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.