New Hampshire to Maine, then to New Brunswick, then to ...

We left Gorham, New Hampshire, Tuesday morning, driving east into Maine.  From there we drifted down along country roads, though paved, out of the mountains and into Lewiston, then Brunswick.  At the place where I put a supposed trading post in the essay, "Bumper Cars" (and I stood on the spot), is a Shell station.  We gassed up, then headed east until taking a road to the Maine coast ... where Tamara and I met Sterling, regular commentor on this blog.

The details are private, of course, but Sterling is a hail fellow, well met, and we spent an enjoyable afternoon with each other, speaking about D&D, Traveller, sailing, his house, cooking and more.  As the house is "nearly" in the country (on the very end of the settlement in which he lives), we accepted dinner and Tamara and I met Sterling's family.  A good time was had by all.

I must say that these meetings are tremendously heartening for me.  I think there's much to be said for these sorts of meetings, to prove that voices on the internet ARE people, especially those we disagree with.  That's not to say that "meeting" someone would automatically mend rifts and conflicts in what we believe; there are many readers I would never like to meet.  With those people, however, who have consistently supported me, consistently challenged me, consistently stood up as a voice to me, I now believe that were we to know one another in person, we would certainly be friends.  It's not an illusion.  With some people, what they say online is really what they believe in reality.

It's just a damn shame we're so far away from one another.

I hope that I have a chance to meet with other readers.  I have met with two and it has been an honour.

After leaving Sterling on the 2nd, we found shelter at a quaint little Irish motel in Rockland, the room of which was one of the nicest we've encountered.  Somewhere during this journey, however, I lost interest in taking pictures.  Somehow, as I begin living my life, I forget about recording it.  That's partly because in the end, recording it in words seems better to me.  My memory doesn't require a picture.  It only asks for the time and a brief description, and I'm there.  In any case, by the time we settled in, I was too spent to write a blog post.

From Rockland, we left Maine and roamed into New Brunswick.  We restored our provisions in Saint John, took some time to witness the tides and settled in for the night.  In the worst room of our entire trip.

Let's see ... the chair in the room was broken.  The bathtub was dangerously slippery.  There was no desk, and I felt too tired to write, again.  The beds hadn't been replaced in at least 15 years and we could feel the springs as we laid down.  But as we'd slept on springs before, we shrugged it off.  The room wasn't expensive.  

To get in, the door had to be forced.  I had to get the manager to show me how, and to be honest I never got the knack of it.  Then, later, deciding to get something from the car, I found that I couldn't open the door to get out.  At all.  I pulled, Tamara pulled, but to no avail.  I was about to call the manager to come over and let us out, when I instead I remembered we had a card from another hotel a week before.  I used the card to break out of our room.  Twice.

When we laid down to sleep, it was then we discovered that while we could feel the springs, the beds had no give at all.  It's a combination I've never encountered.  Tamara, who weighs less than me, padded the bed covers with blankets we'd brought along and made out okay.  I was thankful that we'd brought a yoga mat with us; I laid this under the bedsheets, atop the mattress and slept on that.  A bit narrow, but at least it had some padding.

We did not sleep well.

The next morning (that was yesterday, Thursday the 4th), we started off towards Nova Scotia.  But then we began to talk about what we'd seen, and what we wanted to see ... and none of it seemed terribly important any more.  We'd originally meant to go to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and even Newfoundland ... but ... by yesterday morning, we'd stopped caring about that.  We talked about home, and being home, and going home.  And decided we wanted those things more.

So, just shy of Moncton, we turned around and headed west.  Yesterday, we left New Brunswick and reached La Pocatiere in Quebec.  Again, I wanted to write, but after getting our stuff out of the car in a driving rain, I didn't relish it.

Today, we've gone further west.  I'm writing from an hour west of Ottawa, in a nice hotel with a pool, which I'm going to try in about ten minutes.  We're happy and anxious to return to our lives.