Day 165 - Tue 8 Sep 2015
Moored - Ellsworth, ME

[photo: Try to come up with a good caption for this one; I'll start with 2:

1. Will you paparazzi PLEASE leave me alone?

2. Oh, I am so ashamed that all I do is lie around all day and night.]

It was just cool enough to make me barely comfortable in the berth last night, although I am not complaining. Even Diane didn't ask for any heat in the morning. I spent time researching future stops (there are too many possibilities, really) and Diane did her morning routine aboard.

By 0930, we had the trash and bikes in the dinghy and were heading ashore. The great harbormaster, Adam, gave us some good info on the locations for our intended purchases and off we went. Well, we got one look at the hill leading up to the main drag called High Street and we walked the bikes. Our little, single-speed bikes just cannot do hills very well. Adam had offered to put the likes in his pick-up and drive us up, but we needed the exercise.

The Verizon retailer was just at the top and I was concerned about it not being a corporate store as I have heard some horror stories about the 'authorized retailers' and their service. Well, I was very pleased at how competent and helpful this young woman was except for the price I had to pay to get a decent phone. Don't get me wrong, it was not unreasonable, just sad for me to have to pay it for dropping my phone overboard.

With that important task done, and Diane vowing to match my spending at the LL Bean store (don't you love how understanding and supportive spouses can be?), we stopped at a store called Reny's, which was recommended by several people, including women. It had a little bit of almost everything, but very little that Diane was interested in. At LL Bean, however, I was pleased to see it truly was an outlet store, not a regular store that pretended to sell items at a discount. It really was a discount store, including items with some minor damage, returns with mangled cases, and some clothing that was marked down a lot. Diane spent $100 and got 4 nice clothing items.

It was too early to eat lunch, and walking along High Street (which is US 1) was not that pleasant. We crossed over to Shaw's Supermarket where we got everything we needed, including some liquor items. The only bad thing was we had heavy bottles, heavy groceries, a big bag of clothing, and some sundries to get back to the boat. Using the strong cloth bags we brought along, our backpack, and the bikes as pack mules, we walked the bikes slowly down the rather steep hill.

It took 2 trips from the dinghy dock to get the stuff and the bikes back to the boat, but the mooring is only 200 yards from the dock, so no big deal. Diane put away all the stuff while I called the local NAPA store to have them deliver 5 gallons of engine oil. I need to do an oil change soon, so I will be in good shape now.

We saw a sale of cooked lobster at the store, so bought 1.6 pounds for $13 and I removed the meat for a meal tomorrow. It is enough for the 2 of us, when accompanied by side dishes, so that isn't too bad. Diane is always trying to see if Clyde the cat will eat some people food, when he has pretty much never wanted any. I think that is a good thing, but she keeps trying. Two nights ago, she gave him a few small pieces of her lobster and he seemed to like it. Swell, let's get the cat hooked on lobster!

Today, I was the bad guy because when I started breaking open the lobsters to clean them, he got really interested. I let the juice drain into a bowl, and placed a few tiny pieces of the meat that was too small to use in there, as well. He loved the juice and ate some of the meat, but not all. I can envision many pet lovers nodding, and many others shaking their heads.

It is a bit hard to imagine on 8 Sep up in ME where the water is typically not all that warm, that we would be roasting, but we are. Ever since getting back to the boat, the light breeze is not reaching us with all the trees lining the river, and when the sun is not hidden by clouds it is brutally hot and humid. Even Diane is miserable right now. I did point out how many times she had complained about a freezing cold toilet seat, and that is not a problem right now, but she failed to see the humor.

Twice between noon and 1700 I ran the generator with the A/C running to cool down the cabin. It surely helped but only lasted a while. Once the cabin temperatures started climbing, I doused myself, shorts, and shirt with cool water from the stern shower and sat on the exposed flybridge to get some evaporative cooling, but that only works really well with some breeze.

At 1800, it was time for supper and that meant more generator and A/C. We loved the supermarket's bourbon-marinated salmon fillet, along with the last of the delicious green beans and a sweet potato pan-browned in butter and Canadian maple syrup. Even though we are buying new provisions as needed, we are using up the existing ones pretty well.

The sun was low in the sky by 1830 and it was finally cooling off. There is no getting around that fact that people living in this age in an affluent society have no clue what it would have meant to truly survive a few centuries ago. There was a time 40 years ago when I could do primitive camping, but even then you had a tent with some protection from the elements, bugs, and animals. I grin when I think about future societies, assuming they survive all the potential global disasters that are possible, and how they will view how we lived in 2015.