Rolling with the Punches

"If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty." — Jon Krakauer

I feel like I'm truly starting to come into this lifestyle of homelessness.

It's kind of all about rolling with the punches and adapting to whatever the day throws at you. I don't really view it as a challenge, so much as a way to really just live for the moment.

Troy's housing some Dutch Soccer coaches at his digs in Caribou. We all went mountain biking last night, then had a few beers at the pub...getting into some interesting conversation on healthcare and government. Awesome to hear views from both Europeans and health care professionals. Cool dudes.

We left the pub, and next thing I know it's 10pm. I had forgotten to eat. Only place open was McDonalds, so I grabbed all my gear and tooled over there. I got 2 McChickens, some fries, and a drink, and headed to my spot for the night. I sat at one of the benches along the bike path and ate my heart-attack in a bag.

To the person who didn't know me, I must have REALLY looked like a homeless dude, with my beard, my bike, and sleeping bag.
Thing is, I didn't care. The night was nice and quiet, and it was a great way to wrap up a good day.

This morning, I ate my breakfast by the river at Riverside Park. I saw a homeless guy on the other side of the park. There is a small homeless community in Aroostook County...somehow. I wonder how they slip through the cracks in such a small, close-knit area.

I'm intrigued by homeless people in general.
They have a story.
When I started this blog, I had this idea in the back of my mind of eventually meeting Presque Isle's homeless and publishing my chats with them.
I'll sit on it for a little while more, but it's definitely something that would be pretty cool to me.

krp

1 Down

Been a few days since the last update.
Still doing my thing, and really loving it.
Nicole came up this past weekend. Great times.

Spent last night on Mars Hill Mountain.
I biked via the railroad bed and arrived at the base of the mountain around 8pm.
Powerhiking with my pack and pushing my bike up the mountain(sweating my ass off), I arrived at the last level before the final grunt up to the summit.
As I stood there listening to the gigantic windmills, it was impossible to ignore that one of them emitted a really annoying high-pitched squeak. I opted to go down the mountain a little bit and set up camp, just out of range of the noise.

It was cool to wake up to the view...but more awesome was the ride back to Presque Isle on the snowmobile trail, as the sun was coming up. It was the perfect time for wildlife viewing.

I had a deer jump out into the trail a little ways ahead of me. Also seen were a bunch of rabbits, snakes sunning themselves in the trail, and a falcon that flew just ahead of me for a hundred meters at a time. It would stop on a tree adjacent to the trail, seemingly waiting for me, and then fly further down the trail once I got close to it again. We played this cat and mouse game for about a half mile.
Some bear sign was present. With the amount of running, hiking, and biking I do, I know that it's only a matter of time before I have a close encounter.

Mars Hill. That's Peak 1 in my End of July Peak Assault.
I have 12 more days to get at least 11-15 Peaks. My goal is 20...but that is going to be a real challenge with all the work and whatnot. I'll have to be VERY productive on my days off, I guess.

2 Weeks Down: Conclusions Drawn Thus Far

Actually, my first night was June 28th, so I guess it's officially been 16 nights without a car, a bed, or a roof over my head.

I can honestly say I don't miss any of it.

Some conclusions:
-I sleep better than I do in a bed, and actually go to sleep earlier than when I had an apartment. There's not exactly a plethora of things to do once you've set up your tent, so you just go to bed when it gets dark.

-Walking and biking to work and around town for errands is great extra time for training.

-Already, my bills are declining. I'm going to have my only credit card paid off by the end of August. That leaves 2 relatively small student loans. It just gives me incentive to go all winter..or at least until we start the 25 below zero stuff.
I have this dream of being debt free...how that will open up so many options in my life. I'm obsessed with it the idea of it.

-It's hard to "plan" the two things taken most for granted when I had an apartment: food and showers. I figured the shower thing would be easy: show up at the gym every morning, workout, then shower. Nope. It takes about 30 mins to pack up camp, then I've got anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours coming back into town. Often times, that gets me into PI just in time to get to work...and I would feel weird signing into the gym just to shower and leave. Again, planning.

-Lastly, the beard itches. I go through spells where I hate it, and then times where I kind of like it because it fits what I'm doing.

-The amount of people that have supported this mission is amazing. Almost everyone thinks it's a kick ass idea. Special thanks go out to Mel and Penny, as I have crashed in their backyards on numerous occasions on those nights where weather was bad or I had trained until it was too late to go out into the woods.

Don't forget to vote. Only half the followers have voted!
2 days until my assault on as many peaks as I can bag from July 17th to 31.
In planning, the majority might be right in voting on 11-15 peaks, simply because of the lack of mountains in the County.
I'd still like to get more, though!

Have a good day...
krp

Urban Camping

This is what I saw on my way out of town yesterday.

Weather report called for golf ball sized hail and tornadoes.

I chose to leave my tent in the backyard of mels again.

Been super tired lately. Crashed at 8, woke up at 8am.

Night of 7-12-10

Fun night.

Participated in the Ladies Ride, just to spin out my legs after destroying them at Physical Therapy. Went like 11 miles at a slow pace, then headed to Mel's for a BBQ.

The fire was hot and the beers few. Next thing I knew, it was 10:30, and time to bed it right there in her back yard.

Toothpaste again held off the earwigs.

POLLS
Ok, looks like most people think 11-15 peaks will be the top during the last 2 weeks of July. See if I can go 20+ then :)

Also, take a look at some recent video in previous blogs. Let's Re-evaluate.
BEARD OR NO BEARD?

Vote now!

dannananananananananna
TENTMAN

River Wild

Stayed on the Aroostook last night somewhere off Parsons Road. The picture of the amazing sunset you see was right before the rain came. I didn't realize there was a gap between my rain fly and the screen and I got wet. During the night I had two encounters.

Early on, somewhere around midnight, I had something big by my tent, as I could hear it's sniffing and breathing. No tracks this morning that I could find in the softer part of the gravel about 10 feet or so from my tent, so I really don't know what it was. I was a tad nervous for a few minutes. It's all part of the experience though...kind of cool in retrospect.

Beginning about an hour or so after that,I had either muskrats or otters around me all night. I must have set up camp right next to their dwelling, because they kept walking right by and bumping into my tent. Are there even otters in northern maine? That's a question for you wildlife experts, I guess. All I know is that it was some kind of large rodent. They made little whining noises.

Katahdin Trip

Had an awesome time at Katahdin this weekend. Stayed at Foster's Field, just above Katahdin Stream Campground. Hiked to Chimney Pond (shown above), and saw an awesome moose with it's antlers still in velvet. We hiked up the Saddle, and due to the crap weather, had to hike back down the Saddle as well. We had hoped the Knife's Edge would be fine, but conditions at the top weren't that great. Mostly rainy and foggy and windy. At least we hit the summit.
The next day we spent some time exploring the Tote Road and sliding on rocks in a stream, and hiking at Kidney Pond. Excellent trip.

Escape Reality Challenge

Between weather and training, I haven't exactly been getting the wilderness experience I've been striving to achieve during the TentMan Experience.
This could also be blamed on my hectic work schedule.

Pitched at Penny's last night, again. She's been very hospitable these last few days!

I simply don't have time to get out there...yet. My work schedule should be easing up next week.

It's like I'm a caged beast right now.
The more I work, and the more obligations that stack up, the more it makes me want to up the level of craziness when I'm finally free of it all.

These crazy ideas get into my head. Epic thoughts with no limits that take me away from the real world for an extremely long time.

This would be...in my opinion, the best event in the world:

I'll start at the Northern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail, Mt. Katahdin, and run all the way to Atlantic City via appalachian trail, at which point, I get into a drinking contest with the whole cast of Jersey Shore and handily win after 25 shots of vodka in an hour.
Sleep for a few hours, then mount my bike and do the whole Race Across America course backwards, and end up in California.

My bike, which will be absolutely near-junk after biking through 3 different F4 tornadoes in the midwest, and a scary descent on a washed-out road on the continental divide, will be tossed in the garbage and traded for a wetsuit, with which I'll use to swim north up the coast of the Pacific Ocean...all the way into Puget Sound.

Ditching the suit, because of its holes from a battle with a young killer whale, I'll bushwack up to Mt. Rainier, and fashion a hanglider from the frame of my backpack and some tarps.
It'll be a scenic ride as I catch thermals all the way up to the summit of Mt. Mckinley, and a dangerous trek down to the Aleutian Islands via snowshoe and skis. To stay warm, I'll have to wrestle a polarbear and steal it's fur.

This wins much respect from the Inuit, and they give me a homemade canoe, so that I may paddle over to Russia.

The Russians don't appreciate my unannounced landing, so I do 1 year in a gulag, where I complete 5,000 pushups and sit-ups every day. I get extra cycling in because they need someone to pedal the bike hooked up to their electrical turbine for 10 hours a day so that they may have electricity.

Getting my last name mixed with my birthplace, the Russians deport me to Poland, where I am forced to steal a Razor scooter and a backpack from a little kid. I push that thing through Romania and into Greece, stopping at Sparta to pay homage to Leonidas for being The Man, then hurl myself into the Mediteranean and swim to Egypt.

I backpack across the African plains, and hook up with a tribe of persistence hunters. All of their best runners have come up lame, and now they need someone to help run down the largest Kudu in the area. After 60 miles of running at sub-7 minute pace in the 110 degree heat, I hop on the kudus back and break off an antler...using it to stab the animal in the heart. After a massive feast and celebration, I must go. They accompany me to the Altantic coast where I will row to South America.

Pirates try to rob me as I leave the shore, but they are no match for my twin Kudu horn-swords...a prize the tribal group gave me for such a brave kill.
Knowing I'm on the home-stretch, the Atlantic row seems easy, and I guide my boat directly into the end of the Amazon. I ditch my boat and I'm forced to swim against the current, all the way to the source. Pirahnas take nibbles and one toe, but no major school attacks.

I orienteer myself from the source of the Amazon all the way to the Yucatan Peninsula, where I don some scuba gear and swim, underwater, into the Gulf Of Mexico.

Oil plumes cloud my navigation, so I swim, against their current, all the way to the gushing hole of BP.
By wearing some rubber gloves, tying 23 electric eels together, and using some iron ore from the sea floor, I'm able to weld the hole shut easily in less than an hour.

As I come to the surface, I'm greeted by a fishing boat. Because I've saved their industry, they are more than willing to give me a ride to Key West, where I find Jimmy Buffett. He declares my event over, I eat a Cheeseburger In Paradise, and then spend the rest of the year sitting on the beach drinking Margaritas.

*blink* oh, time to go to work.
Maybe next year....

Colgate Fresh

Well.

I looked at it long enough.

I decided to take out my new bike on its maiden voyage last night.
It is fast.

The bad side to the whole thing, is that because of this, I left my tent set up at Penny's for the second day in a row...which...you guessed it.
My arch-rival, the Aroostook Earwig, had again infiltrated my fortress.

Spent the next hour exterminating and removing...then shut my light off.

An hour later, I turned my light on, and found 6 more.
Where the hell were they getting in?

Upon closer inspection, I realized that there's a small gap where the two zippers meet, and my tent is a 2 door. 2 holes for those little beasts to come in.
I took toothpaste and plugged the holes, and that seemed to do the trick!

The toothpaste would make a later appearance though, in an unexpected place.
Someone behind me in the DD line this morning told me that I had something on the back of my head.
It wasn't just something, it was a big ass gob of toothpaste.
How did it get there? I'll never know...but at least I'm Colgate Fresh!

Ah, the joys of tenting.

Pitchin at Pee Pee's

Not gonna lie, too much sun and too much booze on the 4th left me feeling less than energetic. Did a two hour bike ride on the ATV trails, hoping that would snap me out of my stupor, but no.
No motivation to go anywhere major.

With thunderstorms threatening, I opted to pitch a tent at Penny's.
We sat on the back porch, eating strawberry shortcake and conversing about life in general.

When dark fell, I crawled into my tent and hoped for a T-Storm to break the crazy humidity. No luck.

The good news: on my bike ride yesterday I found a river island. Hopefully going to hit that up tonight.

Ode To Turner, bub

Spent the last few nights in Turner, visiting family, and pounding down too much Yuengling.
For those not privy to the wonderful brew, get thee to New York or PA and try some. It's not sold in New England. My parents were able to find some, though.
To quote Beerfest,"It's so good, I want to freeze it, then ice skate on it, and then thaw it and drink it in the springtime!"

You know, it's funny. I've been tenting now for a week or so, and hadn't seen any wildlife, except for a lot of bugs....until I went to Turner.
Woke up this morning around 3:30, walked into the house to get a drink, looked down at my tent, and my headlight shone on a coyote right in front of my tent. Crazy. It had been less than a minute ago that I exited my tent. I wonder- if I had turned around on the short walk up to the house..would it have been right behind me??

I always joke about my hometown, because for such a small town, it seems to find it's way into the news an awful lot.
There's murder. There are mythical beasts. There's motorcycle gang violence.
There's even a Turner Triangle.

I figured I would share a few links to get you up to speed on my old stomping grounds...

For evil beasts: click here. and here

For motorcycle gangs: click here

For Sasquatch and the Turner Triangle(highly recommended lol): click here

For murder: click here

Turner is great, with it's rolling hills, awesome roads(except for 219 into Leeds), infinite lakes, and endless snowmobile trails. It really is a training mecca...and growing up there is how I turned out to the way I did. Always a great visit.

Good Times. Thanks for reading.
krp

Squapan Mtn Area.

Don't laugh. This is my first video blog.

I had hoped to get to either Squapan Mtn or the east side of the lake via snowmobile trails....but I flat out ran out of daylight. I still found a really great spot with pretty level ground, next to a nice bridge and stream. Unfortunately the camera didn't do it all justice.

Anyways. Enjoy your weekend. I think I'm doing a major ride today into tonight and ending up downstate.
P.S.- there were no drunk rednecks or earwigs....

Dunananananananaananananana
TENTMAN

Learnin' and Wiggin' Out

Location: Friend's backyard

Weather: Breezy, overcast

Temperature: 45-55 degrees

Hours of sleep: 7

Well, I'm learning a thing or two about preparation while homeless.

Number 1: Don't stay in the same place for a duration of time longer than a night. Why? It becomes not only a "temporary" home for you, but for other creatures. See Number 2.

Number 2: Don't leave your tent in the same spot for a long period of time with the zipper partly open. I had to go on a pest removal-fest last night before bed. Earwigs had gotten all through my tent. I took out 15, at least. I can handle flies. I can deal with mosquitoes. I cannot deal with these little ant/scorpion mongoloids. Gross.
I woke up a couple times in the night and turned my headlight on to be sure there were none that had found their way back in my tent, or worse, my sleeping bag.

Also, the rain for the last 3 or 4 days has killed my efforts to get out and see the wilderness. I am unwilling to pack up all of my stuff soaking wet, let it sit in Mojo for the day(still wet), then set it up and be wet for the next night.

It's been in the 40s and I'm not interested in hypothermia. The good news is that there is great weather now, and for tonight. Time to get Into The Wild .

Speaking of wild, check out this video. I posted it on Facebook yesterday, but I have some followers who aren't on FB. We had a gopher just walk into the shop! Check out our follies as we attempt to rid the store of the varmint!

Happy Trails, krp

Good Times

Location: Friend's backyard

Weather: Breezy, overcast

Temperature: 45-55 degrees

Hours of sleep: 8.5

Good Times last night. Literally.

Did the Mojo Good Times ride with Mark, Brent, Kyle, and Carey.
Enjoyed some roads I've never seen before around Mapleton. Awesome.

After, we went to the pub. I got carded, and didn't have my license. So I:
Run to mojo. Find my license. Run back to pub.
Everyone gets Smithwicks but me. They all kick the keg while I'm gone, now there's no more.
I settle for Bud Light.
Waitress brings over nachos and proceeds to dump salsa on me. Cool.

So, another night in Presque Isle. I'm going to wait on an epiphany to see where I stay tonight. Somewhere cool. Stay tuned.

Happy July