Gone Walkabout: The Month of Unusual Bruises

The month of February has been full of fun things that have left me bruised. Tumbling down hills while learning how to cross country skiing, wearing tight harnesses while rock climbing, hitting my face on computers while laughing too hard; all the marks of a good time. When work days have been getting long and my schedule has magically become full-to-bursting, it's nice to have purple-blue reminders of these diversions from the repetitive strain of reviewing the alphabet with kindergartners.

Work has been a struggle lately. It's monotonous and doesn't require higher level thinking. To say I feel unchallenged is inaccurate; I am indeed challenged, but it's to remain engaged in work that I don't feel connected to. The good news is, my future plans are affirmed and alternative career pathways I've been curious about have been explored. Now is the time to begin working toward what I'll be doing next year.

As I'm sure it's quite clear, my blog posts have been sporadic lately. I've not decided if I'll keep this same non-pattern or try to go back to the weekly post ritual. At this particular moment, trying to write about life over the past several weeks feels impossible.

What I've Done

Went to Mt. Blue Take It Outside Day, an initiative to get people outside and active during winter. $1.50 for delicious homemade food and equipment to cross country ski, sled down mountains, snow shoe, and ice skate on frozen ponds. The drive was about 1.5 hours, so not too far at all.

The Food - delicious chili and peanut butter creme whoopie pies.

Friends enjoying the heavenly food.

Mt. Blue area - so gorgeous

The event

The equipment

There was a wildlife display of Maine animals full of sad looking taxidermies.

Help me, I'm poor.

Do not feed the bear!

There was also a set up of how to camp/survive (unclear which) outside in winter.

Snow cave

The frozen skating pond had a spectacular view surrounded by the mountains.

There was a neat little shelter with a wood stove you could go in to put on your skates and to thaw out in.

On the frozen river, you could see little ice fishing shanties and people going by on snowmobiles.

A magnificent day.

Survived the Blizzard of 2013, also known as Nemo.

Once when I was in elementary school, Raleigh got about 18 inches of snow and I did not go to school for 2.5 weeks. The blizzard Nemo dumped 2 feet of snow on Lewiston, there was one snow day, and then everything went back to normal. During the few hours that the roads were not drivable, I made valentines for friends and family at home and watched Downton Abbey season 1 on DVD.

My door! Snowed in!

The wind blew the powder snow into little desert dunes.

Hello, buried cars!

I started to dig my car out and then some Amish teenagers came by to ask if I needed help. It was so bizarre, but of course I said yes, so it took about 10 minutes to dig it out.

There are the Amish teens coming out of a house... you can sort of tell how much the blizzard wind was blowing.

After the snow-catting (when you fatcat during snow storms), I went snow hiking with a friend in a bird sanctuary park behind a Hannaford in Lewiston. That makes it sound terrible, but it's beautiful.

Walking from the Hannaford parking lot to the park, we fell into a giant snow drift up to our waists.

Thorncrag is a little Narnia.

This being my first real experience with snow, I enjoyed trudging through it. It was exhausting to walk the perhaps mile we walked because the snow was so high. It was fun to take breaks and do trust falls into the snow.

Wearing snow pants makes snow so much more fun. No soggy socks or pant legs!

Buried. My hair froze.

After this day, I went home to chow down on, what else?, ice cream and watch the rest of Downton Abbey. Another wonderful day.
Nordic ski'd in Norway
I love being able to say that; Nordic skied in Norway. Nordic skiing is another name for cross-country skiing and Maine has many towns with the names of foreign countries. Norway is right next to Paris. There's also a China and a Mexico I've been through. Norway reminded me of a tiny, tiny Asheville - a little hippie and set in the mountains. It was surprisingly cultured for a town of I believe 5,500?
As part of what I'm sure is also an initiative to get people outside and active in winter, there is a farmland preserve that has free cross-country skiing and snowshoeing trails and equipment nearly every weekend. There was fresh snow that fell that morning and on the drive to Norway, so conditions were excellent.

The building where the boots and skis are up for public use.

Nice and toasty with the wood stove.

There was an absolutely precious old man we saw there. His Bean Boots were ancient and still going strong, just like him. When we talked to him, he said that his ex-wife in Texas sent him the snow shoes he's holding for Christmas in 1967 as a "final get-back." I'm not sure how far he made it in the snow, but he was going for it!

Alive 80 years- and living every day of his life.

Zelda skis

Keep going! You can do it!

Even more Narnia-like!

The elusive Narnia/farm preserve snack mail box - EMPTY! So disappointing.

The vista view. As you can see, nearly every layer of clothing was removed because the skiing is such a good aerobic exercise.

The ski loop was a 3K route that involved hills which were both fun and painful to go down (painful if you fell, which I did a handful of times). It took us about two hours to do and we were utterly exhausted afterward. We went into town to find a cafe to have some lunch at.

The cafe was delicious and cozy. We found a seat right be the window that overlooked a brook/creek/baby river.

View from the cafe window.

We played a board game about travel while we waited for food and while we lingered afterward, waiting to feel the energy to stand and make our way home.

The Europe question on this card was too perfect for our day.

After lunch, we went to a used book store in a charming old house and stopped at an antique store on the way home. Another wonderful and exhausting day. I was ravenously hungry that evening. Cross-country skiing is an incredible work out.
Day-tripped to Boston
Most recently, I took a day trip to Boston. I have been wanting to visit since I moved to Maine. Fortunately, I have a friend who wanted to go to Boston because the closest Chick-fil-a is just outside it. So, we went for the chicken nuggets, stayed for the free beer at Sam Adams Brewery.

Learning all about how beer is made. Very interesting.

After seeing the facilities, which are just for creating new varieties of Sam Adams, not mass producing it, we went to the tasting room. They give you a small glass for keeps and then let you try 3 different kinds of beer, plus teach you how to properly taste it.

The only two rules of the tasting room; share and do not drink from the pitchers.

After the tour, there is a trolley that will carry you to a pub. The trolley features karaoke, a fog machine, disco ball, etc, plus a very animated driver. The driver is the one doing a fist-of-victory pose talking about the pub, the legendary Doyle's. We were all laughing hysterically.

Inside the legendary Doyle's

The trolley carried us to the T after we were finished with our meal (which came with a free Sam Adams pint glass if you bought beer, which of course I had to after falling directly into their marketing trap). Our first stop was Chinatown. We stopped in a Chinese market and I felt like I was back in China. It made me nostalgic for that trip.

We walked everywhere from this point forward. It was miserably cold and windy, so I will definitely go back to Boston when it is a more seasonable temperature.

The Commons

In this cemetery are Paul Revere, John Hancock, and some other important people I cannot recall.

The site of the Boston Massacre. I was so excited to have this connection to my Revolutionary History knowledge!

The last stop of our walking tour was to the North End which has a large Italian population. We stopped for delicious sweet things, Lipton tea, and lattes.

Strawberry cheesecake, chocolate mousse cake, and chocolate chip canoli (mine)

We headed to the T to go on to the Northshore Mall.

A stop on the T.

While chowing down on our well-earned-from-walking-all-day Chick-fil-a, a magician who was there for kids' night accosted us with bad jokes and magic tricks that made us all feel super awkward; he was trying so hard. He would not leave us alone. He performed for us for about 10-15 minutes. The nuggets and sweet tea were still worth it.