Biking the Maine Mountain Division Trail - April, 2009

We had a plan for Easter Sunday, 2009 - and it didn't involve pigging out on ham. This is the explaination of our early spring trip - one that I'm sure we'll make again this fall!

We work up bright and early and the monkey ran out to search for eggs the Bunny had left behind. He scrounged up 8 which I thought was odd. Why wouldn’t the dumb bunny leave 10 or an even dozen? He was happy with his loot regardless, so who am I to judge?

I busted butt to get my Sunday chores done so we could go out and play. I loaded the bikes onto the car and filled my backpack with all the goodies one could ever need (and then a few million more) and we made the quick trip to the Standish end of the Mountain Division Trail. We’ve never made that trip before and thought that it sounded like a great excursion to try out. The path was relatively perfect and aside from a little snow here and there is was pretty dry too.

We snaked around Otter Ponds and then down a 7% grade hill to meet up with the railroad tracks that are no longer in use. We peddled along for about a mile with the wind to our backs and to be honest it was a really nice trip. We crossed Wescott Rd and found a bench at the 2.5 miles mark. We stopped and had a snack and a few slugs of water, then started to move on down the trail when we both realized that we had stiffened up considerably in our quick stop. Deciding that it might not be a smart move to continue, we turned around to begin the trek back and realized that the wind was in our faces now. Ferocious it was too. I bought us a couple of buffs (like on Survivor) a month or so back and I’m glad I did, we pulled them out and covered our faces and ears. They worked perfectly!

We probably biked about a 1/2 mile then walked the bikes back to where the trail met the tracks. We meandered around the Otter pond that is located on the Gorham side of the tracks then decided we’d better climb that 7% grade hill. You notice that I remember the grade quite well, and so do my thighs. At the top of the hill is a conveniently located park bench, which is exactly what we did – parked it. We had another snack and drink before finishing up the trip with a combination of walking up all upgrades and riding down anything with a downward slant to it.

Total trip was around 5 miles and took us 2 1/2 hours. We really enjoyed the ride, it was windy but sunny and semi-warm (perfect for the workout), the trail is clean and well made and rather scenic in the areas we made it to and as monkey put it we really enjoyed each other’s company. This was our second ‘trip’ of the year, we walked Scarborough Marsh off the Eastern Road trail the weekend before.

So I got home and jumped right into setting up supper – pork ribs done up in our favorite homemade sauce – whip up some black bean and corn salsa, fold a load of laundry and then I sit to type. Let me tell you something… I’m so going to hurt in the morning!

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