Well, next it is time to STOP! Next is cycle to Canada. It’s just over there, over that bridge. I now have to:

• cycle to Saint John
• cross on the Ferry to Nova Scotia
• bus it to Dartmouth (I hope this doesn’t happen)
• get my haircut
• by appropriate clothes to wear at conference. I doubt they’ll let me in wearing padded cycle shorts and WSDOT reflecto-vest.
• meet Le Chef. Hurrah!
• Fly to QC
• Attend IFLA
• Fly back to Halifax
• Go on holiday in Nova Scotia sans velo
• Fly home
• Go mountain biking with Fraulein Direktor
• Close diary
• Earn a living

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Distance: 4 miles
Distance so far: 4140 miles
Champagne: a glass at the Masonic BBQ
Pie: Yes. The official last piece of pie in Umerica was at the Masonic BBQ. It was rhubarb and strawberry. Oh yes. A good way to end me thinks.

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And at The End, what is that like? It’s a little peculiar. All that cycling. All that distance. It doesn’t seem like it was me that did it. How could I have done that? Cycled more than 4000 miles across a huge continent. How did I sit on that saddle for hours and hours for days and days? I dunno. You just do it. Just like you just do going to work. Eventually you don’t notice you are doing it. It’s certainly made easier by traveling through a friendly and fun country like Ummerica (I promise that’s the last time it gets called Ummerica). It helps that a kind-of-Engerish is spoken here. And it helps to have the internet so I can keep in touch with everyone, write this silly nonsense and navigate by way of Google maps (how did people travel before Google Maps).

So, what next? Well, I can see Canada from here. I think I’ll go to Canada.

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Given that it’s a short ride of 28 miles or so I decide to have a light breakfast of pizza and plums and coffee. (It was not plum pizza I hasten to add, it was leftovers from my pizza yesterday). I load Haggis up for the last time and we head out on a beautiful day. On my left is hills, in the middle is the road and on the right is an occasional view of the sea. It looks like the West Coast of Scotland. I turn off Route 1 towards Lubec and the road surface deteriorates further. This really is just like Scotland. All in-and-out roads to remote Scottish villages are always a disgrace unless of course the European Union has funded the renewal of the asphalt so that scallops, langoustine, halibut and salmon can be whisked from our shores to the open, greedy mouths of the French and Spanish. But I digress ….

And there’s the sign. Lubec. Most Easterly Town. I am done (well almost but not quite). Lubec reminds me of LochInver or Kinlochbervie. A small, postcard type town with little boats in the harbour and everyone relaxed and friendly. I celebrate my arrival at (nearly) The End by eating a clam sandwich, a slice of blueberry pie and a glass of blueberry ale (which tastes of IPA and not blueberries thankfully). What next? Yes, a trip to the library of course! Dear Boss: does chatting with the Lubec librarians, reading their newspapers and using their wifi count as business leave? I can write a report about it!

I am going to stay here for two days because tomorrow I will go to The Ultimate Destination, the lighthouse at West Quoddy Point. This marks the most easterly place in the USA. I am bemused at how the most easterly place can be called West but I am sure all will be revealed tomorrow. Then I think a trip to Canada and across their The Bridge over The Atlantic.

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Distance: 28 miles
Distance so far: 4136 miles
Beer: Blueberry beer. Very interesting.
Pie: Oh yes. Blueberry pie obviously! Is it my last pie in Umerica?

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But the biggest reason for me being blue is that I ate and drank a lot of blue things today. Here, in Down East Maine (I assume there’s an Up East Maine somewhere) is the official land of the blueberry. Ummericans LOVE blueberries. They make muffins with them in (I had one today), they put them on or in their pancakes for breakfast, they make jam with them etc etc. So I am going along minding my own business and look there are lots of people selling wild blueberries, and over there is the Blueberry Research Institute (you think I am kidding? I am not) and what the? What is that. A giant Blueberry cafe?

So I arrive at my destination Machias, starving. I have only had two breakfast today. I go immediately to Helen’s Restaurant where I wolf a fried clam sandwich, chased down with Blueberry soda, followed by a slice of very, very delicious blueberry pie. Later I have some Blueberry cream soda which is not the same as Blueberry soda and, I’m ashamed to say, another slice of blueberry pie. Now you will understand my blueness. Factoid: 95% of the world’s blueberry crop comes from this part of the world i.e. here in Washington county.

Today is my penultimate day of acrossness. Tomorrow I will be in Lubec the most easterly and north easterly town in mainland Umerica. I thought today I might see the Atlantic Ocean but the coastline is quite jaggy here, even more so than Scotland so all I have seen, through the Haar, are inlets. Umericans call the inlets bays where we Scotchlanders call them lochs. How educational this diary is. So, it seems that I won’t see the Atlantic from Lubec coz there’s a small matter of Canada being in the way. How inconvenient! I will see the Bay of Fundy though which is famous for the biggest …… You’ll just have to wait.

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Distance: 59 miles
Distance so far: 4108 miles
Blueberries: everywhere
Sign to Lubec?: Yes. Just 28 miles to go
Weather: Haar and sun and thunder and lightning and rain

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Haggis gets a free ride at Quoddy Point.

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Distance: 37 miles
Distance so far: 4049 miles
Other cyclists: gazillions. 11 girls cycling from New Hampshire to Maine and back. Bryce from I forget where and Megan and Andy from Minnesota who have been cycling all over from April.
Days til the end of cycling across: two
Days til I say Adieu to Umerica and go to Canada: three

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