Thursday, July 31, 2014
Monmouth, ME - July 31, 2014 - 8 miles
Short ride today around favorite routes. Stopped by a new kiosk put up by a local conservation group, but was dismayed to learn that mountain bikes were prohibited from using their trails. Why do so many conservation groups ban mountain bikes? It seems they should welcome human powered, green means of transport. Isn't it less green to drive to a conservation area and walk around, than to bike to the same area and bike around?
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Bowdoin and Sabattus, ME - July 29, 2014 - 20 miles
A beautiful ride on a beautiful day. Mostly on an ATV trail in Bowdoin and Sabbattus.
Exploring this year much further south than ever before, I kept pushing further and further until I knew that I was going to exhaust myself getting back. Finally arriving at a paved road, I rode a half mile down to the next intersection. Try as I might, there was no locating the intersection on my map, a page from DeLormes Atlas of Maine. Ordinarily an invaluable resource, it turned out to be practically useless today.
Not wanting to risk extending my ride even further with a wrong turn, I doubled back and re-traced my route northward through the woods, until I came to another paved road, which I was also unable to locate on the DeLormes. This time, I was reasonable sure, by the position of the sun, that the paved road was heading north, the direction I wanted to go and that it would be much faster than continuing to re-trace the ATV trail.
This turned out to be a rare good decision-an almost straight, level, mostly paved road leading back to my starting point at the Litchfield fair grounds.
When I got home, I signed onto Google maps, hoping to learn where I had been. Google had the road names right and I was able to identify where I had been. Had the road names been changed since the atlas was printed? Why would a town re-name roads?
Exploring this year much further south than ever before, I kept pushing further and further until I knew that I was going to exhaust myself getting back. Finally arriving at a paved road, I rode a half mile down to the next intersection. Try as I might, there was no locating the intersection on my map, a page from DeLormes Atlas of Maine. Ordinarily an invaluable resource, it turned out to be practically useless today.
Not wanting to risk extending my ride even further with a wrong turn, I doubled back and re-traced my route northward through the woods, until I came to another paved road, which I was also unable to locate on the DeLormes. This time, I was reasonable sure, by the position of the sun, that the paved road was heading north, the direction I wanted to go and that it would be much faster than continuing to re-trace the ATV trail.
This turned out to be a rare good decision-an almost straight, level, mostly paved road leading back to my starting point at the Litchfield fair grounds.
When I got home, I signed onto Google maps, hoping to learn where I had been. Google had the road names right and I was able to identify where I had been. Had the road names been changed since the atlas was printed? Why would a town re-name roads?
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