Day 20: We made it!

What do you know - it worked. We live in Paris.

We landed in Paris at about 6AM. We got our luggage by 7AM. Our landlord is away for a vacation, but he gave his friend the keys and emailed us his phone number. We called the friend from the airport with Skype. Unfortunately, the guy doesn’t speak English very well, but I managed to communicate to him that we’re on the way to the apartment. He, on the other hand, said he’ll be there at 10, which meant we’d be stuck outside the apartment for a while, and all my attempts to convince him to come earlier were blocked - I’m not sure whether by the language barrier or his laziness.

We got to the apartment at about 8, and even though we were exhausted we had to wait for him for two hours, with our luggage, in the middle of the street. Eventually, he arrived, and little earlier than expected.

So here we are. We don’t have air conditioning, we don’t have an oven, but if you stick your head out the window, you can see the Eiffel tower. I really can’t believe we made it. Julia starts working on Monday, and I’m supposed to start in the beginning of the month. No more “Person on the Road” for a while. I might post updated in the future, maybe on a different blog. I really don’t know -  so thanks for following so far, and stay tuned.

Day 19: Iceland

So…we landed in Iceland. That sentence alone sounds weird to me.

After getting all our suitcases we went to the car rental area and got a Honda Jazz. Now, if you know me, you know I don’t care too much about cars, and maybe this is a result of having a ‘96 Renault Express as the most fancy car I had ever owned, but the Jazz is Soooo cool. First, we could fit all of our shit super easily in it, and had room for another person if it we had too; Second - it’s super smooth and fun to drive; and last, but most important - it has heaters inside the seats.

I looked at the guy at the car rental and said: “now that we have the car, where do we drive to?”. He was confused for a second, but then took a few minutes to consult with his friends. They decided we should go to see the blue lagoon and then hang out in Reykjavik.

We started driving in impossibly thick mist. We could see only a few meters ahead, and the image was pretty weird - some kind of green/purple surface of moss. We stopped in  a turnout, where some empty hippy-mobile was parked, to investigate. So weird: 

Suddenly, we heard voices - it was the missing hippies, emerging from a lava cave that we totally missed:

We fished for flashlights in our bags and went in. It was, just like the outside, creepy and awesome at the same time:

We drove on and got the the Blue Lagoon. I really don’t know what to say, other than share this with you:

and maybe this one:

We were getting pretty hungry, so we drove to the nearest town, Grindavik. Although an information sign on the road promised that “Grindavik is a lot of fun for tourists”, We couldn’t find much to do there, or any place to eat that was open before 11AM. We drove to the bakery and bought two small bread loafs, and then to the supermarket where we bought two tomatoes, some cheese and chocolate milk. We drove with the loot the harbor and had an awesome breakfast on the dock.

As we left Grindavik, the mist was clearing, and we could see the angry mountain that overlooks the town:

Julia drove on to Reykjavik while I collapsed into sleep. When we got to Reykjavik Julia was also exhausted, so we parked the car in an apartment building’s parking lot and napped for a couple of hours. After changing cloths and brushing our teeth in a close by mall’s restrooms, we drove to the Reykjavik’s downtown area. It’s really cool. We visited the Hallgrímskirkja church, with its beautiful organ:

We had lunch - we shared a dish of lamb shank, and a dish of whale. Don’t worry, it was a Minke whale, and environmentally, they are doing great. And since you’re curious - whale tastes like and average of steak and tuna.

We walked around some more, and passed by the HARPA, which is an impressive theater:

Then we went to get coffee and Icelandic pancakes - which are more like blintzes. We actually just wanted a place with Wi-Fi so we can coordinate getting our keys in Paris. 

We left Reykjavik, deciding to head back to the airport, but through another route. We found ourselves in lake Kleifarvatn, in pouring rain, where we saw a couple of flip-flops on the lake bank. we didn’t see any people though. that was a little disturbing. 

We left, and then drove by the hot springs in Krysuvik. If anybody ever again tries to convince me that God exist because “look how beautiful everything is!’, I’ll send him to Krysuvik. It’s not only ugly, it stinks too. And it’s fascinating.

At this point, we were getting tight on time. We drove quickly to the airport, with a beautiful, nine-o-clock Icelandic sunset keeping us company was we leave.

Day 18: Passports!

We woke up for the day of our flight, still no passports in our hands. The tracking showed that my passport has left Ellicott City’s post office, and Julia’s passport has left the post office in Baltimore.

Julia drove to her sister’s house in Baltimore to wait for hers, while I stayed in her parents’ house waiting for mine.

Express mail is guaranteed to arrive by noon. At half past twelve I was already engaged in a pointless conversation with the post office (me: “where is the envelope that I was supposed to get by noon?!”. Lady: “sir, we just got it today!”).

I called Julia, to see how she was doing, and as we were both sighing on both sides of the line, she started yelling “somebody just knocked on the door!”. A minute later she called me and reported live the opening of the envelope and the revealing of the visa page in the passport.

She came back to her parents’ house and we had lunch with her parents who were working from home in order to take us to the airport, but it was already two o’clock, and my passport’s location was still a mystery. In an act that I interpret as “I can handle my daughter leaving, but not leaving her terrible boyfriend in my house”, Julia’s mother called the post office and started yelling at them. Turns out that the envelope was left in their mail box. Julia and I ran outside and obtained my passport. Let me say this one last time: we had the two passports six and a half hours before we were moving to another continent.

So I’m writing this from the airport in Washington DC, and we fly in one hour. We stop in Iceland for an 18 hours layover. The plan is to rent a car and drive a little bit, and then continue to France. We can’t believe we made it. Really, we can’t.

There are, however, two more days of adventures until we finally settle down in our new home in Paris. Stay tuned.

I will leave you with something to think about – take a look at the sign for the chapel house in the airport. Is it just me, or does this sign portrays a child preparing to give a blow-job?

Day 17: Train wreck

We were both a nervous wreck when we woke up. We fly to Paris the next day, and we still don’t have our passports. We called lady B, and she said she didn’t go to the consulate to look for our passports, since they haven’t returned her email. This was one of those times when my implosive Israeli side has to battle his well-trained American counterpart. “It was my understanding that you are not waiting for their response, and just planned to go there. Our flight is tomorrow. I’m not sure I communicate well how stressed we are.” Let me translate to this my Israeli friends: “would you get your fat ass up and MOVE!”. As you can see, I have learned a lot during my two years here.

Lady B. had a brilliant idea – she would cancel her meetings and go to the consulate. Duh. An hour later we got the report: Julia’s passport was sent the day before. That’s already weird and distrurbing, since we can’t track the envelope on-line. Please don’t tell me they have lost it. The good news about this were that lady B read to me the tracking number as was given to her by the consulate, and it was the same number we had, so somebody had a visual on that envelope at some point. Well, whatever. Where’s MY passport?

“Ah,” said lady B. “I have it! They didn’t want to sign you visa because.. (something about a missing document) so I told them it’s OK, they approved it, and gave me your passport which I will send you right away!”

The fascinating thing here is that if we hadn’t insisted the she goes herself, that morning, without waiting to be invited, to the consulate – I would have never known there’s a problem. My passport would have not been sent to me, with or without a visa. I would just be sitting like an idiot in Baltimore waiting for something interesting to happen. I couldn’t believe it.

So now we wait for the envelopes. In the meantime, we went to the Baltimore railroad museum:

Lot’s of trains, lot’s of history of trains, two very big mode train layouts. Not enough technology to my taste, but it’s still a pretty cool place:

In the afternoon we checked our envelopes trackings, and it was bad. My envelope was already tracked, but Julia’s wasn’t. It’s either somebody in the consulate is just being lazy taking the box with letters to the post office, our that the envelope is indeed lost. We called lady B. again. She was getting impatient, which really annoyed me, because patience and support were exactly the things I needed. She said that if the passport doesn’t show up by noon the next day, I should fly alone, and Julia will join me when the passport shows up. Very saddened, we started adjusting ourselves to the idea.

And just as we were about to turn the lights off at night, I decided to try just one last time. We couldn’t believe it – BOTH envelopes were tracked! Making their way to Maryland, and should be in our hands by noon, less than nine hours before the flight.

Day 16: Philadelphia, PA

So the day before we checked once again on our visas’ status on-line. Finally, it had changed from something like “what visa are you fucking talking about” to a more “oh yeah, we have made a decision”, not stating what it is exactly that was decided. We assumed, of course, that had there been a problem, they would have let us know. So now we need to track the envelopes that we gave the French consulate in which our passports should be sent back to us. However, nothing yet at that point.

We didn’t want to arrive at Julia’s parents’ place before they do, so we decided to make a detour and stop by Philadelphia. We found a bar in which the special of the day was Philly cheese-steak sandwich and beer. Of course we had to go in, even more so since we both never had a Philly cheese-steak sandwich. I liked it. And the beer.

Philadelphia is, well, interesting. Very different than any city I’ve been to:

We walked on and stepped into the big indoor marketplace, and wandered there for a long time. Then we went to see the liberty bell, but only from the outside, since we didn’t want to stand in line. We also checked out a religious bookstore. Just for fun. We were pretty stressed about the visa situation at this point. We called Lady B. I’ve mentioned her before as the lady who takes care of MIT students going on internships in France. We’ve been trying to communicate our stress since this whole thing started going wrong, but from some reason she is not getting it. We explained the situation to her – We’re going to be in Baltimore, and our visas are processed, but our passports, which are still in Boston, haven’t been sent, and if they are not sent by tomorrow morning – we’re fucked. She said she’ll email the consulate and ask to come herself, pick up the passports, and mail them to us. We fell slightly, just slightly better, knowing that she has waken up and might take some actions.

We left Philadelphia and drove to Ellicott City MD, near Baltimore, where Julia’s parents live. Her sister, along with her corgy dog were there. We had dinner and went to bed seriously frustrated.

Day 15: Corning, NY

We started the day and went straight to the Corning Museum of Glass. Holy crap, that place is huge. There’s a contemporary art exhibition, a history of glass exhibition, an entire area dedicated to the science of glass and so much more. There were some live demos of artists, including two glass blowing demos. In one of these demos, kids submitted pictures and the staff made it for them. We got to see them make a lady bug – the kid was so happy!

Well, here are some pictures, naturally of glass musical instruments:

and finally, a glass chess board and pieces – Hasidic Jews Vs. Roman Catholics:

Other side:

On the Jewish side, please pay special attention to the dude waving a chicken over his head (Kaparot for Yom Kippur) anb the Mohel (the one circumcising a baby).

We practically had to force ourselves to leave. We started driving towards Baltimore. We got hungry pretty late, and local restaurants in… whatever town we were, were already closed. We decided to pop my KFC cherry, and yes, it hurt pretty bad. Who eats that crap, and why?

We spent the night at the Comfort Inn in Bethlehem PA. That’s pretty much it.

Day 14: Beacon, NY

We woke up at Sturbridge. Turned out we had a nice porch with a view to a pond.

Our aim was to get to Corning NY at nighttime, so we can have plenty of time the next day to spend at the Corning Museum of Glass – I saw signs for it about a week before, as I was driving through the state of New-York, and Julia and I decided we’ll check it out together on our way to Maryland.

We started by stopping at a Shaw’s to get some veggies, bread, cold-cuts and cheese. We then drove a little and stopped at a rest area for one of those wonderful fresh, basic kind of lunches. As we were driving on, we saw a sign that said “Hudson Beach Glass”. Well, we thought, we might as well follow. Adventures!

We found ourselves in Beacon, NY. It seemed to be a pretty small town. In a small park on the main street there were some young heavy metal bands performing to mostly to themselves. They were pretty terrible.

We walked up and the street and came across Zoradora, a home-made Popsicle shop. They had flavors like lychee-sake, vanilla-beet, avocado, and pumpkin-chiptole-chunk. I had the blueberry pie and Julia ha the strawberry-kiwi-ginger. That was awesome.

We then found Hudson Beach Glass, a glass studio and gallery. The shop store had a lot of beautiful pieces:

Julia mentioned to the dude that she blows glass, and of course a very vivid conversation started. He was sad to hear we were just passing through the town, and suggested we go up to the gallery on the second floor, where artist Jill Reynolds was installing her works for an exhibition. Reynolds herself and and her husband who was helping her were both extremely nice. Even as they were working towards the opening of the exhibition, they took the time to talk to us about the works, which were very interesting:

We then continued all the way to Corning. We got a room in a motel (with Indian owners, what do you know…) and drove to the downtown area. It was very cute with tons of glass shops on the main street.

We decided to go for a semi-fancy dinner at the Cellar. Unfortunately, NASCAR was also taking place in the area, so we shared the restaurant with a table of loud, drunk drivers and their… I don’t know, women. Complaining to the waiter resulted, as expected, in a free dessert.

Day 13: Julia Joins

I woke up early and drove to Deer Isle. Julia packed her bags and the pieces she made during the workshops, we said our goodbyes and left. We stopped at Searsport for lunch, and we also bought a piece of blueberry pie which we ate an hour later as we were pumping gas. We then drove to Boston. Well, Julia was driving. I slept.

First stop in Boston was the Media Lab. We returned the camping equipment I borrowed, the stove and the cooler, to their rightful owners (thank you Andy B.! Thank you NovySan!) and then we drove to our old apartment, to fulfill the secret mission.

Before leaving Boston, We hid four boxes with our stuff in the basement of our building, and we made copies of the keys, so we can access the basement and get our stuff as we travel from Deer Isle to Maryland. I couldn’t take these with me on my first trip there simply because there was not enough room in the car. So there, this is the secret mission.

Sadly, it was raining when we arrived to Boston, and by the time we were carrying our stuff from the basement to the car, it was pouring. We were finally done with that, but the came the hard part – installing the bike-rack on the back of the car. By the time we were done, we were soaked.

It was pouring two years ago as well, when I arrived to Boston in the middle of the summer. Back then I was surprised. This time I just went like “yeah, thanks a lot, fucking Boston. Goodbye to you too!”.

We drove for about an hour in our wet close until we had enough. We pulled over in a service plaza, changed our clothes in the bathrooms. We drove some more until we hit Sturbridge MA. We found a cute restaurant called the Whistling Swan, where there was a guy singing with a guitar. The food was great too. We went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Day 12: Portland, Maine

I woke up at Gorham. When I talked to Julia on the phone on the previous night, she suggested I drive to Portland ME, and so I did. As I checked out from the motel I realized that a substantial percentage of the motel owners I ran into were Indians. I wonder why.

I passed this sign, and thought to my self that it is a small world, after all:

Portland was really cool. Very artsy, with very interesting people on the streets – I saw a group of youngsters, probably around their twenties. They had backpacks, sleeping bags and guitars. They were dressed in militant/cartoonish/apocalyptic attire, like dusty cargo pants and torn tank tops. Pretty much the way I used to dress when I was their age. One guy had on his shoulders a cat on a leash. I just had to follow them. They went off the main street into an alley that led to a parking lot. There they got into a tiny backyard of one of the building, where they stopped for water and smokes. I had to stop following them and move on. Oddly, I saw some more of these nomads later, some actually had frying pans dangling from their backpacks. Maybe there was a Mad Max fans conference. In town.

I passed by a bong store. One of the contractors/artists whose works are sold in the store also had this glass laser gun for sale:

Then I stopped at Monument Square in the downtown area, where a live music show was starting. They band was really good, and the guitar player reminded me of the guitar player for the Girafot, Mr. Erez Russo. You be the judge:

I then left Portland. On the way, I passed this gas station. Something was just ending there that looked like a modified cars expo. Everybody was getting ready to leave, but I still managed to get some pictures:

I drove some more until I got to Belfast ME, which is just a couple of hours away from Deer Isle. I got a room at the Gull Motel, and then drove downtown, where I got some beer and food and watched the Korean women’s volleyball team getting their asses kicked by their American counterparts live from the London Olympics.

Day 11: First we take New Hampshire, then we take Berlin

I woke up in the camping site, and made some breakfast – Eggs and Israeli salad. I took the tent down and went to to the bathroom. Somebody left there a brochure about the Orono Bog Boardwalk, so naturally, I drove there. It’s pretty cool.

Although there were signs telling you not to go of the boardwalk, I saw a dude off the boardwalk, taking pictures. I think he was a little embarrassed, so he started explaining to me some of the planets. Like the these pitcher plants:

They have hair in the inside, and water on the bottom. An insect that goes inside cannot get out because of the hair, falls into the water and drowns. The plant extracts enzymes into the water which digest the insect and feed the plant. Cool, right? The dude came from Florida to visit his girlfriend and his daughter. He’s a VAC technician. He has been taking pictures for the past 20 years, and he learns about the things he’s taking pictures of. That’s why he knows so much about pitcher plants.

I opened Google Maps. And picked Berlin NH as a new destination, with no good reason. I stopped in some picnic area, emmm, somewhere, got out the stove and made lunch – fried spam sandwiches.

I drove on and got to Rumford falls.

I then made it to Berlin. There was nothing there. I didn’t want my journey to Berlin to be for nothing, so I found a bar and went in. There were not many people there, but I was soon picked on by the drunk Cathie. She asked what my name was, and then she inquired about my last name. She yelled “Shaccchhaarrr !!!”, which reminded her of the word “shocker”, and therefore started yelling “two in the pink, one in the stink!”. I learned something new, and if this is new to you, dear reader, you can learn something new today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shocker_(hand_gesture). You’re welcome.

She turned out to be pretty cool. She’s married to a bartender at that bar, and they have a daughter, one year old. She’s working at her dad’s garage, where they disassemble old cars and sell the parts. We ended up having a few beers together, and Cathie, who’s veeery talkative, went on and on about how un-ladylike she is (cuz I couldn’t figure that out,  when she yelled “two in the pink, one in the stink”, with her fingers pointing to her vagina and her asshole, right?), and how much she doesn’t care, which made me think that she might care a little bit. Anyway, she was a handful. But fun.

We departed when I was getting too drunk and she had to give some attention to her friends in the bar. I drove the nearby Gorham, which is a really cool town, got a room there and went to bed.

Day 10: Camping!

I started driving without a purpose. I reached Grant’s Cove, where I saw this caterpillar hanging in mid air. I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to experiment with Julia’s fancy camera.

Me and the caterpillar played there for quite a while. I then decided to visit Bangor. The downtown area of Bangor is really cute. I walked around a bit and visited the UMASS art museum, where I was really impressed with the work of Chris Natrop. He laser-cuts stuff, and he’s into lilies.

I then had lunch in some pub. The Weather was great, and I thought that it’s a perfect time for camping. I found a Walmart, where I equipped myself with beer, vegetables, eggs and mosquito repellent and headed to Pushaw Lake Campground. I set up my tent as I got there, since I really didn’t want to deal with it at dark. I managed to set it up surprisingly fast, considering the fact that I really didn’t remember how.

I then sat with my computer outside the office for a while. The three of you that are actually reading these posts, you might have noticed that I was a few days behind. This was a wonderful opportunity to catch up. When I got hungry, I went back to my tent and tried to light the stove that Andy, a colleague from the Lab, lent me. It’s not one of those conventional stoves – it runs on fuel. Any kind of fuel. I fought with it for quite a while until I realized I had the thing upside down. By then, it was clogged with gas. The best way I know to get rid of gas is to burn it, so I started a fire, and then dipped the stove in it. It worked like magic, and I was on my way to making shakshuka (an Israeli dish, basically tomatoes and eggs). It was getting dark, and since the camp fire is confined to a fire ring, the light from it is not very helpful. I managed to make the shakshuka, some salad, and Turkish coffee in the dark, and I was very pleased with the results. And with myself…

While I was eating I thought to myself that I will have to wash the dishes in the bathroom, and the path is dark. If only I had a flashlight! But wait, I did have a flashlight. Why was I cooking in the dark in the first place? Man, It’s so hard being me.

Day 9: Meeting at the consulate

We woke up early and drove to the train station, where we took the train to the Back Bay in Boston for our meeting in the French consulate. We were so disappointed to see that we waited all this time just so we can give our forms to some clerk. My fantasy of getting our visas on the same day was shattered. The clerk said that we might get our visas on time. Might. I was so frustrated.

We took the train back to Needham and started driving back to Deer Island. Well, Julia did most of the driving. I fell asleep.

We got back to Haystack just in time for a session in which the assistants showed and talked about their work, which I think are awesome. Then I stayed for a while to watch Julia blow glass. I can’t believe I haven’t done this until now. I tried taking some pictures, but also stay out of the way, and also I was so intrigued by the process, so most the pictures that I took were pretty bad. Maybe except this one:

I left after about an hour, and drove to Bucksport, this time without getting lost. I got a room at a motel there, and decided to check why the car smelled funny. Indeed, I forgot a piece of cheese in the cooler. The ice melted and dissolved some of the cheese, so now the contented of the cooker was a lot of cheese water, a swollen chunk of rotten cheese, three bottles of beer covered in cheese water, and some disgusting plastic bags. There’s something symbolic there, with the disappointment at the French consulate and the rotten cheese in the car. I took the cooler to my room, where I cleaned it with dish soap, took the rotten cheese chunk and threw it in the forest behind the motel, washed the bottles of beer and packed the plastic bags in a clean trash bag. The hazard was now contained. I took that bag with me as I drove into Bucksport to look for a pub. I couldn’t find one, but I threw the hazard into a trash can on the street and went back to the motel where I watched trash TV until I fell asleep.

Day 8: Nervous Nelly

After all that driving the previous day, it turned out I had only about 2 hours of driving left to get to Haystack.

I passed this place:

Doesn’t sound like a good business plan. No wonder it’s for sale:

In Deer Island I passed by a sign that said “Nervous Nelly’s jam and jellies”. I noticed that sign a week ago, when I brought Julia to Haystack. My attention was drawn to that sign also due to two human like sculptures. This time, I decided to stop and check it out. I tend not to use this expression , but – OH, MY, GOD!

There were several small shacks, filled with weird, cute, and disturbing sculptures of humans, engaged in daily activities. I can’t explain it, so I took pictures of EVERYTHING.

The sculptures are by a dude called Peter Beerits. He also writes stories about these characters, illustrates them, prints booklets and sells them in the store, where Nelly sells her amazing jams, jellies and chutneys. Some of them are very unconventional, like hot tomato chutney and jalapeño. I know they’re amazing because you can taste them all.

I left that place very inspired and with a strong desire to stop moving around and get a house in the country, where I too can make crazy stuff. Maybe in a few years.

Then I got to Haystack. It was so great seeing Julia again. She took me to see the work that is being done in the different shops. It’s so awesome and creative. What’s really amazing about it is that people not just learn techniques from wonderful artists, they also get to play around with the craft.

We started driving to Boston, not before I took Julia to see the sculptures at Nervous Nelly’s. We discovered a whole are in the back with even stranger sculptures.

We got to to Needham, a suburb of Boston, where my friend Ran lives. He gave us a great room for the night. We filled some forms regarding the car accident I was involved in, made sure we have everything for the meeting at the French consulate, and fell asleep.

Day 7: Vermont

I woke up at the motel in East Springfield. I didn’t even know what town I was in. The motel had a diner where I got some breakfast and found out what town it was. I had to get Julia by the afternoon of the next day and still had 15 more hours of driving to do in order to get to Deer Isle.

I made a small detour to Featherstonhaug forest:

I arrived to Bennington VA, when I saw a sign: “obelisk - 1 mile”. ooh! oblisk. I drove for another mile, when I saw another sign: “obelsik - 1 1/2 mile”. That doesn’t make much sense, does it? I kept on driving  and found myself stuck in traffic in the main street of Bennington. as I was waiting for the car in front of me to go, a car hit me from behind. A 22 year old kid in a white convertible ford mustang was distracted by some girl waving at him. His front was smashed. Julia’s car suffered minor damage to the back fender. We waited for the police to show up. The officer asked me where I was from, told me he served in Iraq, and we exchanged our impressions of the middle eastern weather. He then told me I can go, but the kid had to stay. As I got into the car I overheard the officer say the words “not supposed to drive…”. I think the kid got himself into some trouble,

I turned around to look for the obelisk. I saw a tall, pointy structured and decided to ignore the signs and just go there. It wasn’t the obelisk. It was the Bennignton War Memorial.

I paid $3 to go on an elevator to the top, 200 feet high, where you can get a view of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.

I left Bennington, got to Wilmington, where I discovered what the obelisk was. These are small  stone pillars that mark the Molly Stark trail. What a disappointment.

I had lunch at one of the taverns, where the patrons were playing some gambling dice game, with the bartender managing the game.

Outside Wilmington , I stopped for a second to see what the Molly Stark trail was:

It was getting pretty late and rainy and I decided to drive a couple of more hours, get some food for later, find a motel and have dinner in my room, but I lost data reception on my phone. Where the hell am I?

I crossed the entire state of New Hampshire, and there were no motels on the road, which was too bad, because I passed so many tiny bars, exactly the kind I like. When I got to Maine, I started finding motels, but they had no vacancies, one after the other. Turns out there are a couple of big music festival in Maine, and it’s a weekend. In one motel the guy at the reception said they’re making phone calls to other motels to find rooms for people, but there’s nothing.

At this point Julia called. It was about 11PM, and she couldn’t believe I was still on the road. I’ve been driving for about than 10 hours now. Luckily, Julia had internet connection. Once again she proved how awesome she is, and five minutes later she called to inform me she booked what was probably the only available room in New England, at the Rocky Ridge motel, just outside Stockton Springs. having no data reception, she also gave me directions. Indeed, the girl rules. Saved again!