It starts here:

After three and a half days of cramped Greyhound Bus riding, bus station water sampling (perhaps the most adventurous aspect of our journey), pb & j munching and a riduculous number of bus transfers and layovers (mmmm fast-food and gas stations - gotta love convenience food); my cycling partner and I finally made it to Portland, ME.

Shortly after arriving in Portland we picked up some almost forgotten supplies from a bike shop in town and biked about 20 miles into rural Maine to stay with a friend of a friend and her 4 billy goats.

Waking up a bit late (I think we both need to learn how to be morning people), we set off on our first day of biking. About ten miles from the border of New Hampshire, we became entrenched in the rain madness that we've been hearing about. The storm itself wasn't bad, the rain was warm and the visibility was decent, so we merely put on our neon-yellow rain gear and continued pedalling. Crossing the Piscataqua River from ME into NH, I led us onto an incredibly slick, lattaced, steel bridge, which was NOT bike friendly. Mariah quickly sensed this and jumped onto the nearest walk way, while I brazenly (stupidly?) zig-zagged my way across.

About 20 miles after crossing the border, just past Portsmouth, we began looking for a place to set up camp. In anytown, New Hampshire, the houses were so big that they could eat my Denver house for a pre-dinner snack and the lawns were typically untamed mini forests. Desperate for a place to call "home" for the night, we lugged our gear across quick-sand and a small stream into someone's "yard" and camped in the rain under a tree.