Day 60
Kilometer 5079
Pleasant Villa, NB
After two days around the Bay of Fundy with Mom (in a car more functional than my bike, I'm happy to say), I'm back for the last portion of the trip. I'm near the end now.
A lot of bike mending was required today. I took the head of a screw and jammed it in between the bike frame and the back wheel to keep them in place. Virtually everything else was fixed with duct tape. (How could I live without it?)
Day 61
Kilometer 5199
Harvey, NB
This is, barring more bike malfunctions or inclement weather (and I won't count on either of those passing me by), my last full day in Canada. I stopped in Fredericton, New Brunswick and celebrated like a true Canadian—er, I went to McDonald's at the mall downtown. For all the times I worried about someone finding me at night and telling me off for being where I shouldn't be, I didn't expect it at a fast food chain in the daytime, but sure enough, the mall security guard came over and told me that I'd "been sitting there for way too long charging your phone. You ate your meal. Now you need to leave." I looked at my watch. Not quite thirty minutes had passed since I walked in. Oh, please, Mr. Mall Cop, thirty minutes is nothing. You don't know the meaning of sitting-at-a-McDonald's-for-way-to-long-so-you-can-charge-your-phone. (But, of course, this polite Minnesotan gave no more sass than an exaggerated eye roll when his back was turned.)
The two new punctured tires today bring the trip total up to eight. And the screw head I jammed between the wheel and the frame is, it turns out, not quite large enough. I wrapped some tape around it for extra width, (I guess I was wrong about the solution not involving duct tape!), and wedged it back in. It seems to have held. For now.
Day 62
Kilometer 5317
Perry, ME
Back in the US—back in the US—back in the US of A. I met first other long-distance bike rider of the trip. Prince Edward Island to Mexico, he said, which sounds a lot more impressive than when I told him my route—just a list of states and provinces—but I checked later, and 5317 kilometers would have gotten me a little ways into Mexico if I'd started in PEI.
I'm sleeping on the 45th parallel north tonight. I pulled over behind a sign on the side of the road telling me I was "halfway from from the Equator to the North Pole."
Day 63
Kilometer 5438
Milbridge, ME
My mom has decided, ever since a particularly long stretch of Québec, that names of cities and provinces up here don't mean anything to her, so she now updates me every few days on where I would be if I hadn't done this weird Canada thing and just gone straight west from Cape Cod, across the US. In Québec, when I'd gone 2000-some kilometers, that was Iowa. For weeks I've been getting texts telling me "Kearney, Nebraska!" or "Almost to Denver!" Well, at Kilometer 5425 this evening, I reached San Francisco and finished my trans-continental voyage. Alas, Milbridge, ME is not San Francisco, so I've got a few more days to go.
Day 64
Kilometer 5530
Bar Harbor, ME
I veered off the route to Mount Desert Island to visit the last major stop of the trip: Acadia National Park. I'm technically inside the park boundaries, which is probably against lots of rules. Don't tell.
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