we get out of our recompense campsite by 0800, nary a bear to be seen. dagny is beside herself for the next two and a half hours, while we book it to the monteux school and the love of her life. our food, packed in its aldi cooler with antique ice packs, starts to melt a bit--no matter where i put the darn thing, it always ends up in the sun.
hancock is a scorched strip of a town, closest thing to a desert i've ever seen in the northeast. there are trees, obviously, and grass, but somehow the effect is stale. arid. maybe it's the traffic. we catch the monteux school on the second pass, thanks to the unreadability of its classy gold-on-white sign. its roads are marked with signs like "lento" and "molto adagio". dagny and i start grinning uncontrollably, as the musical geekiness of the place settles into our respective nervous systems. the building is reminiscient of tanglewood on weed: an oversized cabin in an overgrown field, cars parked haphazardly beside the puddle-filled track that serves as a driveway. billy the kid leaks from the screened windows, so benjamin and i decide to wait a bit. he repairs a bike tube in the shade, dagny reads in the sun, and i wander aimlessly, reliving the last time i played copland, until the bees chase me into the car.
tsb appears after an interval (hahaha! *cough*), dagny is left with attendant stuff, and benjamin and i are back on the road by 1100. it's a nine-hour run from hancock to chester, taking customs into account, so the sun is nearly gone by the time we hit the bed & breakfast. it's a very cape-cod house--or rather, what i imagine a cape-cod house would look like. sharp eaves, red roof, wood siding, gabled window seat, etc. it sits immediately across the lighthouse route from mahone bay, on the southern side of the aspotogan peninsula. david, out of birmingham (england), is there to meet us; his wife mieke (MEE-kah), runs their pottery business. (those are her boxing kangaroos in their garden.) he oohs and aahs over our bikes (or rather, mine), and gives us the nickel tour. it's a great house. telescope looking out over the bay ("to see the seals", david tells us), plant-infested sitting room, bannister-ed stairway. our room, pink though it be, faces the sunset. after a cursory inspection, we stumble off in search of food.
alas, we failed to take into account the one-hour time difference! the only open establishment is the tim horton's in "downtown" chester, where the canada day fireworks are in full swing. we order the ubiquitous soup/sandwich combo, exit soon after the local cop contingent crashes our party, and sleep-drive our way back to the century house.
the bed is great.