Old friends Edward Berube and Richard Girardin catch up with each other near Trinity Church in Lewiston on Thursday. (Sun Journal photo by Andree Kehn)

LEWISTON — Two old friends, dressed for the cold, met up at the corner of Bates and Spruce streets outside Trinity Episcopal Church on Thursday afternoon to trade stories.

Richard Girardin, a distance hiker who said he has completed the Appalachian Trail several times, switched to bicycling in recent years because of foot pain.

Over the past four years, he said, he has crossed the country every year, heading west one year to Southern California and back to Maine the next year.

Girardin said he had plans to circle the entire country by bicycle one year. He started in Washington state, biked down the West Coast and got halfway across Texas when he was delayed by misadventure.

By the time he started biking again, several months later, it was too hot to pedal to Florida, so he completed his journey back to Lewiston by way of a northern route. He said Lewiston, where he was born, has always beckoned him home.

His friend Edward Berube, a longtime Lewiston resident who likes to egg on Girardin as he tells his stories, said he would have liked to have done that kind of adventuring.

Berube said he could only imagine the scenery in, say, the mountains of New Hampshire, but he has never had the nerve to go on a long, unstructured trip.

Still, Berube said, he sees plenty of adventure in Lewiston. For example, he has crafted a special stick he uses to prevent unwanted hangers-on from using his motorized wheelchair as a taxi service.

“You have to endure what comes down the road for you,” Berube said.


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