Maine/Vermont Days 1-2: Drippy

Is there divine justice in getting a cold before a vacation?  Like, "You can have fun, but you're gonna pay for it up front!"  Looking at it this way proves how much I need a vacation.  It's when I think I have things figured out, when life looks like a zero-sum game on a spreadsheet, and when things are too organized.

A vacation is like Godzilla romp-stomping through your neat little world-view.  You need that.

Already it was not quite as planned.  Since January, Amy and I had planning a trip to Nova Scotia, then to Vermont.  Then two days before I picked up her passport.  I wanted to see the photo - it's hot, like you'd expect.  It also expired last month.  Ooops.  It would suck trying to get back into the United States with an expired passport.  (Visions of me leaving Amy at the border with a dozen Tim Horton's and a six pack of Labatt's).

Within hours, Amy had switched everything from Nova Scotia to Maine, which is just about the same thing anyway.  Both are way, way East.   Both have camp sites and mountains.  Both have ocean spray and lobstahs.  The moral: always vacation with those-who-are-flexible.

Saturday was our last day at home, so I spent it fighting my cold agressively.  I rested, drank plenty of orange juice and watched Sesame Street in my jammies.  I vaguely remember this combination working as a kid.  I have to tell you, after 47 years, Sesame Street is still DA BOMB!  It's funny, wise, and very imaginative.  The segments are a lot longer, but I really dig both Elmo's World  and Abby's Fairy School.  They are real out-of-the-box thinkers.  They should both be hired at Internet startups.  Super Grover is awesome.  Big Bird is still kind of an idiot, but you can't hate him.  And Ernie and Bert still have the relationship to which all couples should aspire.   I mean, if they are a couple ... oh, whatever.

Anyway my aggressive therapy worked ... until I got in the car the next day.  Then I was dribbling all over the place.  There were not enough Kleenixes in the car, and maybe not enough in the state of New York.


We spent the first day driving as far as Woodstock Vermont, where Amy's in-laws Carie and Randy live.  Carie is Amy's late husband's sister, and I met them both last year in Michigan.  They're very cool!  Carie is a superb gardneer, a semi-pro entomologist, and a part-timer at a gift shop in historic Woodstock Randy is a master carpenter and a retired Mennonite minister.  In the winter Randy runs the engine room of a small Alaskan cruise boat, while Carolyn joins him for some trips.  They are considering doing the same thing on a Mexican cruise this year.  They live in a quintessential Vermont house.

When we got there, Carolyn had a cold as well.  But fortunately we planned an extra day of downtime.  So as Amy walked into town and dodged all the elderly leaf-peepers in Woodstock - this time of year is the busiest - I sat on the porch sniffling and reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables while watching the leaves change color.

Carie and I talked about daguerreotypes, which were all the rage in Hawthorne's day.  The precursor to film, daguerreotypes required a much longer exposure time - often 5 minutes or longer.  A daguerreotype selfie?  Forget it.  You couldn't hold the camera still that long.

Hawthorne wisely pointed out that everyone in a daguerreotype looked glum.  I noticed that too.  It was an odd comfort to find that people in the 1840's were really as happy as you and me ... they just didn't show it.

Dinners were fantastic.  Amy and I brought some leftover vegetables from our CSA, and Carolyn prepared Delicata Squash with maple syrup ... I am not a squash eater, but this made me a believer.  We had grilled pork one night, and a beautiful pot roast the other, with CSA turnips and potatoes as embellishments.  In other words: New England food.  Already I started to detach from my old New York life.  So what'll be next?