Day 106- Heading Home

I have very mixed feelings about today. On one hand I am excited that this will be my last day of riding. After 105 days of riding, I will turn the pedals for the last time on this odyssey. On the other hand, I am a tad bit sad because the trip has been so wonderfully amazing and it is ending. But there is one more day of riding, even if it is going to be a short ride.

This morning when I woke up, I immediately looked toward the sky. The sky was broken clouds tending toward mostly cloudy. I was wondering if this was going to present a problem with THE PLAN. It was not my plan, but my cousin Steve’s plan. The plan was that I would ride back towards Ellsworth to the Bar Harbor airport and Steve would fly in and pick me up in his private plane. If the weather was not clear enough, he would have to scrub his flight and I would be in a state of limbo either waiting for the weather to clear or maybe having to ride another 150 miles to Portland , ME.

Well, first things first. I had to tear down my camp and ride into Bar Harbor just to check for any text message that Steve might have sent because there was no cell service in the campground. Riding back to town I was pretty sure the weather was clearing so I was gaining optimism by the mile. In Town I got lunch and also received a text from Steve saying he was leaving and his ETA was around 1:45. That was fantastic news.

I needed to leave Bar Harbor pretty quickly at that point since I still had to ride about 13 miles to the airport. I thought I would get there about the same as Steve.

The ride today was now almost certain to be my last of the trip and the weather was now actually getting better by the minute. I felt pretty strong today too. Maybe I was riding on Adrenalin, but the hills were all pretty easy to tackle.

I got to the airport with time to spare so I changed clothes into something fairly clean, got out of my cycling shoes and donned my tennis shoes. I thought I might as well be as comfortable as possible on the flight. It would be about 90 minutes.

Steve arrived pretty close to his estimated time. It had been an easy flight in with nearly perfect flying conditions.

My bike fit into the rear seat of the plane, but only after taking the wheels off along with the panniers. And then just like that, we were airborne.

The view of coastal Maine was amazing with all of the bays and islands.

The one thing about the view from the air was that everything looked so flat. Could all of those hills have been imagined? No, they had to have been real. My legs told me so every day. Flat or hilly, the view was awesome!

We landed near Sterling, Mass (not too far from Boston) where Steve and his wife Sue lived. I planned on staying through Saturday afternoon so I could visit with my cousin plus get some necessary errands out of the way. Then I would be catching the Amtrak Saturday to Chicago, change trains and ride to Whitefish, MT, visit with my friend Joe for a day, and finally arrive home in Wenatchee around 5:30 AM on Wednesday on the last leg of the Amtrak trip.

I am almost home. Home sweet home, here I come.