Frisbee's Market, Kittery Point

Cycling up the Maine coast is ideal. There's just something about any 12 miles of Maine coast that is strikingly better than 12 miles of New Hampshire coast. Route 103 north through Kittery Point to York Beach's Route 1A and then up through Cape Neddick to Oqunquit is just a perfect route for riding a bicycle. Route 103's got the rolling hills to make sure you haven't fallen asleep on the bike, then York Beach's Long Sands has a flat open strip that you can really haul on--except for the summer traffic and pedestrians that lack the common sense to look before stepping out in to the street. Also, there's a mile-and-a-half strip of tourists all trying to parallel park their Windstars at once--if you can imagine. As you can imagine, it's a prime area to be smug as a cyclist. Anyway, it's not that bad just yet--Memorial Day is next week.

So Keith and I were going on a one of those long-easy rides I was talking about on Monday, and took the afore-mentioned route. We decided to cut Mount Agamenticus out of the loop by the time we got there--we weren't looking to do force training, just endurance. The sort of training where you just see how long you can go before you start to hurt, not how hard you can go. Pushing back the fatigue barrier is the key element to base training for cycling, and thereby has the greatest training value.

Anyway, I hit the wall somewhere on Route 103 south, after we had about 50 miles or so, and still another five or ten ahead of us to get home. The wall of hunger is a pretty serious thing. It's that line where you are suddenly taken with a knot in the stomach, and every turn of the pedals just makes you more and more sleepy. You might even feel a little bit drunk--the carbohydrates that your brain regularly uses for things like thinking and being awake are in short order in the blood stream, having been used by your legs. You feel kind of like a zombie. Replenishing carbohydrates at this point is becoming paramount.

Fortunately, there just happens to be a convenience store here--Frisbee's Market. It's a family store that has been there for over 180 years, but it very nearly went out of business entirely before being bought by an investor and is now managed by the previously owning family. The significance of this little store [to me] is that it is the only place in the entire United States that I have ever seen Coca-cola in glass bottles. And not just regular glass bottles--small eight-ounce glass bottles. Here:

I've never seen it anywhere else. Twelve ounces [one can] of cola is more than health/carbohydrate-conscious cyclists like us need, and a twenty-ounce bottle is just gross. These bottles are just enough to wash down a made-fresh-daily spring roll and get you rolling again.

So if you happen to be in the area of Kittery Point / Route 103, I highly recommend Frisbee's Market, and 8oz glass-bottled Coca-Cola. Check it out.