... roger's still on his "all 430 maine towns in one summer" quest, so wednesday we headed out for a little two-day wander across "downeast" maine ... i decided that in addition to snapping pictures of him in front of various signs displaying town names, i would also walk a few steps from my motorcycle at every stop and see if i could find a picture of my own ... for this outing i used my little fuji x-e1 with its rather generic 16-50mm zoom ...
... this is my trusty bmw f650cs ... when i bought the motorcycle two years ago it had 11,300 miles showing on the odometer ... somewhere along this stretch of road the numbers ticked over to 36,000 ... needless to say, i ride a lot, much, much more than the 3-4,000 miles per year most average ... i've pretty much perfected my travel kit, so now all i need to do is sock away enough money and next year will be an epic coast-to-coast-to-coast wanderabout ... [any patrons out there, i'm sure i can figure a way to make it tax deductible] ...
... i read on the internet that the night we were on the road a u.f.o. was seen over orrington ... i'm wondering, perhaps this is a hanger where an extra-terrestrial on a galactic wanderabout hides their f-t-l spacecraft while cleverly disguised they're out slumming with the natives ...
... the glaciers dumped huge boulders all over the hancock county landscape ... if i'd lived in his house when i was a kid the top of that boulder would've been my very own sagarmāthā ...
... motorcycles and bikers, runners, too, i imagine, can be envious ... roger and i spent hours and hours wandering the countryside along lanes such as this ...
... waiting for warmth, in the cool air along the coast these little flowers seemed content to sleep away the day ...
... these seem to be standard for the walkways of town offices ...
... in winter harbor we met warren blair ... he drives a beautiful blue crown vic ex-cop car, the model with the big engine ... he invited me to see some of the glass art he creates ...
... all along the coast the lupine was in full bloom ... i like lupine because if you're unhappy or angry, or just plain ol' discontent, all you have to do is stand in front of a field of these flowers and within a few minutes you'll have a hard time recalling what it was that was bothering you ...
[WARNING - POLITICAL EXPRESSION]
... read the inscription ... this bothers me, greatly ... once, towns put up beautiful marble or granite monuments, with deep-relief brass plaques ... statues, too ... in the smallest of maine towns it's amazing how many names are on some of the civil and world war memorials ... then, in my lifetime, korea, viet nam, panama, grenada, haiti, dominican republic, kosovo, the "cold war" (amazing how those deaths have been erased), beruit, somolia, iraq #1, iraq #2, afganistan, bosnia, "terror," "isis," and, i'm sure, others i'm forgetting ... [sigh] ... now, from what i can see, those who manage the budgets of small towns are hedging their bets ... as i said, although i don't know why, this bothers me ...
... i thought i'd never been to the town of surry, so roger snapped my picture ... when i got back home i checked my life-map and it turns out i was wrong ... it was a long, long time ago, and it was nice to make a return ...
... more lupine ... you can never see too much lupine, that's my opinion ...
... on the side of the street in stonington ... pretty ...
... in castine, sitting on my motorcycle, this tree offered up a cheery "hello" ...
... i'm still trying to understand this ... any ideas would be greatly appreciated ...
... a little break after lunch ... a moment while roger was checking the map for me to think to myself how incredibly lucky i am ...
... we did about thirty towns ... actually, roger did one more than me when i lost sight of him leaving winter harbor and had to scoot ahead and wait at the mcdonalds in elsworth ...
... what great fun ...