Caboteers Part One: Is Portland Is Not Portland

 

Boylston, MA

16 August 2024

It's 9:33 p.m. Glen and Martin are on their way to asleep in the bed by the window. I'm sitting on the floor by the hallway light, blogging next to my bed. Janice is to my left. Glen's bike is to my right. Martin's is by the window.

We're in Portland, but we're not really in Portland. We're at a Hampton Inn off I-95.  Somehwere else in the hotel, Heddy and Ginger are sharing a room. Our Jeff and Lonnie are on the third floor.

I packed more than way too much into Jack's suitcase (it's bigger than mine) to accommodate a week of biking and clothes for after. I also brought this heavy laptop, two cases of protein bars (because I'm a vegetarian and I don't know what kind of nutrition I'm going to find on Cape Breton), my own shampoo (fragrance allergies), and a hardcover book of Micmac legends written in 1895. It's a lot, and there's a second suitcase full of random stuff for the Bar Harbor half of the trip. And the backpack full of biking gear. Somehow, we got it all into Glen's little Jeep when he and Martin picked me up this morning. 

The bikes go on a rack off the back of the car, with Janice nested in the middle.

Smoke from the Canadian wildfires has reached the east coast. It's high up this time, but it was enough to turn the air over Newark and Manhattan a milky white*.  

Waze told us that, if we didn't stop, we'd be in Portland before 3:00. We did stop, and we hit traffic more than a few times. It didn't help that, engrossed in coversation about land use in Hamilton, we missed a turn that cost us another half hour of traffic. When we finally pulled into the hotel, it was 6:00, and the rest of the group was already here.

Glen and I wanted to go to the Allagash brewery, but the group consensus was to walk a few blocks to a strip mall for pho. Nobody wanted to drive anywhere, even though downtown Portland, what I think of as the real Portland, is ten minutes away. I promised Glen we'd visit Allagash on our way home from Bar Harbor.

The sun was pale orange from the smoke. My phone made the sky look more hazy than it was.

The moon rose orange too as we left the restaurant. My phone did a lousy job capturing it, so I didn't take a picture.

There was a search for ice cream after dinner. Downtown Portland has many good choices. Where we are has a McDonald's. Being a fat girl with food issues, I long ago convinced myself that McDonald's does not sell food. Several of our number did buy what is supposed to be ice cream there. I ate the second half of a protein bar when I got back to the room. I've had one bar today, and I'm already tired of the taste.

Tomorrow, we all plan to leave here at 8:00. The drive to the Bar Harbor ferry terminal should only take three hours, but, after today, none of us wants to trust traffic. We want to get there early enough to check in, but not so early that we stand around our cars with nothing to do for hours until we can board the CAT ferry bound for Yarmouth.

Martin has already checked out the hotel's breakfast situation: "Waffles!"

Now he's asleep. It's 9:58. I should pack it in too. 

(*"The sun has charred the other side of the world and come back to us, and painted the smoke over our heads an imperial violet" -- Soul Coughing, "Screenwriter's Blues")