Sue on the (very active and friendly) Maine Photography Meetup group on Flickr mentioned the Greenville Dog Sled race a couple of weeks back. I didn’t think I’d be able to make it because it’s pretty far up north and I didn’t relish the idea of driving through the ice to get there. Luckily another member, Jason, offered me a lift and thus on Saturday at 6:45am outside the Brunswick 7-11 the expedition began.

Once you get off the highway the towns get pretty scant. Mainly made up of a few churches, an ACE hardware, and a few taxidermy and hunting shops. It was nice not to be driving so I could take shots out of the window and Jason slowed down to expedite the process. Some of the houses struggle to withstand the elements.

We missed a turn but still got there a bit early at the meeting point. It was next to Moosehead Lake. So-called because it looks like a moose’s head from space if you squint. Which either speaks to the impressive cartography skills of the early settlers or the view from local mountains. The lake was frozen, obviously. Really thick- planes were landing on it, trucks driving across it and herds of skidooers (skidooists? skidoodlers?) noisily sweeping over it.

Next up, the main(e) attraction, the 30 mile dog sled race start. The 100 mile one had been cancelled due to patchy (lack of) snow which was a blessing in disguise because it started at 9am which would’ve meant getting up even earlier and being colder still. I bet the dogs were disappointed that their run was shorter than they wanted.

There were about a dozen teams, they’d get set up on the start line and set off every couple of minutes which allowed everyone to change their vantage points. You could tell the dogs were loving it. Here’s on of my favourites:

Here’s the link to the full set. After a couple of hours of dog watching we went to the Black Frog in Greenville for lunch. A restaurant specialising in comfort food with a menu that gave Bertie Lou’s in Sellwood, OR a run for its money. They had Poutin on the menu which I’ve heard nothing but good things about. So I ordered that:

It’s chips, cheese and gravy. What’s not to like? I expect there are a few differences to the Poutine they serve in Canada but until I sample those delights I’ll just have to recommend the N. Maine version.

Next up Jason reckoned skirting around the side of the lake, over towards to the Canadian border and then down following the Kennebec river’d be entirely possible and still manage to get back to Brunswick for 6pm, so we did that. Very little traffic along the way, maybe the Moose warning signs every 500 yards put other road users off. It was fantastic scenery- frozen rivers, ice floes, more taxidermy shops. If we’re around in the summer that would be the time to get the full experience though as leaving the car for more than 5 minutes invited hypothermia.

One of the many coffee stops was in Waterville on the way home. I only mention it ‘cos there was a gorgeous sunset. Regardez:

And that was my Saturday. Even managed to squeeze in a Flickr meetup in East Portland on Sunday too. Lovely to see the gang again. Here’s the 4×4 of my pix from then. As you will notice it was a TTV day:

How was your weekend?

Been a pretty busy couple of weeks on the work front. On Tuesday one of my latest sites, www.elizabethharveyphotography.com went live. Liz is a fellow Maine Flickrer and she takes fantastic shots of the local scenery and puts them to music. I went to Portland to show her the ropes on updating it with WordPress and afterwards had a wander round the freezing streets with me camera before picking DrSita up from the airport (email if you’re interested in details on that particular point)

I’m awaiting the arrival of a Bokehnator kit, which will change the circles in unfocussed shots like this:

It’s hard not to mention the weather at the moment. Look at the weather thingy in the left hand sidebar…

I know that a fair amount of the UK got snow today and, as you know, I’m all about the frozen water crystals; However I’ve never experienced cold like we’re having right now. Yesterday 16 degrees C below zero was the ambient temperature. That’s before factoring in windchill. I was wearing at least 6 layers plus my favourite furry hat but as I was dragged around Bowdoin campus by Atticus it felt like I was wearing shorts.  Today if I venture out, I’ll be wearing pajama bottoms underneath me trousers. Wonder if it’ll get to -40° which will spare me having to specify centigrade or Fahrenheit….

Talking of Bowdoin, the maintenance peeps are building an ice rink in the middle of it. They cleared the snow off a patch of the grass and are spraying it with water on a daily basis. Might have to see if Goodwill has any cheap size 12 skates, though it’s been a good few years since I did any skating and I’d be very cautious given that there aren’t any rails around the edge to slam into when it all goes pear-shaped.

My favourite bit about going ice skating when I were a lad (f’rinstance, James Healy’s birthday in 1985ish in Bristol) were the arcade machines. They had my all-time favourites Mr.Do!, Defender… and with Bananarama, The Bangles, & Blondie blasting on the speakers…good times…

Apparently the Androscoggin river down the road is going to freeze over more or less completely. It had ice floating down it t’other day and at the bend half of it had a good couple of inches of ice over it. According to one of my local Flickr friends there’ll be a ‘Fishing shanty town’ on it in the new year so that’ll be worth a photo or three.

After you’ve checked out Liz’s site another recommendation is Mario’s latest Circulo Vicioso podcast. This month the theme is Los Angeles, cos that’s the guest city of this year’s Guadalajara International Book Festival (FIL). He’s picked some great choons. I listened to it the first time on a long walk with ‘Cus round the snowy woods, and it was a tad incongruous, but no less pleasurable, listening to the likes of Los Lobos and Lalo Guerrero as my extremities slowly froze. If your Spanish is a bit rusty, skip to the songs.

Here endeth the blog post. See yous soon  😉

(more…)

It’s been almost a week since me mum left town. We did so much it’d be painful for all concerned to write/read about, but suffice to say we now have a near-native command of places to go to when you come and visit us is deepest, darkest Maine. Well I do anyway; DrSita’s been working like, well like the consummate, conscientious, rock-star professor we all know she is and thus had to forgo most of the opportunities to get to know the area better.

Highlights?

• Mum cooking for us almost every day with an accompanying lesson
• Popham Beach is a bit special, with the tide out even better.

• Discovering a Twiglets & Robinsons Blackcurrant & Apple dealer in Freeport
• Watching the waves at Ocean Point, off of Boothbay island.

View Larger Map

• Seeing mum get to grips with her new camera & netbook and getting her on Flickr (and picasa and skype and gmail and…)

Also 3 weeks ago I went on my first Maine photography meetup. It’s a vibrant little group and has met every week since I joined and every time it’s been perfect weather every time. Lovely folks all of them and it’s well gratifying getting so many new, active contacts at Flickr. The first was at Wolfe’s Neck, which is well local, then at a cemetery in Portland during peak, and I mean really peak, autumn foliage (I’m calling it falliage, let me know if that gets tiresome), then last Sunday it was down Kennebunk way at a nature reserve. I think the frequency of the meetups now reflects the impending winter when it’s going to be cold…

I’ve been angling for more work/ a ‘proper’ job via craigslist and suchlike which has involved a re-theming of agaveweb.com . I’m going to try writing more articles for it, rather than the usual self-congratulatory, thinly-veiled marketing pitches, and see where that gets me. The first is called 10 tips for your non-profit’s website, since I seem to have a fair bit of experience working with cash-strapped but very worthwhile ventures. I still need to update the portfolio though ‘cos I pretty much let the site fall by the wayside once I started web developing for Lewis & Clark last year.

We’ve bought our tickets to go back to zummerzet, I won’t say when cos I don’t want to give the squirrels notice of when atticus won’t be guarding the house. But I’m stoked (to use the parlance of our recent times). DrSita’s not been back for ages and there are tons of people I ain’t seen for a good long while whom it’d be lovely to catch up with.

If you’ve read this far, first off, thanks, secondly there’s a new icon at the end of this (and all others) post(s) if you click the + sign next to it that means you “like” what I’ve written. Comments are best of course, but if you’re not feeling that inspired just give it a click. I can be needy at times. Of course a ‘like’ and a comment would be grand too. Can’t quite offer as much as Skippy over at his site, “A kingdom for a comment”…