Cool as a Moose, Portland
25 May 2019
Yesterday, minutes before we left, I crammed a glass vessel into the bag of other pieces making the trip to Portland. I had the goofy idea to narrate the entire trip from the point of view of this hideous mug, a malformed attempt to depict a Maine coastline (see the very end of this long post for the backstory). Somewhere on Mount Desert Island there must be something that looks like this mug.
We left New Jersey late enough to avoid the local rush hour and early enough to get us out of any rush hours along the way. What we weren't counting on was a steady crawl of traffic from Worcester, Massachusetts to somewhere near the Maine border. Jack had made dinner reservations days before, and now he was trying to change them as we crept along. It's a good thing he did, because we got to the hotel with barely enough time to unload our bags.
I set the mug out on the bed, preparing for its first blog post.
Within minutes of hitting the street it became obvious that the concept wasn't going to work without every paragraph starting with, "My creator tells me..." or actually carrying the vessel with me wherever I went in some sort of Flat Stanley imitation. The former would become tedious; the latter impractical. Still, I held out hope that I could pull it off somehow.
Portland on a Friday night is a blocks-long thumpa-thumpa of live bands and night clubs, of twentysomethings milling about on the street, of block after block of red brick buildings and red brick sidewalks.
I graduated from college in 1988. Jack and I are still friends with a handful of people from our dorm. Two of them, my roommate and Jack's roommate, live in Boston. The plan was for them to drive up and meet us for lunch. We had a little time in the morning before they arrived, so we found a bookstore and a candy shop. Then we headed back to the hotel, skirting a long line of people waiting for donuts.
After I offloaded three plates on my roommate and a bowl on Jack's roommate, we headed off to find lobster roll, because they didn't come all the way up to Maine for nothing. Being a vegetarian, I come to Maine for the local sour beers. Sour beer is the only kind I like because it doesn't taste like beer.
Unlike the four of us, some things never get old, like our having fun with the missing "u" on the sign over the restaurant where we had lunch.
My roommate and I made beaded jewelry in college. Both of us still do. There's a big bead shop in Portland, so we all drove out there and continued talking while she and I looked at beads.
From Portland to Bar Harbor is three hours with no traffic and no stops. This being Memorial Day weekend, we'd made restaurant reservations for 7:00 p.m. We left Portland at 3:30, figuring we'd end up canceling en route. But there was little traffic and we arrived at the hotel at 6:40.
We had time to drop our bags and for me to step out onto the deck to take in the view that has been playing live on my desktop at work for months.
There was the Margaret Todd, who had arrived in the harbor only two days ago, out on her 6:00 p.m cruise.
Here was the view of Bald Porcupine Island and the two hemlock trees that I'd been keeping an eye on all winter.
For good measure I took a screen shot of the Bar Harbor Cam East live feed.
Hi, tree.
The sour beer I ordered with dinner came in a bottle with a cork. Wuss drinker that I am, there was enough left to take back to the hotel. Naturally, I wanted to take the long way around.
The darkness didn't stop me from taking pictures.
For good measure, I put the malformed mug on the bed for another establishing shot.
Then I took it out on the deck so that I'd be able to have the mug complain about the darkness. One can't find one's coastline in darkness.
We'll go for a walk along the Shore Path tomorrow. Maybe I'll find the right coastline then.
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