The Maine Event

Friday Sept 28, 2012

I'm presented with a most distasteful decision today. It's raining and a little on the cool side. I can stay in the hotel today and hope tomorrow is better or go ahead and maybe things will clear. I choose the latter as I am not going to sit in a less-than-luxury hotel room all day with the odds of improvement slim. This is probably karma from my Spring trip where I had only about twenty minutes of rain one day out of the 24 days I was gone. This should be interesting and I'm concerned since I don't have MY winter/rain-proof gloves.

Yuck

Just for grins, I swing by the Harley dealer just down the road, or as the locals call it: the Holly dealer (prolly does good biz at Christmas), and priced a new pair of gloves. I'm not going to pay $80 for a pair of gloves for one day regardless of the misery I will endure.

I decide to take Highway 1A which is the coastal road. I'm sure it would be fun on a good day but not so much today. I can't remember which of these photos is NH or Maine. Taking pictures with rain pouring down is difficult indeed so I only have shots when there was no active downpour.

Ultimately I went from NH to Maine, back to NH, on to Vermont, and back again to NH. After discovering there were no decent hotels in Springfield, Vermont, I backtracked to a very nice little motel in NH. The Red Robin Inn is in Claremont, NH and the owner Lorraine is just the sweetest lady you would ever want to meet. Not only did she give me a break on the room rate, she offered to let me use her car to go get food if the pizza folks wouldn't deliver. Fortunately, the pizza folks did deliver and I didn't have to take her up on her offer.

So after a miserable day of riding, I can settle down to some hot pizza and listen to the guy next door talk loudly on his cell phone. I wish AT&T worked in this part of the country so I could talk also but it's not to be. Only two guys in the whole motel and we're next to each other. Oh well, live and learn. At least I'm warm and dry. Today was no fun whatsoever but I'm not quite as wet as I could have been. My rain suit worked well and I only started getting wet around the feet, crotch, and head. The water that pools in the seat between the tank is an issue for heavy down pours and there's no way to keep water out of the helmet and have any visibility. It could have been worse.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.