Day 4
The Rain In Maine Falls Mainly On The Plain...and our heads.

DAILY DOINGS: Well, our luck finally ran out as we woke to heavy rain and howling winds.  Hopefully, the wind won't blow all the foliage off...we're not through looking yet.  Anyway, we pretty much knew it was coming so we planned to try to wait it out and see what happened.  We had our regular meeting after breakfast at 9:00 at which time it seemed to be letting up but the winds were still blowing pretty hard.  The bad news was that it was blowing from the direction we were heading.  At our meeting we were glued to the weather radar which seemed to show that the worst would be past us by check out time so we changed our departure time to 11:00 to see if the conditions would be better.  Even at that, a couple riders had already decided they didn't want to ride at all...can't say I blame them.  If I could find a place to hide today, I would.

By 11:00 the rain had quit pouring, but it was still drizzling when 5 brave soles set out to ride the day no matter what.  The best news was that the winds had calmed down appreciably and by the time they got half way through the day, the winds were pretty calm...a far cry from the 30+ we were seeing at the 9:00 breakfast.

Our route took us through a few small towns with quaint harbors that broke up the periods we were in the Maine backwoods.  Each harbor was full of fishing vessels all moored randomly just off shore resting from their fishing trips most likely.  Everywhere you looked, you'd see piles of lobster traps in parking lots in the small fishing villages.  I'll bet if you could see the bottom of the bay, you'd probably see bottom completely covered with open lobster traps.  I don't know how a lobster could possibly leave his little lobster house without finding himself in a trap. 

Probably 70% of today's riding today was on fairly narrow, low traffic roads that meandered through wooded areas with colors that would knock your eyes out.  It was fairly easy to support the riders as they rode together most of the day until after the SAG and even then they didn't get much farther apart than a mile or two.  I spent the day just bouncing to the front and then waiting for the back...just like normal, but at a much smaller scale.

Barb took the riders who decided not to ride in one van, and I took the other van and followed the ones who wanted to ride.  With bikes safely attached to the roof of Barb's van, she took everyone to tour Owl's Head Lighthouse and then to a nice leisurely lunch in Damariscotta and some other sightseeing.  They had such a good time, that they barely beat the ones who rode to the motel.  By late afternoon, the sun was even trying to peek through the heavy clouds so several rode their bikes into Wiscasset to look around.  All in all it was a good day.  For the ones who rode, they probably had the best day so far concerning color.  The pockets of color on the back roads after the SAG were phenomenal.  I got lots of photos but the dreary day did thwart some of the brilliant color that we saw today.

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