Navigating is tougher than it seems like it should be. We have a map from Adventure Cycle, a road map of Maine, a GPS, and we sometimes just follow road signs. Still we get lost. Finally we fall back on our last resort for navigating, we ask directions. The advantage to asking directions is it gives us an opportunity to really meet people, and to really see how kind and helpful most people are. Last night we met Olga, an exchange student from Saint Petersburg, Russia who is a very charming waitress with an unidentifiable accent who rides her bike every day. This morning we met Rob and Devin from San Francisco on their last day of a San Francisco to Portland trip. Then in the afternoon we got lost. We ended up off route as a thunderstorm rolled over us. It started raining and hailing, and we found shelter under a canvas gazebo in some strangers back yard, she saw us and hollered out through a window that we were welcome there. During a lull in the downpour we continued riding into Albany looking for a motel. We were having trouble finding one so asked a series of people for directions since the GPS kept unreliably trying to send us onto the Intestate. We had to pedal maybe 4 miles so we would ask someone for directions then further along the way have to ask someone else for further directions. Finally, we asked a man who turned out to a Samaritan. He gave us directions, then said, ‘you guys need to get out of this neighborhood, it’s not safe’. We followed his directions and a little later when we came to a critical turn, where we easily could have been confused again, we heard a car honking. We stopped and it was that same nameless Samaritan. He had gotten into his car and found us to make sure we didn’t get lost again.

— Sent from my Palm Pre