Showing posts with label Maine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maine. Show all posts

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 1: A night in Searsport

We are all packed. We started driving at about 10AM towards Maine. It was a typical summer day in New England - which basically means rain. We stopped for lunch in Augusta. Too  bad it wasn’t a Tuesday:


You gotta have some seafood if you’re in Maine. Americans, however, deep-fry everything. They will deep-fry their own families, given enough oil:


By the late afternoon, we got to Deer Isle. Haystack has amazing facilities for teaching weaving, graphics, photography, dying, glass-blowing, and working with woos, metal and clay. There is also a fab-lab, where some of our colleagues from the Media Lab will be mentoring.


After saying my goodbyes to Julia, I turned back to find a place to stay for the night. Entering Deer Isle was easy, but leaving was hard, as I had no 3G reception, and could not navigate with my phone. After about an hour of driving in circles, I remembered Julia keeps an old-fashioned map in the car. I managed to escape Deer Isle.

I missed a turn and found myself in Bucksport. The weather was starting to get clearer, and I got this beautiful panorama with a rainbow and some mist over the  Penobscot river.



Next stop was Searsport. We drove by it on our way to Deer Isle and it looked really cute, with several motels, a flee market and a model ship store on the main street. I decided to spend the night there, and got a room at the Yardarm Motel. Searsport is tiny and sleepy, and as I got settled in my room it was 8:45PM, which made finding dinner a little tricky. I found the Mermaid bar in a nearby inn. Besides the staff, I was the only one there. I had some beers and a pretty good maple broiled salmon. The owner asked me what brings me to Searsport. I told her the whole story, and she was blown away. We talked some more about technology and cognition - it turns out she studied software engineering, and decided to give up her career at some point to become a stay-at-home mom. When the kids got older and she found herself in Searsport, she started running the Inn.

Some guy walked in and said he and the boys are going squid fishing - or at least I think it was squids. What ever they were fishing , they had to fish it at night. Turns out this is what the guys here do for fun. I should have joined them. Next time. I had to get some sleep.