Ridin'Ard

Hours in the saddle: 5:45 (36:31 so far)

Theme music: Sarah Brightman, Broadway

Jaron’s theme music: Julie singing Sarah Brightman and Broadway over the intercom

We made it to Canada! 

We got rolling at 8:30. OH MY GOD THAT’S SO EARLY. The Days Inn Augusta was not really for hanging around, we’ll just say that. It was foggy but we figured it would burn off as it warmed up. I mean, we’d never left so early before so we didn’t really know how this worked. 

We had a black swan event with Julie’s helmet after turning north on Rt 1. At the rally, a guy from our helmet manufacturer was nice enough to give us some panels to go on the hinges on both sides of our visors that would keep our visors from flipping closed at 50 mph. So we both put those on. I’d noticed that my visor didn’t close all the way since doing that, which was alright since it fogs up when closed but it was annoying when going 80 mpg and wanting it closed all the way. Then one side just came detached. So we pulled over and yeah, the entire visor hinge assembly which attached with two screws was no longer attached to my helmet. So we had to take it apart and put it back together on the side of the damn road and that was very stressful. We did not lose any parts. I iust wanted to take the entire visor off and continue 3 miles to breakfast to deal with it then. Jaron thought I was saying I wanted to take my helmet off until breakfast so he insisted we fix it right then. <shakes head> 

Breakfast was awesome at a local chain in Camden. They had apricot white chocolate muffins and a trout spread special and the most hazelnutty coffee I’ve ever tasted. 

It was super foggy all day. We kept seeing that there were supposed to be nice views along our shoreline route but all we saw was fog. 😡

Continued north to Passamaquoddy Bay. Julie’s favorite childhood movie is Pete’s Dragon, the 1977 version. It is set in the seaside town of Passamaquoddy. So I got really excited when I saw that on the map. BUT, it was not filmed in Maine, it was filmed somewhere in California and there is not an actual town called Passamaquoddy. But I wanted to see Passamaquoddy Bay anyway since it was along our route, so we went to Eastport which is at the end of a point-type thing. Thanks to the instant gratification-enabling music ecosystem, I got the soundtrack and listened to & sang it on the way. My first computer programming project that I remember was to program a school computer to play a song, and I chose Candle on the Water which is from this movie. Then I copied it to my friends’ school computers and had them play it in a round and learned the value of processor clock synchronization (circa mid 1990’s). And two of my friends from middle school might remember us singing this song in choir. 

Here’s Passamaquoddy Bay: 

If you look really closely, you can see a boat. Its foghorn went off every couple of minutes. 

Eastport had a historic district that was pretty cute. 

From there we went to Calais, Maine and CROSSED THE BORDER. It was pretty simple, just handed the guy my passport and answered the same questions you get at the airport. And read him my license plate #. I’d never crossed a land border before. 

We got to the other side and saw some Canadian cows! We made our way to our hotel in St. Andrews and got a recommendation for dinner. It was super good. 

Jaron’s comment for today is “clouds, clouds, clouds”. And that it’s his first time in Canada. 

Tomorrow we’ll make our way north along the Bay of Fundy and check out some scenic drives from the book. 

Oh, and I’ve noticed that the email subscription justs sends one email at like 4am even if I posted more than once. So this post is about Monday and I’m publishing it tonight, but I also published Sunday’s post this morning so those relying on the emails will not get an email about that one. That happened another day last week, I don’t remember which day, but that’s why I’m noting this.