We went to the Carnegie Museum of Art today.  It's generally pretty good.  Their Impressionist galleries were closed for renovation.  Some of the paintings were relocated to their traveling exhibit, which paired Impressionist painting and prints with contemporary art-photography.  There was some gorgeous content there, but photos were prohibited.  Worst, the Carnegie Museum only has one Henri Rousseau painting, and it wasn't even on display today, so you've really got to wonder how serious they are about this whole "museum" business.  It was past 4:00 by the time we got to the pre-20th-Century stuff in the permanent collection, so these pictures are from the modern galleries:

Mark Rothko's provocatively-titled Yellow and Blue.  My crappy Web-1.0-era photo hosting site refuses to let me post this the right way up.  Imagine it with the blue part at the bottom, I guess.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale (Attesa)

Telephone [4] by Pittsburgh's own Andy Warhol

Wayne Thiebaud, Table Setting

Landscape by Francis Bacon

Pierre Bonnard, Nude in a Bathtub.  This painting is stupendous in person.

Sigmar Polke, Watchtower II.  The shiny veneer on this canvas is only visible at very oblique angles.

Jenna and Julia

I'm regressing comfortably into adolescent laziness here at home.  After the last couple weeks, it feels good to be in someone else's care.  Jenna and I both got sick almost immediately.  Maybe it's the sudden release of stress.  Our bodies now sense they're safe to come undone.  It's fine: we have ample time to recuperate.

Jenna and I woke up feeling tough on Sunday, I guess, because we decided to drive home all in one go, on highways, no less.   It took something like 14 hours, all told.  I think we were just eager to be finished with the anticipation of some new, costly catastrophe.  We were irrationally grateful that the van made it home, patting the engine bay like a good dog.

I only saw my mom a little before she left for Montana.  When she injured her knee there a few months ago, she couldn't drive back.  She flew back tonight to retrieve her car.  She'll be back in about a week, I guess.

Our last day in Burlington was awesome.  Julia took us to the Potholes, which is the swimming hole I mentioned in the last post.  It was incredibly picturesque: a series of waterfalls falling between deep, circular pools carved out of caramel-swirl igneous rock.  The water was clear and cool.  Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of the coolest part.  Julia led us upstream, between canyon walls of rock, to another pool, covered by a partial dome of rock, with vegetation hanging over the edge.  We had to swim and climb rock to get there, so I couldn't bring my camera.  We met a local guy on the rocks who traipsed up to the dome with us.  He talked about Eastern philosophy and tattoos, and tried to convince me I need to start doing drugs, although he was a nicer guy than that description implies.

I couldn't take a picture of the falls without getting my feet in the corner, because I would have had to lean way far out over the ledge and I'm chicken.  In contrast, the guy we walked up to the rock dome with kept jumping from this point into the tiny pool at the bottom of this waterfall.  It looked insane.  Apparently, some kid died in that pool last year.

We bought our tickets to Europe.  We got, I think, a really good deal.  The round-trip total for both of us is under $1700.  We're leaving July 31st from Boston.  We'll be in western Pennsylvania for a couple weeks before going to Jenna's house in Massachusetts.

There was another really exciting development this week: Elysia got bumped from an Iceland Express flight a while ago, and they offered her a free round-trip ticket, which she can't use.  She offered it to us, although I haven't determined if we can transfer it to one of us.  If it works out, we'll split the cost of one more round-trip ticket and spend a week in Iceland.  Iceland, y'all.

We can spend up to 90 days in Europe without a visa.  We're staying about a week shy of that.  That means if we run out of money, we have to live under a bridge or something until late October.

We're heading back south now.  Some miscellany from Rangeley and Quebec:

Using the internet in Rangeley

This store is really, really nice.  We picked up some backpacking stuff here, as well as postcards

The town of Lac Megantic seen from the hill above the city.  This hill has a tacky light-up cross on it.

We made it to Rangeley without adventure on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, we decided to go and try the other direction on the Appalachian Trail from Rangeley.  Instead of going with full packs, we decided to attempt the summit of Saddleback Mountain with day packs.  This also passed us by Piazza Rock, which we meant to see last time.  Unfortunately, we neglected to pack a flashlight, so we didn't get to explore the natural caves near the rock.  It's just as well: we spent almost all day just hiking.  The summit round-trip is 11.4 tough miles.  It was a good hike, with an unparallelled view from the top.  I think this is about our limit for endurance at our current level of experience.  It felt like an accomplishment.  Nearing the summit, we ran out of water, and there were no lakes or streams for at least a mile to refill (I brought iodine tablets for sterilizing water).  It was a good lesson for future backpacking, where we'll probably carry gallon jugs.

Piazza Rock

The trail, about a half mile from the summit

Pictures really can't do justice to the power of this vista

Taking a dip in one of the mountain lakes on the way back down

The next day, we left Rangeley heading west.  The day wouldn't be complete without the van breaking down, and it was happy to oblige.  The engine abruptly shut down after a couple hours of uneventful driving, and wouldn't start up again.  The good news is that it turns out I have four, not three, free AAA tows, so this one was also free.  I guess there's more good news: the fix was cheap and fairly quick.  The gas lines were old and dry-rotted and took this opportunity to rupture.  Some new hosing and an hour of the mechanic's time: $70.  Relatively speaking, we got off cheap.  For those of you keeping count, this is the fifth breakdown in less than two weeks.


That wasn't the end of it, either.  The engine started heating up on some long uphills.  Given, it was a very hot day, and they were very long hills.  I still think something isn't right.  We're not leaking coolant, so I think it might be a problem with the thermostat, which can "stick" after an engine overheats.  By the time we started getting hot (although I was careful to pull over long before the heat would damage the engine), it was after closing time for most mechanics.  I elected to just let it cool down and keep driving, turning on the heat to keep the coolant temperature down.

At that point, with the heat blazing on a 90 degree day, I was seriously contemplating the theory that our van has been possessed by some eldritch horror.  It may be the case that the van is inducing us to put the heat on so that when it eventually devours us, we'll be well-cooked first.

We decided that, although we wanted to enjoy ourselves on the drive back, it might be more prudent to try to get back to western Pennsylvania as quickly as possible.  We've decided to scrap our Mount Marcy hike.  Tonight and tomorrow night we're spending in Burlington.  We're hoping to make it to Ithaca, NY on Sunday, then push on to our final destination on Monday.

Anyway, the engine stayed pretty cool for the rest of the drive.  We were planning on bringing our camping stuff and catching a ferry to Burton Island for the night, but because of the time lost at the mechanic's and on waiting for the engine to cool down, we just missed the last ferry.  Burton Island is in Lake Champlain off  a small peninsula near St. Alban's, Vermont, less than an hour north of Burlington.  Although we couldn't make it to Burton Island, we found St. Alban's to be a really pleasant vacation town.  We swam in the shallow, unbelievably warm water at the municipal beach.  We ended up sleeping in a parking lot for a boat launch.  It was incredibly hot and humid, and neither of us slept that well.

The municipal beach in St. Alban's

The interior of the lovely stone recreation hall/changing rooms

We are now in Burlington, which seems like a very vibrant small city.  I like it a lot so far.  We are staying here with our friend Elysia's sister, Julia.  The coffee shop in which we spent the afternoon researching travel plans for Europe, Uncommon Grounds, had extremely good coffee.  I bought a pound of beautiful beans, using the last of my Canadian currency.  We ate at Zabby and Elf's Stone Soup Restaurant for dinner, and Julia took us to Radio Bean, a kind of wild gypsy/punk bar.  The workers all live in a tent compound behind the building, accessible through the bathrooms.  Or something.  I ate about a million too many fries.  We got to do laundry and shower.  It was a good day.

Looking over Lake Champlain from Burlington's waterfront

Tomorrow, I'm taking the van into a mechanic to check on the "Maintenance Required" light which recently blinked on.  Apparently, none of the other catastrophes which befell the van up to this point warranted "Maintenance."  I'm going to have them look at the thermostat and check the transmission fluid.  On a more fun note, we're also all going swimming at some amazing local swimming hole with lots of little natural rock pools.

Jenna and I are writing this post from a bar/café in Lac Mégantic, Quebec.  17 miles from the US/Canada border.  We spent the night in the mechanic's lot.  Déja vu.  Another day, another mechanic.  Another tow.  Jenna and I got out of Rangeley around mid-day yesterday, with, if not exactly high spirits, at least tentative optimism.  After all, we were excited about crossing the border out of Maine and getting into a new mode, something that felt different from the difficult time we had in Maine.

Rangeley is about 50 miles from the Canadian border.  We were getting close to the crossing, in beautiful woods and incredible overlooks, when things started feeling unsteady.  Specifically, we smelled the ominous smell of roast beef.  There was no obvious source to this beefiness, but it got stronger as we were driving.  Furthermore, I noticed steam rising out of a vent in the back of the van.  I'm still not totally sure what this vent is; I think it leads either to one of the water tanks (black or grey water), or is a heat release for the living-area heater.  Anyway, it's never steamed before and now it was steaming.

Once again, we decided we would have to visit a mechanic in Quebec, but I was hoping that this problem was something minor.  The customs officials tore through the van pretty aggressively  at the border crossing, but let us go without any problems.  About 15 miles past the border, the heat started climbing.  The van was oppressively beefy.  On a long uphill climb, I started losing power.  Pressing the accelerator seemed to slow the car down, if anything.  I pulled over posthaste, with nightmarish familiarity.  Heartstopping thoughts of "hydrolock" gripped my brain.  If, after all this, coolant was leaking into the engine block, we were finished.  Total engine rebuild, $5000, do not pass Go.

I wasn't even sure if my AAA membership would allow me to be towed in Canada.  Fortunately, at least that worked in our favor.  This would be my third, and final, free AAA tow.  We didn't have to wait long for the inappropriate, but appreciated, joviality of the red-faced tow truck driver.  He descended from his truck with a hearty, "YOU SPEAK-A FRANCH?  NON?  I SPEAKA NO EENGLEESH EEZER!"  I was able to work out with his dispatcher where to take the van.  We were towed a few miles into Lac Mégantic.  On the way, I got to exercise my extremely rusty (and none too polished to begin with) high school French.  Pointing to the lake: "On peut nager là?"  Jenna: "C'est tres jolie."  Truck driver: "Uuh, ouais.  C'est jolie."  And grinning like an idiot when these basic phrases were understood.

Once again, we were permitted to camp in the garage lot.  One of the mechanics spoke good English, and served as a translator for the head mechanic, a tough-looking bald man with a beard and eyebrow piercing.  Exactly what you would imagine, if you tried to picture a small-town French-Canadian car mechanic.  They poked around under the hood for a few minutes and quickly told us the bad news: the alternator had burned out.  Because the battery wasn't drawing a charge from the engine, we had also burned out the battery.  The pungent roast-beefy smell was the combined odor of the sulfuric acid boiling out of the battery, and the components of the alternator cooking themselves.  We had lost power when the battery wasn't able to power the spark plugs.

It was hard to believe this was happening.  The repairs were going to be expensive.  As with the coolant system, the cost wouldn't beggar us, but it was cutting severely into the money we had worked to save over the past year.  Imagining the price in terms of hours of stressful or boring work at our respective jobs was palpably painful.  After these multiple failures, we no longer felt that we could rely on the van for any more of this trip.  None of these mechanical problems seemed to faze the various mechanics we consulted; they each treated them as par for the course for a 23-year-old vehicle, even one with fairly low mileage.  Indeed, nothing we encountered was all that complex.  However, how many more of these simple-but-crippling problems could we expect to see in the next 10,000 miles?

You gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, and now that I've used up my 3 free AAA tows, Jenna and I are going to quit before we get nickel-and-dimed into financial oblivion.  Basically, this trip has ceased to be fun, and poses too great a financial risk for us to responsibly continue.  We've worked hard to travel, not to throw money against bad in a series of engine repairs.  Jenna and I have had a long talk, and decided that this is the best course to take.  We'll take our savings, and travel in a different way.

As for our immediate plans, we have to take the van back to western Pennsylvania, to my parents' house.  I hope that the repairs we're making now will take us home without incident.  On the way back, we'll stop to hike to Piazza Rock back in Rangeley, and we're thinking about attempting Mount Marcy in New York.  That will be a big challenge.  We're going to try to do it as a two-day hike.  We want to make proverbial lemonade.  My mom and step-father, who used the van while Jenna and I were living in Philadelphia, like it a lot and were sad when they had to hand it over to us.  They have generously offered to buy it back from us for a fair price, which will cover the repairs and the gas money we've spent so far.

We're thinking about trying to backpack through Europe.  Between now and then, we'll try to pick up jobs in Pittsburgh, so we don't dip into our savings too much.  It will take a lot more planning and research, but we think it will be financially feasible.  The trip will be shorter, but we hope it will be fulfilling.  We'll keep updating this blog as we figure out what's next.

I am disappointed, of course, that this trip is ending this way.  I'm at a loss to come up with a lesson to take away from this experience.  I haven't learned anything, or taken away anything to do differently in the future.  I know that that's not how it works.  There's no organizing force in the universe setting up neatly pre-packaged learning experiences for confused twenty-somethings.  Still, I feel like I've been kicked in the shins by fate with nothing to show for it, and it stone cold sucks.

I thought that traveling by van, or living in a van, or whatever I had conceptualized this as, was kind of hedging my bets.  I felt that perhaps I wasn't resourceful enough to hitchhike or hop trains or hike the Appalachian Trail, but was perhaps just capable enough to manage van dwelling.  But instead of making things easier, the van was an expensive burden.  We never even used most of the living systems.  Perhaps, in reducing our creature comforts to the things that can fit in a backpack, we will be taking a greater risk, but there's a lot less that can go wrong.  I'm curious to see if this will prove to be a better formula for us.  At the moment, it doesn't feel like it could be much worse.

Jenna and I are sitting on a dock in Rangeley, Maine, which is evidently the best spot in town to steal the local inn's WiFi.  A bullfrog is being noisy in the reeds on the far side of the pond, and some baby ducks swam within three feet of us.

You might surmise from the fact that we are still in Maine that we've run into further mechanical problems, and you would be right - but I can say, with some confidence, that we have the coolant problems figured out.  After Adley's replaced our radiator, we had noticed an air conditioning tube vibrating in the engine bay, and had mostly corrected that issue with the application of some zip-ties.  When we started to hear funny sounds under the hood, we assumed that this was probably the cause.  Then, in a terrifying reprise of our last mechanical failure, the engine began heating up on a long hill partway to Rangeley.  The sounds under the hood reached a new intensity, and, again, I pulled the van to the side of the road.  We let the engine cool, talked to our parents, and steeled our fraying nerves, then brought the van limping into the town of Rangeley.

After coffee in the local diner, we located a garage in town, where a gruff straight-shooter named Sparky came out and squinted into the engine bay.  "You're missing two bolts on the air conditioning compressor, didja know that?" he asked.  Within 90 minutes, he was able to diagnose and fix several small errors that our previous garage had made in  the water pump/radiator replacement.  Specifically, the radiator had been hung crookedly, and the radiator fan was rubbing on its shroud as a result.  This was the sound we were hearing, and it was also the reason that the radiator wasn't able to dissipate the heat properly.  We hung out in the garage and watched him work, and the fix ended up being very affordable.  The van now runs smoother, like it did before we encountered these problems.  The errant noises have also disappeared, and we've had no trouble with the engine temperature.

We decided to stay the night near Rangeley, and went to the state park to determine if we could pull in somewhere and sleep for free.  It didn't seem very likely, but we got a list of hikes and scenic detours in the area, and decided to follow up on a picnic area with waterfalls, thinking it might make a good place to stay,.  Even if not, there would be waterfalls.

As it turns out, Smalls Falls was a great and secluded place to camp.  Two rivers turn into waterfalls near the picnic area, providing unbelievably beautiful scenery and swimming holes, where we swam underneath the falls.  The picnic area itself had tables, barbecues, and bathrooms.  It was much, much better than we expected.   We cooked lentils and slept very soundly, and weren't bothered by anyone.

Today, we decided to remain in the Rangeley area.  We got up early and drove to the Appalachian Trail entrance near the town.  Jenna and I are trying to build up our strength and experience for a long backpacking trip in the Olympic Mountains, so we decided to pack our framed backpacks with what we imagine we would need for a three-day outing.  We didn't have straps to attach our tent and sleeping pads, but we put in food, clothes, our stove, sleeping bags, fuel, water, and various other supplies.  The packs were heavy.  We planned on going towards Piazza Rock, which is supposed to be a sort of enormous inverted pyramid-shaped rock; however, the trail list didn't mention which way we should hike, and it wasn't immediately obvious from the trailhead.  We ended up going the wrong direction, which was fine, because we ended up at a small lake, where there were boats for public use.  We ate lunch on a rowboat, then hiked back.  I think we did about four miles.  It felt good, and the packs weren't too much.  I feel confident that we'll be able to do multi-day hikes.  We have one tentatively planned after we visit Toronto, before we WWOOF in Michigan.

If all continues to go well, we'll proceed to Quebec City tomorrow.  I think a change of scenery will help put our minds at ease.

Here are pictures from our time in Rumford and Rangeley.

Upper falls in Rumford

The bridge leading "downtown"

Lower falls in Rumford, where we picnicked and read

Some of our cooking preparations

Paul Bunyan is a big deal in Rumford

There's also a Babe the Blue Ox over by the Rite-Aid, but we (sadly) didn't take any photos

We hiked here on our last day in Rumford

To put this in context, the Deluxe Diner was maybe 80 feet from this sign

Rangeley Lake

One of the Smalls Falls waterfalls

The other falls

Swimming at Smalls Falls

Rumford, Maine is the quintessential small town, plucked off some Norman Rockwell canvas and dropped on the Androscoggin River, where it straddles a gorgeous multi-tiered waterfall.  What locals refer to as "downtown" is in fact one street, with very little on it to remind a visitor that this is 2012 and not 1978, 1965, or 1950.  Rumford's residents have been uniformly kind, trustworthy, and helpful, and have a lovely New England accent.  Cars stop at the slightest suggestion that you intend to cross the street.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves here under very bad circumstances.  Really, the last few days have been nothing short of miserable.  We decided in Portland to scrap our plan to hike Crocker/South Crocker.  We had two nights to spend between Portland and Quebec, and if we hiked all day one of the days, we wouldn't have much time to do anything but drive on the other two days.  Our plan now was to camp the night of the 13th in the state park near Rangeley Lake, then make our way across the border to Parc National de Frontenac to stay on the 14th.  We would then drive the last couple hours into Quebec on Friday, and meet with our CouchSurfing host.  This agenda would give us time to swim wherever we liked and split our drives into segments of five hours or less daily.

Partway to Rangeley, I saw some falls.  They were really nice, and there were rocks that cried out to be picnicked upon.  I pulled onto a dirt road next to the falls, following a sign saying, "Campground," and started driving.  Jenna told me it was a bad idea, but I've had a lot of experience driving on some hairy roads, and I cavalierly reminded her of such.  But I'm very stupid.  The road started climbing upward and got rockier, with puddles, and I realized that I didn't want to go any further.  But the path was also narrow, and I had to keep driving to find a wide spot.  I finally got turned around, geared down for the descent, and got to the bottom of the hill, which is when I noticed the temperature gauge climbing.

Neither Jenna nor I have had to deal with an overheating engine before.  We popped the hood and added coolant and water into the reservoir labeled "Coolant," then opened the radiator cap.  The fluid was still boiling over, so we locked that right back up, and walked over to the campground just down the road from the dirt turnoff.  I called AAA and had them connect me to a garage for advice.  The mechanic didn't have much to tell me, except that if the engine heated back up, the head was probably bad.  The engine did heat back up almost immediately, so we walked back, called AAA again, and got a tow.

I knew that if the head gasket was warped or cracked, it could be a few thousand dollars to repair.  We weren't prepared to pay that kind of money, leaving us with little to travel on.  I didn't know what to do.

I'd managed to stay positive up to this point, but waiting for the tow truck, I felt low, angry at myself, and poisoned with self-pity.  I had to face up to the worst aspects of myself.  This breakdown felt unfair, yet it also seemed cosmically right. It made so much sense, that the life I'd been planning for years would end before it had begun because I had done something anyone with common sense would know is stupid. I wrote when we left Philadelphia that so far I've had no moment of clarity or revelation that I'm actually doing something exciting, on my own terms, as I've wanted to do for so long. Maybe I never had a moment of clarity because I'm not cut out for this. Doing exciting, risky things - taking even the mundane risks of a trip like this - is just beyond the reach of someone who's so tremendously unable to do anything right. Maybe I'm a monumental goober, only good at the things I've been taught to do, and when I stray from that path, I'm a helpless imbecile.

The wait was gut-wrenching and desolate.  Jenna, for her part, was rightfully angry at me at first, but was mostly generous and supportive.  The tow truck driver was a gentle salt-of-the-earth guy, whose easy demeanor did a lot to make both of us feel calmer, ourselves.  He took us to Adley's Auto Sales and Service in Rumford, where we met Brad Adley, who told us we could stay in the van in the garage lot.  We could even plug into their power supply.  Brad is a really nice guy, and I felt immediately that we could trust him for an honest appraisal.

So it came to pass that the first night we spent in the van on this trip was at a garage.  So it goes.

Work at the garage begins at 7 AM, so Jenna and I got up early and spent the day in Rumford, killing time.  The weight of not knowing whether we could continue traveling lay very heavy on my mind, and I was still unhappy.  We worked our way down through the woods to find the rocks by the falls, where we sat for a long time reading and having lunch.  We swam above the dam, although some nosy local told us it's full of toxins from a paper mill upriver.  There's a paper mill down river, too.  We also found Rumford's health food store, which had an amazing selection of dry goods, idiosyncratically hand-packaged in used salsa and tomato sauce jars.  Finally, we got a call from the garage: the water pump had failed, and the radiator had sprung a leak.  The bill would come to a sum which, while hefty, was not prohibitive.  The new radiator would be there the next morning, but we would have to spend another night in the garage parking lot.

We woke up early again this morning, hiked along an ATV trail which led us to a good overlook, and did some errands.  Everything could have been much worse.  The repair would be reasonable.  We were extremely fortunate in being allowed to camp in the garage lot.  We had even ended up stranded in a very pretty area.  In the early afternoon, we were told that the van was ready, and we settled up the bill, thanked Brad profusely, and got on our way.  I was keeping a very close eye on the temperature gauge.  I couldn't relax.  We drove for forty-five minutes, and I was still clenching the steering wheel.

I hadn't made it to Rangeley when the temperature gauge started to rise, in an inverse relation to my hopes and dreams.  When it became clear that this wasn't something I could pretend wasn't happening, I pulled over.  There was a hiss of coolant sizzling on the engine block.  My stomach was in knots.  Jenna, who had been holding everything together over the past 36 hours, broke down in anguish.  I couldn't blame her.  I felt emotionless and drained.  We had no cell phone service, and were on a very empty, remote road.  This was the true nadir.  There weren't many outs.  I put some water and Clif Bars into a backpack and we started walking back toward Rumford.  We hadn't been walking for two minutes when we hitched an immensely fortuitous ride from a gentleman returning to Rumford.  It was a real stroke of luck.  He wanted to chat, but Jenna and I, zombie-like in the backseat, made poor conversation partners.  Making smalltalk is miserable when what you want to do is curl up in the fetal position.  This guy was very nice, though.  He even insisted on driving us right to Adley's.

The towing crew went out - again, on AAA's dime.  Jenna and I ate a fuck-it meal at the pizza place in Rumford, and bitterly walked to the library to cancel our CouchSurfing engagement - already once postponed - for Quebec.  Jenna and I were both angry, lost, and concerned for the future.  Were we just pissing money against the wall?  How much more was this fix going to cost?  Everything had seemed to work out for the best, and yet here we were in Rumford again, waiting for word from the mechanics.  The town had lost its charms by this time.  I wanted to drive to Quebec, or else put my efforts into selling the van and getting home.  I wanted to know which choice I would have to make.

Adley's called us just before they closed and told me that the problem this time was nothing more than a hose clamp that had come loose, and the van was ready to go again.  I didn't feel like we could risk driving out towards Rangeley again tonight.  The road is too deserted, and even though I really think Adley's did a good job, and are trustworthy technicians, I can't make myself feel confident that the incident earlier today was just a fluke.  Jenna and I drove to a campground in Mexico, Maine, not far from Rumford.  That way, if the van leaks coolant again, it'll be during daytime hours.  So far, the temperature has stayed where it's supposed to.  I hope these repairs hold up.  I don't know what this means for this trip.  I guess we'll wait, which is something we've gotten pretty good at doing these last few days.

If all goes well, I'd like to drive to Frontenac and stay there tomorrow night.  Somewhere in that area, we'll try to get in touch with Benoit, our would-be CouchSurfing host in Quebec, and see if he can put us up.  I can't muster up much enthusiasm for any future plans yet.

Aram and I are sitting on the couch at Baberaham Lincoln, after a long and fantastically rewarding day, writing this post together.  Baberaham Lincoln is the cool queer/punk collective house our friend Lee King shares with anywhere between four and eight other rad housemates, depending on the day.

Our launch from Boston yesterday was stressful and problematic.  I think we were both nervous, and the route we'd carefully planned on the internet seemed to be nigh impossible to follow in practice. Just past Salem, we stopped at a Brazilian bakery to get some coffee and switch drivers, and the day improved dramatically from there. In keeping with our plan to avoid highways, we adjusted course and took Route 1 North most of the way up to Portland. The drive was pleasant.  Both of us are now feeling much more comfortable driving the van.

On arrival, Lee was out at band practice, but we were greeted by her housemate Mea, who offered us use of the kitchen and talked with us for a while. We made a totally hellacious awesome stew of lentils and quinoa and ate it while we waited for our friend. When she got home, we hung out with her and her dog, Emmett, and talked about good stuff to do in Portland the next day. We formulated a solid plan and went to sleep on the pullout couch.



The next morning, I went for a short (2.5 mile) run. I haven't run for a little over a month because I suffered a stress fracture in my left shin shortly after the Broad Street Run. I decided to start by easing into it slowly, and the run went well. I had plans to stop if there was any pain in my shin, but there wasn't. I'm definitely pleased that the fracture seems to have healed well. It was a great way to start the day.

I woke Aram up when I got back and we made a ton of oatmeal and coffee. Lee dropped us off at the Portland Art Museum on her way to more band practice. We'd been told by my parents not to miss the museum, and Lee generously gave us one free admission pass. With our bogus student discount, the other ticket was only ten dollars. The museum really exceeded our expectations. There were a lot of big names - Cezanne, Magritte, Renoir, Picasso - and the local art on display was of extremely high quality. It was also a really pleasant, manageable size.  We were able to see everything in the museum without feeling rushed in under three hours.

This is a dress made from steel and mussels by artist Brian White

Detail from a Winslow Homer painting

The above two are by Maine artist Mary Aro.

Part of the Portland Museum of Art is the historic McLellan house, constructed in the early 1800s. This is the awesome wallpaper in the foyer.

We left the museum and people-watched on Portland's main drag, Congress Street.

This dude was just casually feeding a pigeon out of his hand.

We ate burritos and Moxie for lunch and wandered down to the touristy Old Port area. Lee scooped us up in her pickup truck and we returned to Baberaham to retool for the afternoon's activities - catching a ferry to Peak's Island to explore Battery Steele.

Emmett on the ferry.

Battery Steele, as Mea explained it, is a WWI heavy gun emplacement, now long abandoned. What's left is an enormous concrete bunker built into a hill, collecting graffiti. Once a year, artists throw a soiree called Sacred and Profane inside the structure which involves various performances, installations, and from what Mea's pictures show, a lot of fire.  Scattered throughout the rooms are remnants of art from past years.  Basically, it's the coolest place ever.

We were warned that because it had been raining a lot recently, Battery Steele might be flooded, so Mea gave us a secondary suggestion to seek out a fire tower deep in the woods of Peak's Island. However, with Lee and Emmett by our side and our biggest boots on, we decided to brave Steele anyway. The entrance was pretty flooded, but not impassably so, and once we were solidly inside the bunker, things were fairly dry.

We also found a little path up to the roof, where we ate lunch in view of the ocean.

After Battery Steele, we still had some time left before dark, so we decided to try to find that fire tower. Our directions were sketchy at best (Mea essentially said, "Go left...and then keep going left?"). We hiked and talked and kept going left, and were entirely surprised when we found ourselves at the base of the fire tower. The had been cemented shut in a lazy attempt to keep out vandals, but someone had fixed a ladder next to the first floor window, through which a pair of hips could barely wiggle. Inside, there were stairs to the second and third floors, and rope ladders connecting the remaining three through holes in the ceiling. We entrusted our lives to the amateur engineers who placed the rope ladder leading to the fourth floor, but decided the next one, which consisted of a fraying gym-class-style knotted rope and no rungs, constituted an insane risk.

On the wall of the second floor stairs.

Portland has been an amazing first stop on this trip. If the rest of our encounters and experiences are half as welcoming, interesting, and fulfilling, we'll count ourselves very lucky.