Wheels

I was recently going over my finances for the past twelve months, and noticed that my car took a much larger chunk out of my budget than usual in 2014.  The reason is fairly simple: the car, a Hyundai Santa Fe, is a 2007 model year, which means that it has reached the vehicular equivalent of middle age.  Just as has happened with me in my own middle age, lots of things have suddenly come up needing some attention.  Luckily though, for both me and the car, most of it has been preventative maintenance.  I am known as a pretty frugal guy, so one would think that I would be bothered by all the extra cash I laid out on my car last year.  If those expenditures were on anything else, say my wardrobe for example, or my lawn and garden equipment, I probably would indeed be a bit irked.  The thing is, the primary set of wheels in my life at any given time has always held a rather special place in my heart.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say money is no object when it comes to my vehicles, but it is less of an object than it would be for other things.

Big Wheels Rolling

My love affair with things that go started very young.  At Christmas when I was almost three I got a low-slung plastic tricycle popularly known in the early 1970s as a Big Wheel.  These slick little machines were heavily marketed during children’s television shows as being the pinnacle of cool for the preschool set.  In addition to a storage box in which to keep important “stuff”, the big draw for kids like me was a hand brake on one of the rear wheels which effectively allowed the driver to spin out in the most awesome way possible.  And yes, it was well and truly awesome.  The house where I grew up had a long sloping driveway that was just perfect to barrel down at high speed and then yank up on the hand brake, spinning almost all the way around.  The end of the driveway was constantly marked by rings left behind by my spins.  I wore out my first Big Wheel toward the end of its first year by overusing the hand brake to the point where it wore through the rear wheel.  Such was my love for the Big Wheel, and my parents’ appreciation for it as an outlet for my energy, that I got a replacement the next Christmas.  It came with a parental proviso, however: Lay off the hand brake.

This vintage ad sums it all up nicely.

Big Wheel #2 ultimately received even rougher treatment than its predecessor.  Not only was I getting bigger, but since I was using the hand brake less, I needed to find another way to get a vehicular thrill, and found it in jumping the Big Wheel off whatever makeshift ramp I could concoct.  I rode it as fast as I could off curbs, low steps, or any other slight elevation, lifting up on the front end.  It was an attempt to “get air” before “getting air” was even a thing.  Heck, this was even before the Dukes of Hazzard.  Much like the spinouts, these jumps were well and truly awesome in my mind, even if they were usually only an average of four inches off the ground.

I think this was Big Wheel #2.

My second Big Wheel died when it broke in half.  Yes, you read that right.  It broke in half!  While I won’t disagree that I played pretty hard with it, it is also worth noting that in those days before video games, DVDs and the like, kids spent MUCH more time outside, at least several hours a day for me and even more in the summers and on weekends.  The majority of that time for me was spent on wheels.  Big plastic ones.  Therefore, some attrition was to be expected.  Those things got a whole lot of use before they finally gave up their ghosts.  Believe it or not, my parents did actually get me a third Big Wheel, but fortunately for their pocketbook, a market in used ones had emerged locally at yard sales, the toys having been around for a while at that point and kids were outgrowing them.  They were able to get my last one at a steep discount. 

Frankenstein's Bicycle

My third Big Wheel did not meet the same untimely end as my first two, because shortly after I got it, I got my first two-wheeler, which subsequently dominated my attention.  My first bike did not arrive with a lot of fanfare.  It was not a Christmas or birthday gift.  There was no anticipation, and I did not even ask for it.  It just kind of happened.  One Saturday in the summer before I started kindergarten, my father and I were nosing around in my grandmother’s garage and found the remains of several of my uncles’ old bicycles, which had been sitting in there for ten years or so.  It didn’t take my father very long to determine that he had all the parts he would need to assemble one Frankenstein’s monster of a bicycle for me from the remains of the old ones, and later that afternoon I had my first bicycle.  The only expenditure on my parents’ part was a couple of dollars at Western Auto for training wheels.  I only used the training wheels for little more than 48 hours, however.  The bike had a pretty heavy frame compared to most contemporary bikes of that time, and the training wheels were not made for that kind of weight, so they started bending almost immediately.  When it was pointed out to me by my friends that I was riding on two wheels anyway, I took the training wheels off by myself.

I had several bicycles after that first one, but that bike my father cobbled together in my grandmother’s garage was the best.  It was too big for me when I first got it, but that didn’t keep me off it for a second.  A shade of dark metallic green with a white banana seat and huge handlebars, it looked like no other bike on my street.  The tires were of an early 60s vintage, very wide and thick, and the frame was virtually military-grade.  That bike was solid as a tank, and many neighborhood kids recognized its uniqueness.  Sure, it wasn’t as sleek and attractive as some of their newer ones, but it was solid as a rock and remarkably fast.  I distinctly remember an older boy named Kevin admiring it and asking me how much I wanted for it, and I replied that it wasn’t for sale.  Even though I was just a little kid, I could tell that this ten year old was trying to con me when he offered me a hundred dollars, then a thousand, and then a million.  “I’ve really got it at home,” he said, counting on a preschooler’s lack of money sense.  I only had to let him have the bike now he said, and he’d come right back with the money.  Yeah, right.  My final response was that I would only sell it “for the highest number there is”, and then pedaled off, with my suspicion that I had something special on my hands confirmed.  

Bicycles were my primary mode of transportation and the symbol of my personal freedom for the next nearly ten years.  I always felt naked if I didn’t have my bike within easy reach, and it was always a sad day each year when the first snow came and my bike had to be put away for the winter.  It proved to be my parents’ most effective discipline tool in my childhood, as few punishments were worse for me than to have my bike taken away for a day, much less a week or more.  Send me to my room. Take away the TV.  But leave my bike alone.

Beloved Rustbucket

My first car came to me before I even got my driver’s license.  Living in a rural area, my parents had to do a lot of chauffeuring for my brothers and me, so my being able to get myself around would be a real plus for them.  However, they didn’t relish the idea of having to share the family vehicle with another driver, so they encouraged me to start saving for my own car as soon as I laid the subject of driver education classes out on the table.  I started working a part time job in the spring of the year I turned 15, and by that August, I had enough saved up for a very used car my father had found and approved.  I paid $575 for a rusty, 13 year-old Chevrolet Caprice with nearly 100,000 miles on it.  It sat in the driveway taunting me by its presence for the four weeks between when I got it and when I actually passed my driver’s test.  Needless to say, by the time I got behind the wheel to drive it by myself for the first time, I had polished and detailed that car to the point where it probably would have glowed in the dark, in spite of the rust.  I spent nearly as much on Turtle Wax, Windex, Armor All and paper towels as I did for the car itself.

It looked a lot like this, only less sexy and more rusty.

The Caprice was huge, and even in those days of cheaper gasoline it cost me a fortune to keep it filled.  I could fit a lot of my friends in it however, which was a real plus because I was one of the first in my class to get my license and one of the only ones to have his own car.  My services as a taxi driver to and from school were in high demand.  The car wasn’t very reliable.  It was always a roll of the dice as to whether it would start when the temperature dropped below freezing, and it had a habit of stalling in almost any weather.  There was a constant blue cloud coming from the exhaust pipe, and the interior smelled like burning oil, which I tried to cover up by using a half dozen cherry-scented air fresheners.  For a while toward the end of its life, I actually had to keep the passenger side door closed with a piece of rope.  It probably would have never passed inspection again, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Environmental Protection Agency had a warrant out for its arrest.  Nonetheless, it was all mine, my ticket to freedom, and I loved it.  That Caprice had one of the smoothest rides of any car I’ve ever driven, and was so large that if I had been in an accident, it would have kept me relatively safe compared to the ubiquitous compact cars that were on the road at the time.  Plus the radio had great reception and was LOUD!  I only had that Caprice for a year before the cost of upkeep got to be too much, and I downsized to a newer, smaller car which had fewer problems and expenses.  It just didn’t live up to the standard that the first clunker had set for me, though.  I sold the Caprice to a man who wanted to use it for parts.  To this day when I smell cherries, I am reminded of the air fresheners I used in that old car and wonder if it is still around, rusting in the woods or in a junkyard somewhere.

I’ve had quite a few cars in the thirty years since I bought that Caprice, all of which came to be central players in my life.  My latest is no exception.  It’s my chariot, my set of wheels.  I travel a lot, and when I am on the road, my car acts as a mobile comfort zone when I am staying in pleasant but strange places surrounded by welcome but unfamiliar things.  There’s always a slight sense of satisfaction when I catch sight of my car in a parking lot after having been away from it for an extended period.  I don’t think it is so much the car itself that stirs these feelings, as much as what it represents: freedom, opportunity, and the ability to ultimately return to the things that mean the most to me.

A glamour shot of my current chariot, from the manufacturer.

Carded

In the six or so weeks between late April and mid June of this year, I will have dealt with Mother’s Day (I have both a mother and a grandmother to think of), Father’s Day, my mother’s birthday, my father’s birthday, my parents’ wedding anniversary and my nephew’s first communion.  That is one heck of a lot of cards to buy.

You see, I am still a sentimentalist at heart, and hold on to the belief that buying actual physical cards and either delivering them in person or sending them through the U.S. postal service is a kind tradition worth preserving in our increasingly impersonal electronic-based culture.  Don’t get me wrong. I fully appreciate the convenience of modern communication technologies.  I interact with most of my friends and family through e-mail and text messages for routine correspondence, but those modes of communication just seem hollow for special occasions.  They require something different.  And e-cards just don’t cut it, in my book.  Ever since I saw the first one back in the 1990s, I thought they were both cheesy and pale imitations of the real thing, much like The Munsters were to The Addams Family.

So, I continue to trek to the drugstore when special occasions come up to choose just the right card.  And for those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that there is the rub.  I am the type of person who can handle metaphorical bags of porcupines tossed at him with grace and dignity, but I can also take something very simple like card shopping and turn it into a task on the level of complexity of establishing peace in the Middle East. 

First, there is finding the appropriate level of sentiment in the card.  I am a caring person, but not mushy.  As a kid, I was sad when Bambi’s mom died, but I didn’t cry.  Much of my family is the same way.  A card with too many butterflies and cloying lovey-doveyness would embarrass both the recipient and me.  At the same time, giving one of those joke cards (which I love getting, by the way) for anyone other than a fellow male whose sense of humor arrested at the age of 15 would come across as being overly emotionally defensive.  So the search is on for just the right tone.  Card companies seem to like to go for the emotional jugular, however, and most cards are either too emotional or too cold.

Next, there is a question of cost.  I am a practical guy when it comes to finance, and most of the people I am closest to are as well.  I know that when I get a card, I read it and appreciate it, but then it goes into a drawer somewhere until an indeterminate period of time has passed and I can toss it into the trash without feeling guilty.  And don’t even try to tell me you would never do such a thing!  I challenge you to come up with even one card from two birthdays ago. 

Mmmm-hmmm…I thought so.  My 88 year old grandmother could probably do it, but none of us mere mortals could if our lives depended on it.

I don’t head directly for the 99 cent card rack when I am card shopping, but I do set a limit of $6 maximum per card, even those I get for Gram, who has cards in shoeboxes and drawers dating back to the Eisenhower administration.  It makes little sense to me to spend more money than that on something that will be read once or twice and then be stored away until it is thrown out.

Another rule I have for card shopping is no singing or talking cards.  Those can be tacky, or creepy, or both.  Plus, it is always awkward when people open them in the presence of anyone else.  I believe that there is a special place in Hell for people who send musical or talking cards.  The hottest part of that place is reserved for people who send Disney Channel pop star-themed musical cards.

Cards that people make on the computer are okay I guess, but they don’t quite meet the mark for me.  Knowing that almost anyone could put one together and print it out in the space of less than five minutes just seems like the sender didn’t put forth the same amount of effort as they would have getting a store-bought card.  Now handmade cards are the very best of all, hands down.  To me, they show the very highest level of thought and engagement by the send.  However, I can’t draw straws and my handwriting looks like I hold the pen in my mouth, so that’s not a practical choice for me.

The greatest problem I face when card shopping is finding one that addresses the recipient with the same term that I do.  I call my father “Dad”, as I think most people do, so finding cards for him that say things like “To my dad” is not too difficult.  However, I refer to my mother as “Mum”, and not “Mom”.  After 44 years, it is way too late to change that.  Almost every card you can find for a mother addresses her as “Mom”, and that just will not do.  At all.  That restricts me to choosing from among the cards that use the emotionally-distant, third-person term “Mother”, since I have yet in my life to locate one that uses “Mum”.  With all the above requirements I also have when buying cards, this cuts back my choices considerably.  To make matters worse, I have referred to my grandmother as “Gram” my entire life, and not “Grandma”.  Much like the Mum/Mom situation, one can very rarely find cards addressed to “Gram”, though there are tons of “Grandma” cards out there.  So I am usually restricted to choosing from those distant, third-person “Grandmother” cards.  

Honest to goodness, it took me over an hour and trips to three stores in order to pick out a birthday card for my mother the other day.  Thankfully, this six-week period of intense card-shopping only comes once a year for me.  The other birthdays and special occasions in my loved ones’ lives are mercifully spread more or less evenly around the rest of the calendar.  It’s a good thing too, or else I’d probably have to quit my job and become a full-time card shopper.

Losing It

There are few things that dig at me more than when I misplace something.  When an item turns up missing, whether it be large or small, I simply cannot rest easy until I find it. Unfortunately, I have always had an absent-minded professor kind of brain, where my thoughts can be so occupied with some other issue that I can set something down and walk away from it without even noticing.  It’s not something that has come with age either.  I’ve been absentmindedly setting things down and forgetting them since I was a kid.  Of course age hasn’t made it any better.

My favorite things to lose are coffee mugs.  Every place I have worked, I have unintentionally left half-full mugs of coffee in various locations like some kind of cross between the Easter Bunny and Juan Valdez.  If I was lucky, I’d notice its absence in fairly short order and locate it while the coffee was still drinkable, or someone I worked with would return it to me.  There have been a few occasions where I’ve set a coffee mug down in an obscure location like a storage closet, and it goes unfound for weeks or even months.  

In case you were wondering, coffee can become a solid if given enough time. A nasty, blue-green solid.

Another common item for me to lose is, disconcertingly,  paychecks.  For most of my working life, I have been able to have my paychecks deposited directly into my bank accounts.  I haven’t had that option with my current place of work.  Over the years I have been working there, I have lost at least three paychecks.  Thankfully, our accountant is a kind and forgiving soul (not to mention endlessly patient) and has been willing to issue me a new one in each case.  Typically, I cram it into my pocket when I get it, and take it out as soon as I get home, where it safely stays in a secure spot until I am able to take it to the bank for deposit.  On all three occasions when I’ve lost a paycheck, I have literally torn apart my home, my car and my workplace looking for it.  I’ve also scoured my garage, yard, and the parking lot at work in my searches.  Having sent paper through the laundry process on numerous occasions, I know that I didn’t leave it in my pocket and destroy it in the wash, since the evidence left behind when I’ve laundered paper in the past has always been pretty clear.

Oddly enough, no trace of those three missing paychecks has ever turned up.  No one has tried to cash them, and they haven’t been found underneath a piece or furniture or under a melting snowbank.  It’s like there is some kind of Bermuda Triangle designated especially for my paychecks.

My most recent tragic loss, and the one that inspired this post, was the tiny little USB plug that goes with my wireless mouse.  I have a corded mouse that I use when I am on my laptop computer in bed, and a wireless one that I use when the laptop is downstairs in its usual place.  Last night, I briefly needed to use one of the USB ports for something else, and since I was in bed at the time, I took out the USB plug for my wireless mouse, which I was not using at the time, and (I thought) set it down on the bed next to me.  One thing lead to another, and before long I forgot all about the tiny USB plug I had set aside.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t miss it until the next morning, when I got up for my coffee and internet news fix.  My wireless mouse was not working, and the USB plug was nowhere to be found.

I immediately knew what had happened to it, but when I went upstairs to look around, I couldn’t find it.  Knowing better than to tackle a full search prior to having had coffee, I grabbed the corded mouse and went back to my caffeine and news.  I didn’t enjoy it though.  While I could very easily replace my wireless mouse, the principle of the thing bothered me.  That USB plug was somewhere. I just had to find it.  And no, I couldn’t wait until later to do it.  So I tore that room apart.  Bedding, mattress, box spring, hamper full of laundry, overloaded desk, everything was overturned.  All the books and whatnots I shoved underneath the bed came out.  Finally, after making a holy old mess, I found it.  It was right where I typically put it when I need to use a USB port, on a shelf next to my iPod and various earbuds.  I remembered taking it out of the port last night, but didn’t remember putting it in its usual place last night, so I didn’t bother to check there until last, for some reason.

Yes, I am kind of a dope, actually.

There’s a delicious irony in this post, which I promise you I am not making up.  Before I started writing this, I went back over previous posts, because I could have sworn that I had previously written one on this topic of my habit of losing things.  Even the title of this post “Losing It”, seemed like one I had used already.  So I looked back over nearly three years of posts.

Guess what?  I couldn’t find it.

The Annual Winter Whine Post

The winter season trudges on unabated here in Maine, despite the fact that the calendar flipped over to March not long ago.  Our friendly local meteorologist tells me that today’s high temperature is going to be 12 degrees.  12 degrees fahrenheit, not celsius.  That’s cold for this time of year, even by Maine standards.  There’s at least a little comfort in knowing that a good chunk of the North American continent is experiencing a harsh winter as well. There are few things left that we all go through together in today’s culture, but the weather is one of them.

If I had a dime for every time I’ve either uttered or heard “I’m sick of the cold” and “I’m sick of the snow” lately, I could probably settle the national debt.  While freezing temperatures and snow are the most common subjects of complaint, I’d like to offer a list of ten less-often-heard but equally valid concerns about winter, as my annual “winter whine” blog post.  (See here and here for past examples of winter whines.)

10. I’m sick of those buildups of slush in the wheel wells of my vehicle.  If they freeze solid, they can seriously damage your tire by rubbing against them, not to mention cause you to break a toe if you give it a good kick to remove it.

9. I’m sick of taking the garbage out in the cold.  Taking out the trash is an odious task under the best of conditions.  Having to do it when the snot in your nose is freezing every time you inhale just adds insult to injury.

8. I’m sick of getting more heating fuel.  Lugging in another ton of wood pellets or another cord of wood in mid to late winter because you are running low is no picnic.  Writing a large check for another tank of heating oil you didn’t budget for isn’t either. 

7. I’m sick of changing from shoes to boots to shoes.  While boots are great at helping one’s feet stay warm and dry, they tend to go on hard and come off even harder.  I’ve fallen on my keister several times this winter already doing the footwear changing dance when coming in or going out the door.  With small puddles from the snow melting off your boots, you don’t want your socks to touch the floor, after all.

6. I’m sick of being snow-blind. Yes, I am actually complaining about the sunshine here.  Don’t underestimate my whining skills.  The sun reflecting off the snow almost has the same effect as an allergy on my sensitive eyes: watering, sneezing, squinting, headaches.  Sunglasses help, but spring helps more.  Less white, more green!

5. I’m sick of these crazy cats with their cabin fever.  I am an animal guy, and enjoy watching the birds, squirrels and whatnot gather at the bird feeders outside my window in the winter.  Trouble is, so do the cats, and it makes them absolutely insane.

4. I’m sick of stale air.  Sometimes one of the cats drops a bomb in the litterbox.  Sometimes I cook things that have a lingering smell.  Sometimes I raise dust when I am cleaning around the house.  During the winter, one can’t just open up the windows and air things out.

3. I’m sick of tall snowbanks and narrow streets.  I drive a relatively high-profile SUV, and yet I’ve still had more than a few times this winter where I’ve had to stick my nose so far out into and intersection to see if anyone was coming in either direction that I’ve nearly had it clipped off.  Just a bit of a thaw to shrink those suckers down is all I ask.

2. I’m sick of not being able to make travel plans in advance.  Any out of town appointment or event at this time of year is a crapshoot, contingent upon travel conditions.  A concert you’ve been dying to see for months finally comes to a nearby city, you have tickets and hotel reservations, and then BOOM, an ice storm hits.  Epic bummer.

1. I’m sick of my feet always being cold.  My feet are almost perpetually cold anyway.  I tend to wear wool socks from October until April.  Even then my feet are chilly, only slightly less so than if I didn't wear them.  If there is such a thing as electric socks, I would seriously consider them.  I’d probably need a very long extension cord though.

Even though it seems impossible now, the temperatures will warm up, the snow will melt, and spring will arrive, just like it always has for as long as the seasonal wheel has turned.  

Of course then I’ll need to find some new things to whine about. 

I Don't Shop Well...Or Do I?

I’ve been told that I shop like a hunted animal.  It’s bad enough online, where I compare prices at various sites and read reviews ad nauseum before I pull the trigger on the purchase days (or weeks, or months) after first starting.  But get me out shopping in person, in an actual store, and it just becomes sad.  I dither, contemplate and generally wander aimlessly around the store for much longer than a normal person ever would.

Typically, I’ll pick up an item that may or may not fit the bill, and proceed to carry it around the store a while as I think about it.  The whole thing is an exercise in rationalization.  Suppose, for example, I pick up a shirt that I think I might like.  I’ll start walking around the store with the shirt in hand, and start talking myself out of it.  There’s the price.  If it is a bargain, I’ll wonder if there is something wrong with it.  Is it low quality and prone to shrinking the first time I wash it?  If it is not a bargain, I’ll wonder if I really want to spend that much on it.  Maybe I can find it cheaper somewhere else.  Even if the price is fine, I might find another reason to talk myself out of it.  “It’s a lot like another shirt I already have,” I might think, or “It’s not really the kind of thing I will wear very often,” or maybe even “How many Rick Springfield tour t-shirts does a guy really need anyhow?”

And so on and so forth.  Nine times out of ten, the item I have taken for a walk around the store ends up back on the shelf from whence it came, I pick up something else, and the whole cycle begins again.  It doesn’t matter if it is a major purchase or a minor one.  It’s always the same.

Needless to say, precious few of my friends and family ever volunteer to go shopping with me.

For that matter, there are not many people at all who want to be caught up in the epic clusterbumble that tends to be my shopping.  I am unfailingly polite and sympathetic to retail salespersons, whose jobs I know can be trying at times.  Nonetheless, I am usually part of the problem for them, though not on purpose.  I have a tendency to pepper them with endless questions when shopping for something specific, typically only to decide I need to sleep on it, and then walk out of the store without making a purchase.  I’m sure they hate people like me.

My dysfunctional shopping habits are especially problematic for me at this time of year, Christmastime.  Not only do I have to do a lot more shopping than usual, but there is a deadline attached to it all.  Granted, I find it easier to shop for other people than for myself, but that is like saying it is easier to swim across the Atlantic Ocean because it is not as wide as the Pacific.

This year, I have cut myself some slack in the Christmas shopping department, though at the possible expense of some sentiment.  I am giving everyone on my list two things: a gift card and a charitable donation in their name.

Gift cards are widely available in almost any amount for almost any place of business.  They always “fit”, meaning that the recipients are guaranteed to get something they want and/or need, because they will be getting it themselves.  No risk of getting someone a gift in a color they don’t want, a size they don’t fit into, or that they already own.

The downside is that a gift card does not show the same degree of thoughtfulness that a specific gift might.  Getting Uncle Louie that one Miles Davis CD that is missing from his collection might be a great gift, but I would argue that getting him a gift card to his local music store so he can get it, or something else, himself still shows a level of thoughtfulness that a gift card to the Fabric Mart for him would not.

Another downside, at least as far as gift cards and young kids are concerned, is that in most cases, it isn’t something they can enjoy as soon as they open it.  Few kids dream of waking up on Christmas morning, running to the tree, and ending up sitting in the midst of a stack of plastic cards after everything has been opened.  Taking that into account for the youngest folks on my list, I do pick them up something else as well.

The charitable gift giving is the part of this whole thing that I like the best.  Most of us have no shortage of “stuff”, and adding unnecessary things to it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially given that many people in the world have very little or none of the basics in life.  This year, many of the people on my Christmas list are getting a donation made to Heifer International in their name.

Photo from http://www.heifer.org/

Heifer International, if you haven’t heard of it, is a well-established charity that does work empowering the poor around the globe.  Theirs is essentially a “teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” philosophy.

Here’s how it works: In their catalogue, you can “buy” gifts that are given to families in need.  The gifts are of the type that allow the family to lift themselves out of poverty.  For example, for $20, Heifer will provide a flock of geese, along with education and training in their care, so the family in poverty can raise them for their eggs, meat and down, which they can use themselves and also sell.  For $30, Heifer International will provide a needy family with a hive of honeybees, along with the education and training to manage the hive and produce honey that they can in turn use, as well as sell locally to provide for themselves.  Gifts such as these are also good in that they are living things that can multiply, and therefore can be passed on to empower other poor families nearby.

Heifer International has gifts that range from as large as a camel to as small as a basket of chicks, all of which can be given to a poor family on behalf of the person in whose name you made the donation.  If you want, Heifer will send a card or e-mail to that person explaining the donation made in their name and the good that it does.  For my young nieces and nephews, I got each a stuffed toy to represent the gift given in their name.  My niece in whose name the gift of a flock of ducks was given is also getting a small toy duckling along with her donation card, to help make it more concrete for her.

A gift donation to Heifer International is easy, fits almost any gift-giving budget, and really fits the spirit of the Christmas season a lot better than a pair of pajama jeans.

Please don’t get me wrong in my intentions in writing about this charitable giving.  I am not trying to give myself a pat on the back by any means.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t originally going to even include it in this posting.  However, I’ve decided that by making mention of Heifer International, their philosophy and my personal experience with them, it might nudge some others to do the same thing.  I didn’t take the plunge with them myself until someone I knew told me of her positive experience with them.

One thing that may particularly interest you is that Heifer International does not just help families in far away places.  Families in the United States, even right here in Maine, have benefitted from their work.  Poverty is not just a far away thing.  Half the world’s population, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 USD a day, and 80% live on under $10 USD daily. (Source)

So here’s to hoping you and your loved ones have a happy and peaceful Christmas season.  And if you see me in a store between now and the 25th, it is probably best if you just steer clear.

Getting Rattled

I've been a “car guy” ever since I was a little kid.  Not a car guy in the sense that I could tear down and rebuild an engine, but a car guy in the sense that I have always enjoyed driving and admiring them.  When taking a trip in my car, half the fun for me is the journey to and from the destination.  An antique auto or any kind of unique vehicle on the road will almost always turn my head, and I find it impossible to just drive past any kind of car show or display.  One of the highlights of my summer excursions around Maine this year was a day spent at the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum in the town of Owl’s Head, just outside of Rockland.  I could have made it several days, actually.

Because I place such a premium on the car experience, it makes me kind of edgy when something interferes with that pleasure.  You may recall that I addressed this here in this blog a few months ago when my Hyundai Santa Fe developed a mysterious knock which seemed to be coming from the undercarriage that I could not track down no matter how hard I tried.  It turned out to be some manner of rod near one of the wheels, according to my mechanic, who is also likely certified to fly space shuttles.  I think this “rod” was actually part of the flux capacitor or something, and I never would have ferreted it out by myself in a million years.

Because my Santa Fe is nearing seven years old, I know that it, like me, is not getting any younger and is bound to develop more frequent health quirks.  Much as I do with my own health, I sometimes get concerned that the other shoe could drop on my car’s well-being at any time.  Also much like my own health, I am not so much worried about some major crisis as much as a series of irritating little ones. 

Take, for instance, the plastic covering for the fuse panel, on the side of the dashboard.  It has a loose fit nowadays, and occasionally falls out onto the ground when the door opens.  If it ever gets lost, I would probably also lose at least a piece of my mind.  On the other hand, there is no good way to secure it in place short of duct tape, the sight of which would bother me just as much as having to constantly watch to make sure the covering doesn't get lost.

And then there are the various and sundry pieces and parts that are rolling around inside the back door.  When installing a new license plate a few years ago, some washers and little plasticky things fell inside it, and now rattle around in there whenever I lift open the door or take a sharp corner.  Taking the door apart myself to retrieve the errant pieces would just be a recipe for complete and total disaster, and taking it to a mechanic for something so foolish to someone else would likely be both embarrassing and expensive.  So, I just put on my big boy pants and deal with it.  Not happily, mind you.  Not. At. All.

About a year ago, I got a pen wedged inside the ashtray, preventing it from opening.  I don’t smoke unless someone sets me on fire, so it seemed at first like a good place to keep a pen.  I often have need of one while on the road and can rarely locate one quickly.  And a good place for a pen it was, for quite some time actually, until one day I went to open up the ashtray/pen receptacle while at a drive-through ATM with a line of cars behind me.  It was well and truly jammed.  No amount of jiggling, finagling or cajoling could get it to open, and the line behind me was growing longer and more impatient.   I left without completing any of my banking tasks and immediately pulled into a nearby parking spot.  I spent nearly an hour on every strategy short of explosives to get it open.  At long last it did pop free, with no damage to the ashtray/now-former pen receptacle.  It’s a good thing too, because if I had to look at a broken ashtray every time I got in the car, I’d probably have to sell it immediately, probably at a loss, just to get it out of my sight.

My latest potential vehicle crisis emerged a few days ago.  There was a tiny but highly irritating rattling sound coming from somewhere inside the cabin whenever I drove over rough roads, which are not unusual things to encounter in northern Maine. 

Rattles belong in playpens, not in Hyundais.

Source: http://www.2carpros.com/

First, I checked the storage compartments, of which my Santa Fe has more than a herd of kangaroos. I store plenty of stuff in most of them, like CDs, charging units, my GPS, manuals, a small rubber lizard that came with a great drink I had in the Old Port in 1996, as well as the typical flotsam and jetsam that accumulate in a vehicle like paper clips, receipts, gum and the like.  I secured anything and everything that looked like it might be loose and headed back out on a bumpy street.

The rattle was still there!  Drat.

(Yes, I really did say "drat".)

Perhaps some part of the vehicle itself was loose, I thought. Since I could only hear it when I was driving, which is a less-than-ideal time to be crawling around looking, I recruited a friend to drive while I attempted to pinpoint the problem.  The thing was, when I was in the back seat, it sounded like the rattle was coming from the front, and when I was in the front, it sounded like it was coming from the back.  We switched places, and I had my friend try to find the source of the rattle.  Nothing.  After exhausting my friend’s patience as well as half a tank of gas, I concluded that it wasn’t a loose part either.

By this point, I had endured the phantom rattle for three days and seemed no closer to locating the source.  I was within inches of deciding to sell the car for scrap when fate, as it so often does, led me to Dunkin Donuts. Treating my friend to coffee was on my agenda, and as I got to the drive-through window, I went for my wallet in the glove compartment. 

You see, once in a while I keep my wallet in there, along with the vehicle manual and other car-related papers.  Nothing loose though.  It’s a pain to fish anything out of there when driving, so the glove compartment doesn't accumulate nearly the amount of stuff that the other ones do.  I was so sure that there was nothing rattle worthy in there that I hadn't even bothered to check it thoroughly. 

As I shut the glove compartment, I heard it.  The rattle.  Thankfully, no one was in line behind us, so I asked the coffee guy to wait for just a second, as I unbuckled my seat belt and reached over to pull everything out onto my friend’s lap.  Under the manuals and paperwork, I found a quarter, which had likely slipped out of my wallet.  It had to be the culprit!

I gave a fist-pump of victory accompanied by a loud “Yussss!”

The coffee guy looked at me as though I had lost my sanity.  My friend knew that particular train had left the station a long time ago and just rolled her eyes, a reaction I tend to get a lot, especially from women.  Regardless, the latest rattle crisis was resolved.  I have driven in rattle-free bliss ever since.

Winter’s coming, and no doubt new rattles and knocks will be popping up in my car.  Cold weather seems to foster them.  So if you see me pulled over on the side of the road frantically fishing around the vehicle, don’t worry.  Probably something has come loose.  Whether it’s in the vehicle cabin or in my head is a matter of debate, I guess.  

What A Drag It Is Getting Old

According to legend, I was born in 1970, so a little arithmetic will tell you that I am 43 years old.  And lately, the “old” part of being 43 years old has been particularly evident.  As I write this, I am propped up in bed with an ice pack strapped to my swollen right knee, dealing with a bad case of bursitis.  Yes, bursitis!  Bursitis, if you don't know, is a painful inflammation of the cushion between one’s joints, and something up to now I always considered as a condition for people who are, for lack of a better word, OLD.  I've never had it before, don’t know why I have it now, and hope to high heavens that I don’t have it again anytime soon. 

I am only 43, I tell myself.  I am not supposed to have things like bursitis.  My grandmother is.  She’s 88.  That makes more sense.  Not that I am wishing ill upon her by any means.  It's just that I am too young for this!  After all, I know who Imagine Dragons are and wear cargo shorts on a regular basis!  I’m not old!

And a booming voice comes out of the clouds above: “Wrong, Grandpa!”

Okay, I am pretty young at heart, but my body...well, maybe not so much anymore.

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I've always joked about aging and the passage of time at milestone birthdays, like my 18^th, 21^st, and 30^th, but truth be told, those came and went and not much really changed.  My 40^th, on the other hand, was like passing through some kind of gate into a new land.  That was when I really started to notice that, physically at least, I wasn't as young as I used to be. 

First, there is the noticeable change in stamina.  My health has been pretty consistent over the years.  I am overweight for my height by about 20 pounds, but otherwise suffer from no chronic problems like high blood pressure or diabetes.  In my forties, however, I've found that things are different.  I've been placed into the body of an old guy.  

A case in point was when I climbed Mt. Megunticook on the coast of Maine recently.  It was the sole physical activity of the day for me.  It took me the better part of the afternoon and several bottles of water to hike up the 1,385 foot elevation and then down again.  When I reached my camp at the bottom, I had to take some aspirin and a long nap, and was terribly sore for three days.  And don’t even get me going on the blistered feet.  The climb took all the wind out of my sails, and then some.  I actually checked my cell phone’s reception to make sure I’d be able to dial 911 if necessary.

Back in my mid-20s, several other teachers and I climbed that very same mountain with a group of nearly 80 third and fourth grade students.  The weather was iffy, so I didn’t even dress for the trip, thinking it would be cancelled.  Nonetheless, I climbed that same mountain in a shirt and tie, in half the time, with no blisters, barely breaking a sweat, and without any water.  I then went back to school with the students, taught all afternoon, attended a long committee meeting after school, ran some errands in town and then mowed my lawn after dinner that evening.  If I had aches and soreness afterward, I don’t remember them.

Next, I've found that piddly little things are causing me pain.  All of a sudden, the motion of raking the lawn for an hour or so causes my shoulder to ache for the next day or two.  Getting down on the floor with a sick animal at work can easily tweak my back if I am not careful about how I do it, and once about two years ago, I literally threw out my back while bending over the bathroom sink to spit out toothpaste.  Seriously.  If I was in an old-time covered wagon heading out west, my companions would be completely justified in leaving me alongside the trail for the coyotes.  And if that same party became stranded and had to resort to cannibalism, there is no doubt who they'd eat first, despite the fact that I would probably be quite stringy and gristly.

Of course its not a discussion of male aging without a mention of hair.  I am fortunate to still have lots of it, on my head and elsewhere, just as I always have, and the vast majority of it is still the original color (brown).  Based on the photos I saw of my 25^th high school class reunion, many of my male peers are not so lucky.  It still blows my mind when someone my age or younger has male pattern baldness.  Luckily, that is one thing I don't have to get uptight about.  It's nowhere to be found in my family tree.  Gray hair is a different story.  I found my first gray hair when I was 24, just after I closed on the mortgage for my first house.  I figured I earned that one.  Since then, the gray has been oddly slow in coming.  Very, very gradually it is becoming noticeable in my temples, especially just after I get it cut, but I am still below average in the gray hair department compared to most men my age.  Thankfully, the same lack of grayness applies to the hair that is not on my head, of which I have more than my fair share.  I truly think that having the hair on my chest or arms go gray will bother me much more than the gray on my head.  Once in a blue moon a stray gray will make an appearance there, but I swiftly vanquish the interloper.

Interesting side note: people sometimes ask why I do not grow facial hair or allow more than a day’s growth of stubble.  The fact of the matter is, all the gray hairs I have seem to have come in on my face.  If I go more than two days without shaving, it becomes very clear that my mustache and beard would be heavily streaked with gray.  That’s not a look I could pull off gracefully especially with a shock of thick brown hair upstairs.  Maybe someday I’ll grow some facial hair when what I have on my head matches, but until then, no thanks.

For me though, the worst parts of getting physically older are the surprises.  You know, like the food or drink you've enjoyed regularly over the course of your entire life that suddenly gives you screaming heartburn.  (I’m talking to you, hot tea!)  Or the sudden back spasms that literally knock you off your feet at work and cause your coworkers to think for a moment that you've been struck from behind by a pygmy dart.  Or the nights when you may as well sleep in the bathroom, because you are making so many trips there to empty your apparently pea-sized bladder.  Oh, and waking up one morning with painful bursitis in the right knee, for no known reason. Those are the kinds of surprises I mean.

It bothered me when Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield retired from baseball in 2011, because he was the last player on my favorite team that was my age.  As of last season, there were no major league baseball players my age or older.  That was a milestone I didn't care for at all.  It still bothers me when I read an obituary in the paper of someone my age or younger dying of some health malady.  And I don’t think I will ever get used to the idea of people I went to school with being grandparents now, but a couple of them are.

I know what they say: “You are only as old as you feel, ” and I have no doubt that age is relative.  To my nieces and nephews, I probably am seen as old.  To my parents and their generation, I am seen as pretty young.  To my grandmother’s generation, I am still practically a kid.  There are people old enough to be my parents running marathons and swimming from Cuba to Florida (not on the same day, mind you), so I guess I just need to keep setting my sights high.

I could go on and on about this topic of getting old, but I had better stop here.  It’s 4:00 in the afternoon, and the early-bird dinner special is starting at the diner downtown.  Plus, I need to restock my bowl of hard ribbon candy.

A video for Mother's Little Helper by the Rolling Stones, from YouTube.

Post-script: There’s no small amount of irony that the title of this post is borrowed from the first line of an early Rolling Stones song, “Mother’s Little Helper”.  The Rolling Stones are now quite old, no matter how you slice it, and yet their most recent songs and footage from their live concerts this past summer prove that they have still got it going on.

The Mighty Hunter

I step into the guest room in my house to find my cat Don’t Bite Me in a crouch.  He’s fat, lazy, and not terribly bright, so for him to be in an action pose like this, there must be something big brewing.  His pupils are dilated, his tail is twitching, and he’s making that odd chatter that excited cats get.  I follow his stare into the darkness under the bed.

Don't Bite Me in a much more typical pose

My mind runs through a list of possibilities as to what my cat’s quarry may be.  Looking more closely, I can’t see anything at all.  Is it a mouse?  I hadn't seen any signs of one.  Maybe one of those sassy red squirrels that are always chittering at me from the tree when I step onto the back deck had made its way into the house.  That would be a disaster.  He'd better catch it if it's one of those.  Many years ago I found a dead rat in the attic.  Could it be one of those?  Yick, I certainly hope not!  A bat is another possibility.  Whatever is under there, I sure as heck want Don’t Bite Me to catch it, so I just stay stock still and watch.

As the seconds pass, it suddenly strikes me as odd that one of my other cats, whom I call Stop It is in the same room, but paying no attention at all to what is going on.  He’s actually on the bed in question, yawning widely at me, barely awake.  Of my three felines, Stop It is the only one who has ever shown any instincts even remotely like those of a predator, so his lack of interest here is peculiar.  His sister, Get Down saunters into the room from behind me, not even turning her sleek black head in the direction of Don’t Bite Me’s interest.

Don’t Bite Me’s rear end starts to wiggle slightly as he gets more and more wound up to pounce.  At this point, I am beginning to question his sanity.  Maybe he is hallucinating.  I don’t see a blessed thing.  His teeth chatter some more, he backs up on his haunches.  The mighty hunter is going in for the kill of something.  Claws out, he leaps forward with amazing speed for a cat who has the physique of a Dodge Dart.

It’s a small housefly.

And he misses it.  By a mile.

He’s totally mystified, I'm thoroughly disappointed, and the other two cats, if they could, would have been laughing their furry heads off.

Confessions of a Total Coffeehouse Rube

As someone who comes from a rural area, I am rather sensitive to the “country bumpkin” label, especially when I am traveling.  Not all of us from out in the boonies just strolled off the set of the Beverly Hillbillies.  I am perfectly capable of driving in multilane traffic, ordering in a fancy restaurant, and taking buses and/or trains from one end of a city to another by myself, among other things.  I don’t exclusively wear flannel shirts and jeans, nor have I ever once referred to a swimming pool as a “cee-ment pond”.

Overall, I’m pretty comfortable with life in urban areas, with one notable exception: coffeehouses.

How I'd like to come across in a coffeehouse.

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How I actually come across in a coffeehouse.

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As someone who rarely experiments when it comes to food and drink, I’ve always stuck pretty close to my “usuals”.  In the realm of fare commonly found in a coffeehouse, that would be plain old caffeinated hot coffee with just cream for me.  Sometimes I get all wild and crazy and try a flavored coffee like hazelnut or, if I am feeling especially daring, maybe even an iced coffee.  Someday I might even try a flavored iced coffee, but I will have to work my way up to that.

When I am on the road, I find that most coffeehouses make for comfortable places to meet with friends, get a little writing work done, or tweet a little.  The staff and clientele are usually friendly and considerate, and there is not an expectation that you will simply consume your order forthwith and quickly move on in order to free up a table for the next customer.

There is, however, the perfectly reasonable expectation on the part of the coffeehouse staff that you will actually buy something while there.  And that something should be more than a 30 cent cup of ice.  Therein lies the rub.  When confronted with the menu board in a coffeehouse, I freeze like Bambi in the path of a freight train at midnight.  If there are other customers waiting in line behind me, that freight train becomes more like one of those Japanese bullet trains.

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At this point, you are probably asking a very simple question: Why not just order what you normally drink, a regular coffee with just cream?  To that, I respond with another question: Who does that in a gourmet coffee house?  It’s akin to going to an award-winning Chinese restaurant and ordering a cheeseburger. I may as well show up at the coffeehouse on a camouflaged ATV wearing a flannel shirt without sleeves and a backwards Mack Truck ball cap if I order “just a plain old coffee”.

Let me backtrack a bit.  I am currently working on a collaborative project with a writer from Connecticut, and we were recently planning on meeting halfway between our locations for a summit on the project, which put us in the Portland, Maine area.  We would need a place to do some work on a hot summer afternoon, and an air-conditioned coffee house near the water fit the bill almost perfectly, as long as I was prepared.

This southern Maine summit was an ideal excuse for me to take a mini-vacation, so I was already in Portland the day prior to the meeting with my co-author. High on my to-do list was some reconnaissance at the coffeehouse where we were planning to work.  It was a hot summer afternoon, and I had spent the first half of it in the sun-drenched bleachers at Hadlock Field watching the Portland Sea Dogs play baseball.  Not wanting to give up the great parking place I had found prior to the game, I decided to walk the five blocks or so to the coffeehouse.  By the time I arrived, I was pretty parched.  The idea of getting something hot to drink was not very appealing, but I wanted to sit for a bit and see how the place was.  So I stepped up to the counter.

First, I had to parse out from the mass of choices on the menu board something that sounded at least somewhat cold and refreshing.  I was looking for terms like “iced”, “frozen”, “arctic” and the like.

Next, I had to figure out what cold thing I was actually going to get.  There were lattes, café au laits, chais, cappuccinos, espressos, and all manner of other things, some of which I don’t think were actually real drinks, but just decoys put up there to weed out the weak like me.  I was getting a bit shaky in the knees, but I did not run screaming out the door.  Instead, I continued to stare glassy-eyed at the menu, letting one customer after another behind me in line go on ahead.

In time, I reached the conclusion that I was going to get an iced cappuccino because it sounded appropriate, yet somewhat safe.  Then it was a question of flavor.  There were choices like Mexicali Cream, Jamaican Me Crazy, Jazzy Java, and Streusel, all of which are probably terrific if you know what they actually are.  So I let more customers behind me go by.  Frankly, I cannot recall what flavor I eventually decided upon, though I do remember that it was vaguely chocolate-ish and quite tasty.  I think “Bavaria” was part of the name.  The experience is mostly a blur now.

Feeling good about my selection, I stepped up to the counter, where I was greeted by a very pleasant young person who just exuded coffee house know-how.  Undaunted by the presence of this fountain of java knowledge which would make my own seem like a Dixie cup in comparison, I rattled off my order in what I thought was a confident tone of voice. I was going to ace this.  Then…

Order-taking person: “What size would you like?”

Me: “Huh?”

One would not think this to be a tough question, but for someone like me, in an actual coffee house, it is.  The sizes are not “small”, “medium” , “large” and “extra large”, but “tall”, grande”, “venti”, and “trenta”.  In my world, “small” and “tall” are just not the same thing.  If someone says “Gee, you sure are tall”, they do not mean that you are a small person.  And if something is “grande”, it sounds like “grand”, which is a variation on spectacular in my mind, like a grand finale.  It doesn’t sound like it would be just medium.  I panicked a bit.  For fear that I would say the wrong thing and end up with my drink being served to me in a bucket of some kind, I sheepishly asked for “whatever the middle size is”.

Now in a reputable coffee house, which this most certainly was, one’s order is not just thrown together.  It is constructed like a piece of fine art by a highly trained person known as a “barista”.  I believe that is Italian for “young person who is more hip that you will ever be”.  My barista, who was already busy with some other orders, was given mine on a slip of paper while I dutifully stepped aside and admired the various pithy mugs and bags of what I think was coffee beans for sale.  They were labeled with names like “Cappadocia Supreme”, and could have been magic beanstalk beans for all I know.

After a few minutes, I was handed a small cardboard cup that was very, very hot, and confusion immediately set in.  I had purposely ordered something cold because it was such a warm afternoon.  This drink was lava-like in its temperature.  Such was my confidence, or lack thereof at this point, that I was convinced that I had done something wrong or was missing something here.

I looked around the coffeehouse, hoping to see someplace where I was supposed to pour crushed ice or something into this volcanic liquid in order to create the frozen cappuccino I thought I had ordered.  Aside from a napkin dispenser, there was nothing like that anywhere.  I literally froze in place.  What was I supposed to do?  I considered just walking out with the hot cup and tossing it in the trash, hoping maybe my co-author and I could just do our work on a park bench or picnic table the next day instead of a coffeehouse.

Instead, I manned up and audibly cleared my throat to get the barista’s attention.  Being careful not to affect a “tone”, which I have been known to have and which is perceived as being sarcastic, I meekly said “I’m no expert on coffee-related things, but is this what I am supposed to be getting?”

The barista, probably young enough to be my daughter, looked at me sympathetically, as one might at a lost child in a shopping mall, and asked “What did you order?”   I mumbled something about having ordered a cold drink, and she swiftly swooped the hot little cup from my hand, gave it to the elderly gentleman next to me who had been reading a book of poetry whilst awaiting his order, and handed me a plastic cup of frosty, caffeinated goodness, complete with a yellow straw.

Relieved, I found a seat, fired up my iPad, watched funny cat videos, and sipped my frozen something-or-other, which was actually very good.

The writing summit with my co-author at that same coffeehouse the next day went very well.  He ordered some manner of something that wasn’t even coffee I found out later.  It was some stuff in a cup, but he also got a bottle that he poured into the stuff in the cup.  For fear that learning about this would cause part of my mind to blow a fuse, I chose just to live in ignorance of whatever it was. 

As for me, I chickened out when I made my order the next day.  I went with arctic lemonade, which I figured would not elicit any awkward beverage-related questions, and even mentioned the size I wanted (grande).  I was feeling pretty smug, having not looked like a hillbilly in the coffeehouse in front of my co-author.  That is until the order-taking person asked, “Do you want whipped cream on that?”

Wait…what?  On lemonade? Is that even a thing?

I need to take a class on coffeehouse fare before our next writing summit, I think.  Either that or I’ll just go with a regular old coffee with just cream, like a total rube.

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***CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE: I would like to thank the staff of Coffee By Design on India Street in downtown Portland, Maine for their patience and graciousness as I struggled with the language of coffeehouses, and for their allowing my co-author and I to take up space in their wonderful shop for the better part of a Monday afternoon while we went over our project together.

Watch That Speedometer, Bub!

If you are a Maine police officer, please do not read any further.  I’m sure there are some funny cat photo websites that you would enjoy, and what follows is really not something you would be interested in anyway.  See you at the next post!

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Are they gone?

Good.

Let’s talk about speeding.  Specifically, places in northern and eastern Maine where you definitely should not do it.  Even if you don’t drive in those areas and cannot envision a situation where you would need to, unless you and your vehicle are picked up by a wind funnel “Sharknado”-style and dropped in northern or eastern Maine, read on. I hope to capture your interest anyway. 

Again, unless you are with the police.  Then, it’s the funny cat photos I recommend.

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I am not a real leadfoot driver.  My current vehicle is an SUV with all the get-up-and-go of a lawn tractor.  What it lacks in speed, it makes up for in power and comfort, so I’m okay with it.  Even before I got it, I seldom drove more than 5-10 miles over the speed limit, and then usually only on open highways.  I will admit that I did once have a testosterone-fueled hunger for speed, when I was in my teens.  Some friends and I decided to see if my ’72 Chevy Caprice would really reach the 110 mph mark on the speedometer on a flat straight stretch of highway. (It could.)  I shudder to think what could have happened that day when I look back at it, and certainly don’t encourage such behavior.  I got stopped for speeding only once, back when I was 16 and taking some friends on a ski trip.  The officer caught me doing 77 in a 55 mph zone, and suspected I was doing even more before he locked the radar on me. (He was right.)  The fine was steep for my teenage budget, and the whole thing was a wake-up call for me.  I started to ease off the gas pedal after that, and my driving record is as pure as the driven snow from that point forward.

Now let me be clear: you should never drive at an excessive or dangerous speed.  I think we would all agree on that.  But there are some stretches of road where it is very easy to creep up to 47-48 miles per hour without realizing it when you are supposed to be doing just 35.  And that’s breaking the law.  I do it sometimes and so do you.  Yes, you do, so don’t argue with me.  It’s not a big deal, we think, and often that is true.  However, there are some places where you are wisest to just stick to the speed limit, because for whatever reason, the police are especially picky there.

Northbound I-95 detour between Island Falls and Oakfield:  This detour has been in place for a few weeks now, and diverts all northbound interstate traffic through several small towns before rejoining the highway.  The police presence has been pretty constant all along the detour, and justifiably so.  A lot of vehicles are passing through some normally quiet, populated areas.  There is also a considerable Amish population here who travel the roads in horse-and-buggies, along with many older people and lots of farm equipment.  Keep it at the speed limit, fasten your seatbelts, and make sure your license plates are not obscured, as I have heard reports of all these things being reasons to get pulled over here.  And watch out for moose.  Seriously. It could be very bad for both you and the moose if you don’t.  The laws of physics don’t favor either of you.

The entrance to the University of Maine at Presque Isle, at the edge of the downtown area:  This is a favorite spot of Presque Isle police to catch speeders coming down the hill from the south on Route 1.  After miles and miles of 55 mph on that road, many find it tough to slow to the residential area speeds required coming into downtown Presque Isle. You really should slow down, to keep people safe and to avoid a ticket.  Plus, UMPI is my alma mater, so you should drive slow to see if they’ve erected a statue in my honor in front of the school yet.  I’m thinking it can’t be long now.

Downtown Monticello: This is another spot on Route 1, about 12 miles north of Houlton and 30 south of Presque Isle, where the speed limit goes from 55 to 45 to 30 and then back up again.  It’s a populated little village, and the police are quite vigilant about keeping speeders under control there.  Don’t get too cocky with similar speed limit changes in Bridgewater and Mars Hill either, unless you were already planning to make an involuntary donation to the state treasury.

I-95 between Houlton and Bangor: There are many turnarounds in the median where state troopers tend to sit, hoping to find someone putting the pedal to the metal as they jam out to some Lynyrd Skynyrd.  I’ve driven this highway more times than I can count, and it is among the prettiest and most mind-numbingly BORING stretches of road ever laid down.  Personally, my mind wanders when driving it. Some suggest that it never comes back.  Nevertheless, it is very easy to let your vehicle creep up to a high rate of speed without realizing it.  The police know this all too well and stake out I-95 fairly often.  Some of the most commonly used turnarounds for the police are the ones just before and just after the main Houlton exit, the Island Falls area, Medway, Lincoln, and any of those between Orono and Bangor.  There are speed limit changes from 75 to 65 at Orono and from 65 to 55 in Bangor, so be especially vigilant there. 

NOTE: Occasionally, there are speeding “stings” on the I-95 medians between the Bangor city exits.  Just because you’ve made it past one police car without getting stopped, don’t speed up.  Sometimes there is another one at the next median, and maybe even at the median after that too.  The traffic is thick there with lots of lane changes and a fairly narrow road, so it’s best to keep at the speed limit anyway, police presence or not.

Route 1 in Indian Township and Princeton: The police departments in these two towns are well-known in eastern and northern Maine for cracking down hard on speeders.  This busy highway passes through some pretty populated areas there with lots of pedestrians.  It is said the police departments there are quite strict about enforcement as well.  If the speed limit says 35 mph, then that is what you had better be doing, and no more.  I’ve had drivers riding on my tail shaking their heads at me for going exactly 25 in a 25 mph zone in Princeton on more than one occasion, but I don’t care.  I’m not getting a ticket just to keep some yahoo behind me happy, and chances are, I saved their speed demon butt from a ticket too.  Alas, the only gratitude I tend to get is a one-finger wave, it seems.

North Street in Houlton: Busy and straight with lots of swift traffic, it’s an easy place to creep up to 40 mph or so, but the speed limit is 25 and the local police will hold you to it, especially near the interstate ramps and as you are approaching the downtown area.  Much of the year, this street is riddled with potholes you could lose a Smart Car in, so that’s added incentive to keep it at the speed limit on North Street.

Union Street and Stillwater Avenue in Bangor: Two busy, straight, multi-lane roads with lots of traffic.  Almost everyone tools along at ten miles over the speed limit, and the multiple lanes makes it almost too easy to do so.  Bangor police could stop speeders there round the clock if they wanted to.  They don’t, but I’ve seen more vehicles pulled over by police on those two roads than the rest in Bangor put together.

I’m sure there are many more in the northern and eastern Maine area as well.  Please know that I am not encouraging excessive speed here amongst you, dear readers.  And I am certainly not trying to foil the police.  I’m sure they’d prefer to see you at the speed limit regardless.  I’m merely trying to keep you on your toes, so that your absentminded drift a few miles over the speed limit don’t result in a ticket.

Stay safe out there!  

Party Like It's 1985 on Mount Desert Island

My latest adventure in Maine this summer took me to Mount Desert Island, also known as “The Island of Lost Tourists”.  Actually, it’s a beautiful place, and while it is no doubt touristy, it is certainly worth visiting.  The home of the resort town of Bar Harbor and world-famous Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island is 108 square miles in area, and the 52^nd largest island in the contiguous United States.  It is accessible by car via the Trenton Bridge on Route 3, and also by boat.  The nearest airport is on the mainland in Trenton, just a few minutes away.  Blimps, trains, and flying saucers to MDI are not currently available.

There are many, many resources to help you plan your trip to Mount Desert Island.  Just Google it.  This post is intended to give you my casual, tourist-on-a-budget point of view.

Theme music: In my last post, I explained how I like to choose a specific type of music as my soundtrack for a road trip.  For this one, I chose the music of 1985, a high-water mark year in my life, as it was the one when I started in radio and also when I got my driver’s license.  Some of the major acts on the charts in 1985 include Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, Tina Turner, and Sting.  It was a good year for cool music,.  While it is by no means a requirement to have theme music on your trip to MDI, I highly recommend it.

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         *Official 1985 Tune for Theme Music tip: "Freeway of Love" by Aretha Franklin.  The Queen of Soul’s comeback song from that year sets just the right tone when driving on a warm summer day.   “So let’s drop the top baby, and cruise on into that better-than-ever street.” (Okay, so it’s not Shakespeare.)

Source

Pronunciation and Meaning: There's no real consensus on this.  Many locals call it Mount “De ZERT” (emphasis on second syllable), though you will hear plenty of references to Mount “DEZ ert” (emphasis on first syllable).  Neither pronunciation will get you voted off the island, though turning your vehicle around in a private driveway just might, especially if it is Martha Stewart’s.  (She had an incident with someone doing just that a few years back.  It was not “a good thing”.) Personally, I switch back and forth between the two pronunciations, though “MDI” is an easy shortcut and the most common term for the island. 

The island was named "île des Monts Déserts" by explorer Samuel Champlain way back when.  It means “Island of the Lonely Mountains”.  Apparently, when approaching it from the sea, the mountains appear much sooner than any other land, and they seem to be alone in the ocean.  Hence the name.

        *Official 1985 Tune for Pronunciation and Meaning tip: "Miami Vice Theme" by Jan Hammer, because, like Mount Desert Island, Mr. Hammer has problems with people pronouncing his name properly too. In his case, Jan rhymes with “lawn”, not “fan”.

View from the top of Cadillac Mountain, as taken by me.

Traffic: The Trenton Bridge is the only way onto and off the island by car, so it can be a bottleneck.  It’s a good idea to allow yourself plenty of time to get on and off MDI if you are keeping a schedule.  There is always construction on that stretch of road in the summer.  At what exact point that seemed like a good idea, I do not know, but it happens every single summer like clockwork.  Plus, there are many roadside attractions on that stretch of road, including a zoo, which can get passing motorists’ attention and slow them down or cause them to make an unplanned turn.  Driving Route 3 onto MDI is a lot like making your way down a busy sidewalk in New York City: just go with the herd and watch the guy in front of you at all times.

Ellsworth is a city on the mainland that acts as a gateway to the island.  You almost have to pass through Ellsworth to get to MDI by car, unless your car floats.  Ellsworth itself is a beautiful place with great people and a wealth of amenities.  I lived there for a year in the mid 1990s and loved it. The only downside is that the traffic can be maddening in the summer, especially on the main drag, which is Route 3, locally known as High Street.  If you aren’t sure where you are going in Ellsworth, pull over and check a map or ask someone.  It’s no place to make a wrong turn, as the domino effect of such an action could result in an embarrassing traffic clog at best, or your accidentally ending up in Canada at worst.

Don’t give up hope though.  Once you are on the island, you can just park your car and leave it for the whole day.  The Island Explorer is a network of buses that hit all the high points on MDI all day long at regular intervals for free.  L.L. Bean helps fund this free service, and it really makes your day a lot easier to negotiate.  Just study the schedule before you start your day, and make sure you wear a watch.

Last thing about traffic: Never, ever try to make a left turn onto Route 3 unless you are at a traffic light.  There is a special place in Hell for people who do (or try to).

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        *Official 1985 Tune for Traffic tip: "Things Can Only Get Better" by Howard Jones.  You’ll have this song going through your head as you sit in construction traffic for what seems like a geological epoch and stare at the skinny guy with the great tan and bottle of Mountain Dew holding a STOP sign.

Bass Harbor Light on a foggy day, as taken by me.

Accommodations: If you need a place to stay, there are hotels, motels, inns, bed-and-breakfasts, cabins, cardboard boxes and bus benches to fit nearly any taste or budget on and near MDI.  However, the closer you are to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, the more likely the accommodation will be a) fully booked and b) expensive.  I am a fan of both camping and being cheap, and there are numerous campgrounds on MDI and nearby which are almost always cheaper than getting a room.  They are generally well-maintained, but often quite busy and booked well in advance.  I personally recommend Lamoine State Park campground, which is about 20 minutes off the island, just outside of Ellsworth.  It is clean, beautiful, quiet, has a nice view of MDI, and most importantly for me, away from the hustle and bustle.  The cost of a campsite per night at Lamoine State Park will be less than what you will find for a campsite on the island itself.

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        *Official 1985 Tune for Accommodations tip: "One More Night" by Phil Collins, because that is what you will want as you are packing up to leave Lamoine State Park. It’s really a nice spot that could be a whole trip in itself.

A scene from the campground at Lamoine State Park, taken by me.

A view of MDI in the distance from the campground at Lamoine State Park, as taken by me.

Food: The two things of which you must partake while on MDI are ice cream and lobster.  You might even try lobster ice cream, which I am sure is a thing somewhere.

There are lots of roadside ice cream places on Route 3, but it is pretty much tradition that you get at least one cone in one of the shops on Cottage Street, the main street through downtown Bar Harbor.  The most famous is Mount Desert Island Ice Cream, where President Obama had a coconut cone during a vacation there a few years back, though they serve Republicans and independents too. 

Lobster is served almost everywhere you look on MDI and vicinity.  My favorite place for lobster, hands-down, is the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound, which is on the right just before you take the bridge onto MDI.  They boil their lobsters in sea water, over wood fires, with a stunning view of the narrows between the island and mainland.  Even if I am not stopping for lobster, I always roll down my windows to get a whiff of the woodsmoke and seafood smell that emanates from this local gem.  The clams are great there as well, and they ship around the country!  Just remember, they are not open on Sundays.

Whatever I eat when I am out of town, I try hard to buy from local operators, like the two businesses I just mentioned.  The locals give you a unique flavor for the place you are visiting, and depend on visitors like us to keep themselves financially afloat.  I recently saw a funny but poignant sign outside a “Mom and Pop” restaurant that I liked a lot which said “Stop in to eat or we’ll both starve.”

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        *Official 1985 Tune for Food tip: "Fresh" by Kool and the Gang, because the lobster on and around Mount Desert Island is just as fresh as you can get without actually boiling it up on board the lobster boat itself.  Local lobstermen are resistant to letting us flatlanders do that, I’m told. Something about "being in the damn way".

Sand Beach, as seen from the Loop Road, taken by me.

Sightseeing: If you are planning a trip to Mount Desert Island, there are four things you absolutely must see, and about a million others that you really ought to.  

•         Cadillac Mountain: The highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States, you can drive, bike, or hike to the top.  Cadillac Mountain is the spot where the sun first touches the United States in the morning.  It tends to be busy, but the amazing views are totally worth it.  Be sure to bring a sweatshirt if you are prone to the cold though.  It gets chilly up there.
•         Sand Beach: While it’s usually too busy for my taste, Sand Beach is a gorgeous spot of sand along the Atlantic.  I can sit and watch the ocean waves for hours, but here you can also see outstanding mountain vistas at the same time, including “The Beehive” right behind you.  One of the most entertaining aspects of any Maine beach is watching the tourists think that they are going to actually swim in the Atlantic.  On purpose.  For fun.  Yeah, right.  The water temps rarely get above 60 degrees, so it’s always good for a few laughs from those of us on shore, especially when some macho goon is trying to impress his wife or girlfriend as his lips turn blue.
•         Thunder Hole: This is an indentation into some seaside cliffs where the waves make a resounding boom during high tides, especially when the waves are really rolling.  It really gives you a clear picture of the sheer power of the ocean.  I went there a day before a hurricane rolled in back in 1997, and will never forget it.
•          Downtown Bar Harbor: Over the years, the center of Bar Harbor has evolved into a series of gift shops, restaurants, art galleries, inns and the like.  There is a waterfront park which makes a nice spot for a rest or a picnic.  Short ocean cruises to view whales, puffins, seals or lighthouses leave from the pier in the downtown area.  The shorefront walking path is a nice cool place to explore on a warm day.  And folks visit Bar Harbor from all over the world, so the people-watching is fascinating.  Remember to get the obligatory ice cream cone.  I think it’s a law or something.

Among the million other things you should see are Seawall, Bass Harbor Light, Wild Gardens of Acadia, the Oceanarium, Echo Lake, the College of the Atlantic campus, the land bridge to Bar Island, the schooner Mary Todd, Abbe Museum, Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, horse-drawn carriage tours, and more.

        *Official 1985 Tune for Sightseeing tip: "Don’t You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds.  No matter how full your sightseeing itinerary is, you will forget something, I’m sure.  All the more reason to go back to MDI for another visit.  I am going to make at least one more trip there myself this summer.  Maybe I’ll see you there.