopen this blog. In the meantime, I figured I should compile all the breweries (and wineries, etc.) that I visited into one post so people don’t have to go hunting through 6 weeks’ worth of posts to find a given brewery.

Acknowledgements

This ride would not have been what it was without the support and assistance of many, many people. So I wanted to reserve a page for shout-outs to all the people who made my ride special.