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 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.