Day 34 Saturday June 1/13 Bar Harbor, Maine 10955 kms

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Waaaaaaa. It's tooooooo hhhhhhhhhhhhoooooottttttttttttttt ...... (I did NOT, I repeat, did NOT say that out loud). BUT 34 degrees C at 10:00 o'clock this morning with increasing humidity as the day went on.

Maine! Land of lobsterpounds, la-la, and no helmet laws.

The border crossing at Saint Stephen, NB into Maine was on a bridge over the Saint Croix River. My US border agent clearly didn't attend the same charm school as my interrogator at the Soo, and we entered the US very seriously indeed. In front of us in the 3 car lineup was a large Harley, with two riders dressed in muscle shirts and small helmets ready to be ripped off once across the line. Welcome to the norm in this state. Only the gringos wear jackets, boots and gloves, and they're also the only ones sweating buckets in the humidity. Envy sets in, but smart-sense keeps our clothes on and we put up with the sweat rolling down the back and boots imprisoning the swollen feet.

We agreed on a goal of reaching Bar Harbor via route 1 along, you guessed it, the water. Always drawn to the water. This small town is situated on Desert Island, on the edge of Acadia National Park, and looked very charming on line, offering a plethora of accommodations and restaurants. Why was it then that we managed to book the wrong hotel? Perhaps it was that we were sitting in the Visitor Info Booth downtown among a thousand other hot people in scorching sun and humidity, tired from riding, and anxious to get settled in somewhere this late in the day. The Holiday Inn Waterfront we thought was downtown was actually 5 miles from downtown. The waterfront room we thought we had booked according to the ad on Expedia in reality was a first floor hellhole in a separate outbuilding with a view of the parking lot. Errrrrrr - NOT. After a lengthy, polite but firm discussion with the hotel manager about the virtues of advertising and honouring what you promise, we were given a water view room with king bed in the main hotel complex. We ended up enjoying the facility, taking advantage of the pool to cool down, savoring a Bud Lite or two and taking in the ocean and surrounding scenery. We later feasted on, yep, a succulent lobster salad in the hotel restaurant. If you are wondering why we didn't just ride back into town for dinner, other than being done from the heat (not a complaint after all the wet cold we have already complained about) and having had a drink, my throttle had broken as we were riding out of Bar Harbor to the hotel right in the middle of an intersection, where I throttled up and the bike decided otherwise and came to a halt. Houston, we have a problem. The grip itself has split and disintegrated and is no longer attached to the throttle mechanism. We (as in Ian) will try to fix it in the morning.

On the topic of advertising, Bar Harbor was not quite as we expected either. The first word that came to mind was artificial. Ian's first reaction was Disneyland. Cruise ship passenger trap. Overpriced boutiques nestled between Niagara Falls Tacky Tourist Strip Tee-Shirt shops. Ostentatious hotel and restaurant facades luring you in to try outrageously priced lobster rolls. Land of make believe that becomes a ghost town in the winter months. The harbor itself was stunning, in fairly protected Frenchman Bay offering calm waters for anchoring. Cruise ships arrive here every day during the summer months.

Tomorrow's destination remains unknown and will depend largely on how Ian is feeling. I feel so badly for him, he spent the day sneezing and coughing in his helmet, and there's nothing I can do for him other than drug him up at nighttime with Advil, anti-histamines and a sleeping pill. Get better babe!

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