Impromptu trip to Maine

Late Friday night, as I was watching the Red Sox game and finishing an unhealthy, yet strangely satisfying meal of garlic and cheddar mashed potatoes, sliced tomato with salt and pepper and a cold beer, I got a call from Sylvie. We had talked earlier in the day about getting ice cream later, and we were deciding what to do about it when she said, "You know what I really want to do is play Skee Ball." Well, anyone who knows me, knows that I'm always up for some Skee Ball. The problem: There is no Skee Ball in Boston, that I know of anyway. Miriam overheard Sylvie say this and she said: "Why don't we go to Maine?". This might seem crazy, except that Miriam's parents have a house in York, Maine to which she has a key. Sylvie thought this was a great idea, she handed the phone off to Miriam because she had to start packing. I figured out the details with Miriam and within 20 minutes they were picking me up. At this point it's about 9:45pm.The drive up was pretty easy, less than an hour and a half. We got to the house, got settled and then stayed up until 1am playing Yahtzee and eating and entire bag of Sweet and Salty Chex Mix. If you've never had this, I highly recommend it.

I slept until 8am, which is like a miracle and then after getting ready we all headed to the Bagel Basket to get some breakfast and split the paper. They had spinach bagels, my favorite! We then headed to a wonderful grocery store and on the way home we saw HUNDREDS of motorcycles on the road. It was pretty cool to see, lots of cool choppers and everyone was waving and honking. It was pretty impressive. The police had stopped traffic to let them pass, so it was obviously a big deal. I still don't know what exactly it was, but it was neat to see.

After heading home and unpacking the groceries, we headed to the beach, just a short walk from the house. We only stayed about an hour because it was really hot, but it was long enough for Sylvie to go in the FREEZING water and for Miriam and I to walk along the beach and then relax with our magazines:


We got home and Sylvie made some wonderful orzo salad, but not for us, it was for a dinner party that night, while Miriam and I played Mille Bornes, which if you haven't played is a really fun French card game where you get to shout things out in French. Miriam was way more into the shouting things out, but it was really fun.

After the orzo was made, we headed out to accomplish our initial goal for the trip: Skee Ball here we come! But first we had to eat lunch. We stopped at this great little sushi place near the Fun-o-Rama arcade. We enjoyed our lunch, but we were all excited to get to Skee Ball. So after eating, we headed over to Fun-o-Rama, got some quarters (about $4 each) and then played some great classic Skee Ball. Sylvie got the high score of the day with 350!,

I got 330 and Miriam got 300. It was great. I cashed in my tickets for a finger trap. It was the perfect arcade trip. And what is a trip to the arcade without getting ice cream after? We headed to Brown's and stopped to see The Nubble on the way. At Brown's I got Pistachio, Sylvie got Indian Pudding and Miriam got Planet Earth, which consists of Blue Vanilla ice cream, oreos and marshmallows. Just as we were getting our cones, it started to pour rain. We ran to the car and ate our ice cream there. We were treated to a fleeting view of an enormous rainbow and then the clouds covered the sun and it was gone.

We headed back to the house, packed up all our stuff, did a quick clean up and only 20 hours after deciding to take this trip we were already on the road back home. It was a perfect little escape to Maine.