Eastern Promenade from Munjoy Hill, Portland, ME
18 June 2023
Jack and I are creatures of habit. We find hotels we like and keep going back. It saves time and trouble. In Portland, we stay at a Holiday Inn. It's on a hill across from the art museum and a short walk to Old Port. It costs less than the hotels in the middle of everything, it's easier to get to, and it has better rooms.
We arrived late in the afternoon and walked around Old Port for a while.
Those are condos on the right. I wouldn't. Would you?
I mean, they don't get hurrincanes now, but...
We met up with a friend of Jack's for dinner.
The next day, still under clouds, we walked around the city some more. Jack wanted to get to all the bookstores. A bird pooped on Jack's shirt before we got to the last one. He went back to the hotel to clean up while I went north to Munjoy Hill. We had plans to meet another friend at noon, so I only had half an hour to get all the way up there and back.
I hastily took a couple of pictures.
The houses up here go for millions of dollars. For people who live here, every trip ends by walking or driving uphill.
I turned around. To the south, clouds were threatening.
I was late getting back. I texted Jack to meet me in the lobby. I had time to dash into the bathroom to wipe away sweat. Then we got in the car and drove off the peninsula to meet his friend at a large Italian restaurant at the edge of the city.
Jack knows this guy from his bibliophile club, which meets online for Friday happy hours. This was the first time they'd seen each other in meatspace. Within ten minutes, we figured out that he was the previous owner of the house my boss lives in. Now I had a story to bring back to work that might strip a few gears.
We went back to his house. The neigborhood could have been anywhere in New Jersey. Off the bay and on high ground, they didn't have to worry about floods the way people in the center of Portland do. Speaking of floods, he and his wife had considered buying one of those portside condos until they found out that the parking area is under water three months out of the year.
I've already ruled out anything on the peninsula. I'm not living anywhere that has "coastal evacuation route" signs posted on roadsides.
On our way back to the hotel, we stopped into a beer distributor we'd passed on our way over. I found more Allagash Coolship and another Allagash sour. Jack put a pin in the map so we'd remember it next time. We also went to the bookstore we'd missed in the morning. I found a parking space across from the store. I'm sure it was a fluke.
By the time we returned to the hotel, it was too late to walk to Old Port before our dinner reservations. We chilled in the room instead.
Earlier in the day, word had been coming from our friends back home. The sky was yellow, orange, apocalyptic, purple on the hazard scale, full of the Quebec smoke that our friendly cloud mass was protecting us from. When I saw this, I was less disappointed by the Bar Harbor weather. Those fretful porpentines were protecting me!
Tuesday had been bad. Today was going to be worse.
From the west, the sun poked through the clouds. We hadn't seen the sun since it rose through the haze on June 3.
On her drive home from work, one of my colleagues sent me this, a photo of the sky over Saint Michael's Preserve in Hopwell. Seward Johnson's "The Awakening" looks especially sinister here.
Another friend had taken a picture of the Delaware River from one of the pedestrian bridges.
The air quality was yikes.
In Portland we had a cloudy sunset.
While we were in line, another couple there recognized us from the Abbe Museum on Sunday. They, too, were on their way back to New Jersey.
When we left the next morning, we were under clouds until we reached New Hampshire. After that, we could see the air, a pale yellow haze over everything. As we got closer to New York, it got worse. On the Tappan Zee bridge (that's what I'll always call it, damnit), the view was white reflecting on silver-white.
Jack had fun calling up airnow.gov. It became a contest between home and wherever we were at the time. Eventually the numbers converged around 130, "unhealthy for sensitive groups." By the time we pulled into our driveway, things had improved enough that we went food shopping without masks. We'd kept the house sealed up, too, which was good. Except in one room that I'd closed off from the cats. I'd forgotten to close a window that was open a crack. Maybe it was all in my mind, but the room did smell a little like smoke.
Okay. That's that for this year's photo dump. We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.
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