Day One – Portsmouth New Hampshire to Worcester Mass.

I woke early enough this morning to take the short ride to the Maine border on the Piscataqua River just as the sun was rising, so I will be able to officially say that I cycled from Maine to DC. I was rewarded with the smell of salt air on a quiet Sunday morning, and a terrific sunrise over the Harbor.

We ate breakfast after a short ride from the hotel, and then started out for Worcester. We enjoyed the quiet traffic and relative cool of Sunday morning, though the day soon got warm, and the temperatures we saw on bank signs and the like by mid-afternoon were in the mid-90s, with far more humidity than we get in Southern California. Most of the route took us through wooded New England countryside and small towns, but part of the ride took us through the heart of Lowell, Massachusetts.

For most of the morning I rode with a fairly large group that included a majority of the 18 riders, but by late morning I was riding with just Chris Fly (an emergency room doctor from Augusta, GA) and Debbie George (a nurse from Elkhart, IN). We were fairly evenly paced (though Debbie, coming from the flat state of Indiana, was a bit disadvantaged on the hills) and enjoyed riding together, especially as we together sorted out the sometimes confusing directions on the cue sheet.

Chris, Debbie and I were riding together as we began to get hungry for lunch, and found a place that looked promising just as we were leaving Lowell. We feared we wouldn’t find anything else for a while, so stopped, even though the place (Café Madrid) turned out to be a sit down restaurant doing a Sunday brunch business. We didn’t quite fit in with our sweaty cycling gear, but they served us anyway (albeit a bit slowly), and we had delicious wraps and a chance to cool off for about an hour. Chris and Debbie are pictured here, just after lunch.

The ride was a comfortable 92 miles (and with the side trip I took before breakfast, I just about put in a century today). There was little climbing compared to what I am used to in Southern California, and none of it strenuous. We climbed one little bump on Sawyer Mill Road, and were rewarded first with a short rest by a quaint horse farm, and then with this view out over central Massachusetts, complete with the obligatory New England stone fence.

Due to our long lunch and fairly frequent stops to chat, we didn’t get in until just about 5:00, but made relatively good traveling time, covering the 92 miles and 1800 feet of climbing in a little over six hours. For those of you who like maps, here's today's route.