Maine Outdoor Journal

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Earlier this year, the Maine Bicycle Coalition led an enthusiastic early-morning Legislative Bike Tour from the capital to Hallowell’s Water Street and then back along the Rail Trail.

2009 file photo

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Cyclists head up a leaf-strewn hill along the Kennebec River Rail Trail in Hallowell.

Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer

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Cyclists head up a leaf-strewn hill along the Kennebec River Rail Trail in Hallowell.

Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer

 

 

AUGUSTA — Fittingly, this story begins with a story.

Larry DeBlois abruptly swerves his bicycle to a stop in front of a small two-story tenement building in Hallowell and begins to tell me a story. This, of course, is not a surprise. DeBlois, after all, now 70 years old and an avid cyclist, was my creative writing teacher almost two decades ago. Stories are what united us.

Standing here, propped up against my own squeaky, balky bicycle in the unseasonably cold autumn air, he tells me about a lost wallet.

"We were going into Slates for lunch, and there was this scruffy-looking man walking around near the car," DeBlois says with a nod in the direction of the popular restaurant, its building resurrected after a fire nearly wiped it off the face of the Earth in early 2007.

DeBlois goes on to talk about how his friend's wallet was lost, that they assumed it had been lifted by "Scruffy," and that they figured it was gone forever. Gone, that is, until the two men went back into Slates to inquire about the lost wallet. They described Scruffy, a local fixture the people at the restaurant knew, and they were given directions to the building where they might find him.

The very building we'd pedaled to today, years later.

"Inside, it was lying in the middle of this cramped place where they had nothing – I mean nothing," DeBlois recounts. "They were using lawn chairs to sit on. The wallet was there, under a white cloth."

Nothing had been touched, and Scruffy wouldn't accept anything more than a thank you. According to DeBlois, a reward was denied.

"It just goes to show you," he says to me, "you never know about people. Here's this guy that looks like this and has nothing, and look what he does. You would never know it."

THE DESIRE TO MOVE

DeBlois was forced off his bicycle for eight full months this year, felled by a tear in his Achilles tendon – a painful, burning injury that restricts its victims to complete rest and lack of mobility.

"I just wanted to go 'somewhere,'" DeBlois said.

The desire to go somewhere is how DeBlois got into his whole cycling craze to begin with.

A longtime runner, he first hopped on a bicycle for serious riding in 1991. After years of joking with friend and fellow English teacher Greg Durgin, he went to the American Lung Association's "Trek Across Maine," a three-day pedaling excursion from Newry to Belfast.

From there, DeBlois was hooked.

A self-described "head-down" rider, he's crashed into other riders and earned the nickname of, well, "Crash." He's ridden with a group that calls itself "McPhed's Trekkers" after a late colleague of theirs – Dave McPhedran – that aims to raise $2,500 each year for the American Lung Association through the Trek. He's been beaten, bloodied and bruised and even had hypothermia.

But DeBlois loves every minute of it.

"It's a different kind of shape," he says when I gently complain that my thighs are starting to offer resistance in the form of pain. "Your upper body doesn't matter at all. It's all about your legs."

FOLLOWING THE RIVER

As best I can figure, it's been 17 years since I last saw my old teacher, whom I must now call "Larry" – which feels ridiculously strange, even for a grown man with a wife and two children.

Heading back from Farmingdale on the Kennebec River Rail Trail, pointed straight upstream toward Augusta, I watch the river as it winds itself back through the foliage-ravaged trees along its banks. Already, it's looking more like late autumn than early autumn. The river's roiling surface, pimpled with whitecaps, only serves to hammer the point home.

On the bicycle, though, the cold air is irrelevant. We're both layered in wind-blocking fleece, hats and gloves, and I'm actually breaking a sweat. That's in stark contrast to the walkers we pass on the trail, huddled up and bundled up as if to face a bitter January freeze.

About the only thing that's cold, DeBlois remarks, is his water bottle.

"I grew up here, and sometimes I look back and can't believe how little attention I paid to the river," I tell Mr. DeBlois – I mean, Larry. "It cuts right through central Maine, and in my own little world, it's like it never existed."

Still a teacher, he reminds me that there may be a reason for that.

"Up until a few years ago, you probably didn't want anything to do with it," DeBlois said, referencing the cleanliness that was sorely missing from the moving waters.

BIKE TRAIL STORIES

Another thing I didn't want anything to do with back in the day was a discussion about writing with a teacher. Legs churning along a paved Rail Trail last week, though, it's a different discussion.

I talk with DeBlois about my career as a writer – and his, too. We talk about the process, about editors we've had, about finding voices that you trust to critique the work honestly.

I almost forget that I'm getting a workout – at least until the next morning, when my upper back and neck muscles cry out in frustration. It's been a while since I've pedaled even a few miles.

At least now, I think, as I see him load his bicycle on the rack poking out from the back of his car in the parking lot after the ride, I've got another story to tell from Maine's outdoors.

After all, stories are what reunited us.

Staff Writer Travis Barrett can be reached at 621-5648 or:

tbarrett@centralmaine.com