Maine Mosquito Madness

After a slight delay in NYC, we eventually pulled into Cape Elizabeth, Maine at 11:30 pm. It was hard to tell then, but we woke up the next morning across the street from the "beach." The beaches in this part of Maine appear to be some form of shale and the rock forms slabs that go all the way to the water. It's beautiful, but not exactly friendly to sand castles.




Saturday was spent walking around the shoreline and the state parks. Eric and I lost our respective wives and spent over an hour looking for them only to discover they had gone home earlier. I got a 40 minute bike ride in while hunting for a farmers market that apparently closed 3 years ago. After returning with some veggies, Meg & I got a 40 minute jog in. (Her knee is still bothering her from an overuse problem, it appears. )



Sunday we went to downtown Portland where we caught up with my friend Derek who I did Ironman Lake Placid with. He now has a 1 year old and lives in Kansas City so it was nice to spend some time with him and Kelley catching up. We will try to stop by his neck of the woods on the return trip.

Monday, I got a very humbling 10 mile run in. For the first time on that much asphalt in nearly 2 years it went ok, but I'm a long way from my old form.

We had been saving our stereotypical Maine lobster meal for Monday night. With 11 people and only 1 pot we would have to eat in shifts -- no problem we said. Since lobsters are pretty messy and the ring burner had to be outdoors we decided to eat outside on a nice evening. Batch one of the lobsters were done at 7:45. As soon as we started eating the crustaceans the mosquitoes started swarming and eating us. I've seen dome nasty mosquitoes in Michigan while camping but this was the worst I've ever seen. Round one scarfed their lobsters down as fast as possible. While round two were boiling we moved the table away from the burner -- mosquitoes are allegedly attracted to propane. That provided some limited relief but those eating in round two had to inhale their lobsters or risk bring carried away from the table. It was kind of comical, but also dissappointing that we couldn't savor the lobster a bit more.



Tuesday morning arrived far too quickly and we said good bye to our good friends and hosts Jen and Eric along with everyone else. We'll hopefully see many of them again in September at the Big Schloss.




-- Posted From My iPhone on I-90 in upstate New York headed towards Rochester.