6.21.10
4:06 pm
Last night, I returned from a ten day trip to Maine.
It was my first real vacation with Christina in ten years.
Ten motherfucking years.
Lazy ass inbred that I am.
Overall, I'd say the trip swung between 75:25 to 80:20, good to bad ratio.
The bad was mostly things like a few overcast days in a row, insects (I. Fucking. Loathe. Insects.), a canoe mishap and, mainly, the fact that the cabin we rented for 8 of the 10 days was made for a god damn Hobbit.
A short Hobbit.
Without legs.
Yes, I'm hyperbolizing, but, all exaggeration aside, a man of 5 foot 5 would have been totally comfortable, but anything above that was in for some suck.
Enter me.
It definitely cast a pall over the whole time we were in the cabin, but fuck that pall.
We still had a great time.
The town where we stayed, Rangely, was so genuinely adorable, that it made me, an asshole New Yorker, suspicious at once, but it turned out that these people were all nice and wonderful.
The food in town was great, for the most part and I had the best burger in my life at a place called the BBQ Shack.
It was a shack, that served BBQ.
We went to Small Falls and climbed all over that bitch and, later the same day, some gorge where the threat of mountain lions made us turn back.
The primary goal of the trip was to see moose and we did more than that.
We were almost killed by one when, the sun full in her face, one bolted, deer-like, from the trees at the side of the road in front of the car.
Chris nailed the breaks while the clumsy ass bastard just looked at us as if to say, "Welcome to Maine, tourists...you'll lover it to DEATH."
Not really, but we did almost die.
We saw several more, a lot less threatening, although Chris would NOT let me get out and pet them or scratch their dewlaps.
I hope you'll forgive me if my thoughts are a bit scattered, I'm still acclimating myself to the return to the city.
Maine is the Pine Tree State, and, while it does, indeed, have a plethora of pine trees, Chris and I, somewhere in the eight hour marathon drive we took yesterday, decided to rename it the Yard Sale and Cemetery State, as we saw more of them than pine trees.
Let's see...highlights...generally, the silence was wonderful.
We had a gently lapping lake, literally, twenty feet from our front door and many mornings were spent eating and just watching the silence.
I believe we were there about a week or two before the official season began, and while that did have drawbacks (shortened hours and god damn freezing water), it also had pluses, such as the glorious silence.
We decided that, if her and I do this trip again, we are going to bring more stuff to do as the rain sort of narrows the scope of your options for daily activities.
We kicked a jigsaw puzzle's ass, read a lot, made dinner almost every night and tried to share a queen sized bed.
THAT went badly.
When it was nice, it was stupidly beautiful, as bucolic as you'd ever want a place to be.
On those days, we drove to nature spots and ran around like idiots, taking pictures to vista galore.
One day, we drove to Waterford to Melby's Eatery (a quaint little restaurant with a great, dry down east sense of humor and quirk) and had a huge, wonderful meal.
On this four hour drive (two there, two back) we discovered a tiny little area called Coos Canyon and visited a little rock shop where we bought some beautiful crystals, namely citrine and salmite, gorgeous stuff, that had been mined right there.
As I said, we saw lots of moose, quite a few deer, parlayed with some ducks, encountered a suicidal rabbit and heard a massive amount of birds, plus a coyote.
There was one bird we kept hearing that sounds like that noise you get when you clear four lines in Tetris (Chris' description, not mine, but apt).
We found a store that had a huge book with a little computer pad which played recorded bird calls.
The closest was the Wood Thrush, which I am convinced it is, but Chris is not.
Any ornithologists out there?
Our first beautiful day we took the canoe out and paddled like mad men around our lake.
When we returned to our dock, we went in the lake to cool off and dubbed ourselves idiot assholes for doing so.
The water...was so cold...
Eventually I had sort of adjusted and swam around a bit, which was just so...liberating, but the cold got the better of me and we both got out before our hearts stopped.
Then we proceeded to have horrible headaches and vertigo for about an hour afterwards.
Either the cold had somehow compressed our brains, or that brain eating parasite found in some lakes had begun to consume our think jelly.
I'll keep you updated.
I ate a total of three lobster rolls, thinking they were much more than just lobster on a bun.
The first was at a tiny little ice cream place that had been in Rangely for over 60 years and, while it was not the biggest, it tasted the best.
The next was at a little fresh seafood place, just up the road from Rangely, but they had too much bun and that detracted from the overall lobstrocity of the thing.
The final one was The Best Lobster Roll In The World as dubbed by people other than me, but I'll get to that...
We went to several ridiculously cute little shops in town and Chris bought four, yes, FOUR antlers, assorted deer and moose.
I bought a tiny, wooden music box and was seized with a unfounded urge to buy a metronome from the 20's, but couldn't bing myself to pay $75 for it.
Even after haggling it would have been $50 and that was still too much from a small box that ticks.
Several other yard/garage sales were busts, some of them a bit creepy, but none were so annoying as to make me hate.
A few had a very "Return To Oz" feel (you know, the ending when they're all in that object room?)
Saturday morning we left early to drive to Bangor.
Bangor sucked.
The less said, the better.
That night we arrived in Wiscasset, the location of the B&B/goat/pig farm we were staying in.
For some idiot reason, I did not listen to Chris about going to Red's Eats (the Best Lobster Roll place) that night when there were only six people in line rather than sixty, but...well, I'm an idiot and we ate at some shitty, overpriced place which FACED the Best Lobster Roll place.
The soup was bland (Salsa Jack Chowder sounds pretty zesty, right?), the salad was salad and the bill was insulting.
We then drove, grumbling, to the Squire Tarbox (sounds a bit like a British racial slur from the 1800's) Inn where we were charmed out of our assholes by the place.
It was great.
They had converted an old carriage house into a library, the 13 acre plot was gorgeous, idyllic, bucolic etc., they had their own spring, there was a pond outside our window replete with frogs, both bull and otherwise...and I could stand up straight without fear of concussion.
We were bummed we hadn't gotten there earlier or even stayed there a few more days.
Then came the sleeping.
As I twittered, the bed room as all set up for a blustery winter night...in the middle of June.
I awoke, swimming, at 5 in the morning, ready to destroy the Earth (we'd been up since seven and driving for most of the day) when Christina made everything better (as she'd done for most of the trip, in one case actually wrapping the support beam that had bisected our cabin's living room about five feet five inches above the floor in bright orange life jackets, as a constant reminder of the danger to my dwindling brain cells) and I was able to secure about three hours of sleep.
The next morning, I was just praying that the husky-voiced innkeeper (think Kathleen Turner from "Californication" without the foul mouth), would ask how we slept, but, rather than doing that, she made us an amazing breakfast.
The French toast was made from what tasted like slabs of fruit cake...it was astounding.
Plus, Earl Grey tea...with real cream.
I was ready to face the day.
We took off down the road a ways to visit Watershed, a sort of artists compound where Chris' sister, Liz had lived and worked some years ago, doing ceramic stuff.
It was...earthy.
A great energy to the place and the guy in charge, Reed, could have been the Gunslingers brother.
He was almost black from his time in the sun, he had shoulder length blond hair and a big, grey beard, plus jeans and a shirt the color of dust and rain.
The man was more earth than human.
We met a few other people and they were just...groovy, in all respects of the word.
Plus there were cows.
They were covered in flies, which made me hate insects EVEN MORE and one came over and had discourse with us, wonderful, beautiful,, friendly cow that she was.
Eventually, we left and headed to Red's Eats to get the Best blah blah blah.
There were made forty people in line and we waited an hour in line.
In that time, I drank a homemade wild blueberry ice cream milkshake from Red's which WAS the Best In The World, and then, finally, we got to the window and paid $48 dollars for two lobsters rolls, two large fries and two large lemonades.
The fires were amazing, the lemonades hit every spots and the lobster rolls....were huge portions of lobster on a bun.
I will say this: for the money, it was very good lobster, but not very flavorful.
Now, I realized that plain lobster, like plain drab or shrimp, is NOT very flavorful, that's why Jesus the Christ invented tartar sauce and cocktail sauce and etc.
Thing is: I was under the impression that a lobster roll was more than lobster on a roll (stupid, based on the name, I know), I thought it was some sort of lobster salad (like chicken salad or pasta salad) with spices or some herbs or something on it.
But, I was wrong.
So, to wrap up this issue with Red's, it was excellent lobster for the price, but not flavorful enough to be the best in the world.
No offense, Red.
One thing I will admit utterly, those people really do care about their clientele.
They were passing out water and free shrimp and were cordial the whole time.
Really good folks.
Anyway, after were gorged ourselves on fresh Maine lobster for the third and final time, we set off to return to New York.
We left at 2pm and arrived at 11pm.
Yes, we stopped, briefly, two or three times when the other drivers got to be too douchy for Chris, but, we drove for at least seven of those nine hours.
And it was awful.
Bad ending to a really amazing trip.
There's going to be a massive amount of pictures up soon and you can share in our joy.
You can share in my snarky solipsism now if you go to my Twitter and read my thoroughly amusing* twitters.
I feel bad for the three people following me there as this trip was a great reason to have a Twitter account, but now that I'm back, I'll have to revert to using it as a Fart Diary or something.
Or like a bulletin boards for whinging.
At least I know for a fact that there are people out there that have more boring Twitter feeds than me.
God bless the Internet.
Whatever.
I think John Linnell really nailed the feel of our trip in the lyrics to his song, 'Maine'.
Okay, I'm off.
Also, I proposed to Chris and we're getting married.
Pictures from the trip
here
*read as 'not thoroughly amusing'
