thee istsfor manity reader

A Streak of “The Luck of Job”

I’ve been back at home in Boston the last four days. I’ve had a streak of “the luck of Job.”

In case you’ve forgotten, over the course of 1,146 miles from Key West, FL to Georgetown, SC — and then from Calais, ME to Bar Harbor, ME — the only mechanical issues I had were 3 flat tires. 

Fairly common.

But in the course of a week, last week, I blew out a derailleur (it got bent to hell) — and last Sunday my rear brake failed and warped into the brake rotor. I was left with only the front brake functioning in very steep terrain. And the rear brake was partially locked because the metal spring in the caliper / brake pad mechanism was bent into itself. See detailed images below:

Since I joined the group… if I didn’t have bad luck, I had no luck at all. Oy!

Seriously, I’ve just lived through two “freak” mechanical failures in a week.

My life partner-wife, Pattie, was kind enough to drive the three hours to pick me up in Thomaston, ME. I really didn’t want to rent a car and hotel again.

Again, luckily I biked these miles (from Boston to Searsport, ME) last summer, so I’m lucky to have the flexibility to wait for the group to bike into Boston to rejoin them. Which I will do this Saturday for the ferry ride to Provincetown, MA, for our ride through Cape Cod as we head south to Washington, DC.

I’m surprised at this last mechanical failure as I had the bike checked out and tuned up last month in Mt. Pleasant, SC.

As you see in the picture above, and in the penultimate post, Saturday’s ride to Camden Hills State Park, in Camden, ME, was a complete wash out. Rain with temperatures in the 40’s and 50’s — a fairly miserable weather day.

It cleared overnight and Sunday dawned a sunny day. A truly perfect riding day. A high of 60 degrees and light wind.

This (above) was as good as it got for me on Sunday. Coming down a short 12% to 15% grade (truly steep) — I lost my rear brake. I was advised that with the pitched grades we were riding it might be best to hitchhike ahead to Bath where an excellent bike shop is located. But I decided to get this sorted out at home instead.

As Thursday was a day off in Hampton, NH, and I’ve already ridden the 245 miles between Boston and Searport, ME, I chose to wait for the group here in Boston while I got the bike worked on.

I ran some water up to the Saugus, MA campground yesterday — where there is no potable water — so the group has drinking and cooking water today.

Day 76:
Location: Boston, MA
Miles: 1,146

In the meantime I’ve logged 2,042 miles on my bike this year. I’ve also prepared my old bike for the remainder of the East Coast Greenway tour in case my current bike acts up again.

My luck has got to change.

What I’m Reading:

How we move through our cities plays a big role in sustainability — but not every place makes it easy to go car-free. Today, Realtor.com® and Local Logic unveiled a new ranking of America’s Top Eco-Friendly Cities for Car-Free Transit, highlighting the places where walking, biking, and public transit are not only viable, but widely used. Leading the list are Hoboken, NJ, Cambridge, MA, and Brookline, MA, with the most top-ranked cities found in the Northeast and California’s Bay Area.

— Thao Tram Ngo / “America’s Top Eco-Friendly Cities for Car-Free Transit” / Local Logic

What I’m Reading:

There will always be a gap to see through

And when the clouds seem to separate
So far, that the sky is
Almost embarrassingly present

There won’t be any place to lie down.

— Michael Benedikt / “The Way Things Settle”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

But now, capitalism has entered a radical and apocalyptic phase. There is no utopian vision in any of this. Instead, there’s a final battle. And this is where it gets really dark. The people who are advancing this agenda are also building their luxury bunkers and their spaceships to Mars. They don’t believe that there is a future. These people believe history is ending, literally. It’s end times! Get onto your rocket ship, or get into your golden city in the sky. And that is distinct. 

— Naomi Klein & Tim Dickinson / “Naomi Klein: What They Want Is Absolutely Everything” / Rolling Stone

The picture postcard Goddess on my fridge
has eight, one for every day and then some
random crap will happen, the roof
spring a leak, a dictator stink
I’ll scream or just lie
there in bed, slow draining
blinking red.

— Sophia Naz / “To Bear the Right”

More and more, climate change denial is just taking the form of conspiracy culture. It’s: “Who started the fires in Lahaina? did they direct that hurricane to [North Carolina]?” It’s about feeding this narrative of paranoia about global elites wanting to take away your freedom. 

— Naomi Klein & Tim Dickinson / “Naomi Klein: What They Want Is Absolutely Everything” / Rolling Stone

Grief felt fourth-dimensional, abstract, faintly familiar. I was cold.

The friends and family who had been hanging around being kind had gone home to their own lives. When the children went to bed the flat had no meaning, nothing moved. 

— Max Porter / Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

My house had three stories that grew less and less finished as they rose, as if the builders had lost spirit the further they were from the soil.

— China Miéville / This Census Taker

We don’t think hope,
the only tyranny
we’ll never overthrow,
will ever run dry.

— Fady Joudah / “Barzakh”

I don’t think it’s the time to give up. But time is very short. One area where there is — I don’t know if I would use the word “hope” — but where there’s some productive work to be done, is that this [Thiel/Musk] agenda is not the platform that Donald Trump was elected on. There’s quite a lot of vulnerability in the MAGA Frankenstein coalition around the extent to which Trump is not just doing the work of the billionaires, generically, but specifically the of tech billionaires. That is a place to break apart the coalition.

People who are in it just for the white supremacy are going to stay. But I don’t believe that’s everybody who voted for Trump. And the radicalism of the vision — if they have given up on the future — provides a basis on which to organize, and to oppose, that is incredibly broad. 

— Naomi Klein & Tim Dickinson / “Naomi Klein: What They Want Is Absolutely Everything” / Rolling Stone

What I’m Listening To: 

Woosh, woosh, woosh, woosh …

— The roar of traffic on my left side

What The Hell? Why?

Fair enough start leaving Bar Harbor. Chilly again, in the low 40’s with a “feels like” temperature of 36 degrees at 7:45 am.

Climbing out of Bar Harbor on Eagle Lake Road,  next to Acadia National Park, the first 6 miles were good climbs and the forecasted rain had suddenly evaporated. It would be a cloudy, chilly day but dry.

Paula had just passed me near the entrance to the park, and…

… Snap! Grind! Clang, clang, clang!

Let me explain: as you see in this photograph (below) from Thursday, during the loop shakedown ride—I got stuck carrying one of the group’s cooking pots—we share carrying Adventure Cycling’s cooking gear. Each one of us is tasked with carrying some piece of communal gear. I got one of the hated pots. It’s large, obtrusive, funky looking and just a literal pain in my ass, placed on my rear rack behind my bike seat.

See how it’s held down by two bungee cords I carry for instances that require carrying something outside the panniers?

Well, one of those cords tore in half from the strain of the stretch over the pot. Then ricocheted into my wheel, got caught in my chain and dragged into the jockey wheel mechanism on my derailieur.

This is what a normal derailieur looks like: you see the arm mechanism hanging down at 6 o’clock—it ferries the chain through the cassette and derailieur mechanism. (See above, see below).

This is how mangled my derailieur became in the incident: instead of hanging down, the steel arm was bent up and backwards into the cassette and a chain mash of metal.

I am astonished I didn’t fly over the handlebars, crash, or even fall off the bike. After a grinding halt, I looked at this mess in a daze. How is this even possible? no no no!

You can see the base of the bungee cord hook imbedded in the jockey wheel at 11 o’clock (top left).

What the hell? Why? On day three, after 6 measly miles of actually riding south, after so much time waiting for this ride to get going again.

After the daze wore off, I hired a car out of Ellsworth, and took the bike to the region’s most renown bike shop in Bangor, Maine.

Slipping Gears Cycling. After calling they said they had a derailieur replacement—the last one in stock compatible with my bike’s drivetrain.

I will say, these guys know what they’re doing. They saved my derailieur hanger—which is not easy or quick to source, and had my bike riding better than it started this trek 1,100+ miles ago in Key West, FL, back on the last day of February.

Thanks, Matt & Slipping Gears Cycling!

Luckily I had already cycled the section into Ellsworth, ME last week—and a good portion of southern Maine on the East Coast Greenway Trail last summer.

It was too late in the day to bike from Ellsworth to Bucksport, ME, where we were scheduled to camp last night. So in effect I’ll have a 40 mile gap (one day’s ride) that I’ll have to come back and complete later this year—probably in the fall.

But the good news is that I’ll meet up with the rest of the group in Belfast, ME—or thereabouts tomorrow—and continue on towards DC.

Bike Day 30: (Actually day 70 since Key West, FL)
Start: Bar Harbor, ME
End: Belfast, ME
Miles: 6.09 (Actually 1,116 miles since February 28, 2025)

Oy! What an exhausting runaround day after only biking 6 miles. Crisis averted. Let’s move on with better luck from here on out. I got all the bad luck out of the way today.

Here’s hoping!

What I’m Reading:

The long day has ended in which so much
And so little had happened.
Great hopes were dashed,
Then halfheartedly restored once again.

— Charles Simic / “Thus”

Sun Makes Another Appearance

As you see at the base of the Precipice Trail, in Acadia National Park, above the sun made a rare appearance this week. It spent most of the mid-morning g to mid-afternoon putting on some Vitamin D time for us. 

The Precipice Trail is still closed for nesting falcons until later in the spring.

And just a couple of miles later, as you see above, in Thunder Hole the fog socked the park in and visibility was less than half a mile…

… all throughout the eastern portion of the loop trail it was as if we were cycling during another season.

Christopher and Dan, a couple of the 13 riders making their way down to Washington DC.

Today’s loop ride was a shakedown ride for the group leaders to gauge rider’s abilities, and for the riders to make any last minute gear adjustments.

Blue sky broke through again for a fleeting view of Cadillac Mountain in the fog-shrouded distance, as seen from Otter Cove.

By midday the sun was shining again and the loop road was wide open for biking as traffic was relatively light.

A view of a glacial erratic in the distance above the sign identifying it on the North Bubble.

Full sunshine at Eagle Lake at the last of today’s 10 climbing summits. From here it was nearly 3 miles all downhill.

Bike Day: Shakendown Ride Around Loop Road
Start: Bar Harbor, ME
End: Bar Harbor, ME
Miles: 22.06

Even though today, Friday, May 9th is tour day number three, it’ll actually be the first day we make positive miles on the East Coast Greenway Trail, i.e., actually biking the trail south towards Washington, DC, and we’ll do so now for the next 30 days.

What I’m Reading:

We are what happens when the seemingly
unthinkable celebrity rises to power.
Our existence makes my eyes hurt.
People are forever thinking that the unthinkable can’t happen. If it doesn’t exist in thought, then it can’t exist in life. And then, in the blink of an eye, in a moment of danger, a figure who takes power from our weak desires and failures emerges like a rib from sand.

— Lydia Yuknavitch / The Book of Joan