Caleb Remmerde peddles to college> COA freshman rides bicycle to Maine from home in Washington state

An overloaded station wagon filled with suitcases, books, posters, and whigged-out parents is the ultimate image of college freshmen arriving on campus each fall.

But that’s not Caleb Remmerde’s style.

He rode his bike. College just happened to be 4,400 miles from home.

An incoming freshman at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Remmerde arrived on campus Thursday afternoon. No parents, no suitcases, and no posters. Just a couple of threadbare T-shirts, shorts, a few rain-soaked books, and himself.

The Vancouver, Wash., student’s only luggage was the images of the people he met and places he saw on his trip through Canada and the American Midwest.

In Toronto, he met Lyle, who claimed to have taught Elvis “all of his tricks.” And then there was the man in Ontario who invited Remmerde in for a cup of coffee.

“This guy was sitting outside of a shack where there was all of this junk,” he said, during an overnight stay at a Bangor campground. “It looked like a garage sale, and there was an old wooden sign which said, `Take what you want and give what you think it’s worth.’ ”

Remmerde rode alone through Washington to the Canadian border, and traveled along on the northern side. He then dipped back into the United States to go south around Lake Superior before heading north to Quebec and Maine.

Remmerde readily admits he did not ride the entire 4,400 miles, taking a 500-mile bus ride to save his sanity along the way.

“I was going through sensory deprivation,” he said of his ride through the prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. “I was feeling very small and insignificant in a very large universe.”

He entered Maine Tuesday at Jackman, where the border patrol found him to be a nice change of pace from the usual tourists and pulp trucks. They asked him questions about his bike, the trip, where he was going and where he was from.

Then they alerted the media.

Remmerde was riding down Route 201 when a woman driving in a car pulled up next to him and asked if he would mind being interviewed at the convenience store ahead. She was a reporter for The Border Reporter, a bimonthly newspaper, and promised to buy him a beer if he stopped. She quickly changed the bait to a Coke when Remmerde told her that he was under age.

An hour later, his picture was being taken in front of a welcome sign made for him, with the soda in one hand, and the reporter in the other, kissing him on the cheek.

“All small towns, they’re suspicious,” he said. “But in Maine, they’ll ask you, `Who are you, where are you from?’ They’ll act on their curiosity, which is really much more pleasant.”

But the daily traveling took its toll mentally, he said.

“The thing that’s difficult is not being in contact with people you know,” Remmerde said. “When you’re on the road, it’s like you’re having the same conversation day after day. `Hi, how are you, where are you going?’ It’s just mentally exhausting.”

He took the trip to make the distance real to him, as opposed to a six-hour plane trip, which he classified as a “surrealistic experience.”

“If you want to find reality, go biking,” he said. “This will give me a mental image of the distance and the landscape.”

And what will Remmerde do with the next 2 1/2 weeks until freshman orientation begins and his classes in wildlife biology start?

“Explore the area, explore the island, experience being a member of the community for a while.”

Welcome to Maine, Caleb.