BMFRTE Day 2: Auburn, Maine

Sat 8/18, noon, Auburn, Maine

We get up, and work on rustling up some grub. Naturally, this occurs at our Mecca of eating establishments: Denny's. Years ago I achieved a personal goal of seeing all 50 states, leaving me to move on to my next goal: eating at a Denny's in all 50 states. Eating at this one in Maine means I'm certainly more than half way there. Sure, it's not the noblest of goals, but it's going to be easier to achieve than becoming Pope.


Ed has to start getting ready for the wedding late this afternoon. Apparently a space has opened up at the reception, so the bride offers to Ed that he can bring me. As attractive an option as being Ed's date is, I find that I have little desire to go to a wedding where I know a grand total of one person. A part of me wants to go just on the principle that weddings = a place to dance, and turning down an opportunity to dance is a grave matter indeed, but the rest of me would rather spend the afternoon and evening doing something a lot more fun: repacking the car and trailer.

In our haste to get everything out of the apartment and into the trailer, we really did not do a great job of loading, and I ended up having to leave a bunch of stuff behind. In Keiko's office. Plus, our travel bags are wedged in in exceedingly difficult places to get out of, so extracting stuff this morning when we checked in was a nightmare. But I like the challenge of making amounts of stuff that seem impossible to fit somewhere actually do so (JOC calls me 'a savant' when it comes to that), so I tell Ed that that's my plan for the evening.

Ed, projecting Swarthy Latin Machismo.
His buddy, a nice guy whose name I don't remember, projecting Painfully Goofy White Dude.










So, as he heads off to the wedding, I head to the parking lot, where I proceed to unload everything from the trailer and the car, and organize it into piles based on relative size, weight, and probability of needing access before reaching our final destination. Then, I systematically repack everything, which results in the trailer being much better loaded, with better weight distribution, and a lot more space in the car. It only takes me about 6 hours to pull that off.

After it's all done, I shower and head for the nearest pub, to get some food. Ed texts me much earlier than I thought, so I invite him out, but it turns out that he's contacted me so early because he is suffering. This from Ed [my commentary in brackets]:

"It was a gorgeous day for a wedding... I talked with Lenny, the groom, for a while, and then got to see Jen's [the bride's] parents. Of course, I had to apologize profusely for missing lobsters the night before. [First two casualties of the BMFRTE- our leaving more than a day late caused us to miss Acadia National Park, and caused Ed to miss the rehearsal dinner, and fresh Maine lobsters.] Then back onto the trolley- and now the crazy old ladies have a few drinks in them- for more good times. I have a great conversation with the crazy old ladies... Our table is probably the only one with an average age of around 30. [~30 yr old bride + ~60 yr old groom = geriatric wedding fun. Too bad I decided to skip it.]

After some dancing and some cake, the wedding is over and we take off back to the hotel. My stomach is killing me by this time, and I don't know if it's the food, the pants that barely fit me, or the Alleve I took earlier for my shoulder (oh yeah, my left shoulder has been in excruciating pain since before we left NYC, and it's getting worse). Either way, by the time I get back to the hotel I'm doubled over in pain by these stomach cramps. So no going out for me."

So when I finally get back to our room, Ed is curled up in his bed (looking a bit worse for the wear) watching Sportscenter. [Watching Sportscenter is for Ed a lot like breathing, both in (a) how critical it is to his ability to actually survive a given day, and (b) how much time he spends doing it.] As a benefit of my perestroika of the car, I was able to extract my Mac, so I set to work burning the rest of the road trip CDs. Although I had roughly designed them, I didn't get a chance to review them or burn them past the first couple before we left NYC. That project was yet another casualty of my moving debacle.

Sunday 8/19, 2 a.m.:

To bed... CDs are burned for the next several days, and we have a big day tomorrow- the first baseball game of the trip, in Fenway!