Snowshoeing up Millcreek Canyon
Add another gerund to my list of favourite winter activities.
Dramatis personae include Ben, Erin, Roxy and Shelly
Yesterday’s frozen rain…
…was a pretty weird affair though I saw something similar back in Massachusetts way back when. That was a wintery mix though, this was just pouring rain that froze to whatever it hit. I just broke the scraper trying to break through the car’s encasement of ice just now.
Here’s folks up at the University of Utah yesterday:
And here are Mormons on Ice at BYU:
I christened my birthday yaktrax and that is why today we can enjoy bread and milk.
About 2″ of snow on the lawn
(Photo by Matt)
It could be a foot or so by tomorrow. Glad I bought me boots and skis last week 🙂
This blog’s gone to the dogs
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?
Last night midomi saved my life
Well not literally.
6 weeks since my last post eh? That’s got to be some kind of new record. Sorry about that, I’m sure you found other ways to spend your time though. It was probably good for you to take that break. What did you do? Learnt a new language? A musical instrument? The harpsichord eh? Good on ya. Upload a cover of something baroque to YouTube would you. Thanks!
I nipped over to the UK and Eire for a few weeks just to check in on everyone and have a fine old time. We’ve been back in Brunswick, Maine, Top Right of ‘Merica, Last stop before Canada, for nigh on two weeks now. It’s still cold and that snow that fell last week is not going anywhere. I’ve taken up ice-skating and am working on describing graceful figures such as 1 and 0 in the ice.
There’s a song I’ve been trying to find for almost a decade now I think it was on one of David Byrne’s compilations. It’s a Brazilian duet so I could only sing it phonetically. I think it’s about arrows. Probably. Anyroad, usually if you want to find a song on the internets you usually just google a few words from it + “lyrics”, but if you don’t know how to spell them, you’re stuck. Same with instrumental pieces (like this one). So I thought I’d try www.midomi.com. You hum it for 10 seconds, then it searches its database for songs that match, and lo and behold, first time it found what countless hours of googling couldn’t. I’ve been listening to this over and over. It’ll warm you up when you’re in the negative celsius.
It wouldn’t be a proper post without an Atticus update. He’s almost back to his usual self after 3 weeks on the mean streets of Harpswell, ME. We’ve nursed him back to health after a nasty bout of kennel cough, and some new toys. His favourite is a squeaky hedgehog thing. DON’T try and take it away from him.
Back soon. Abrazos
Tis cold
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 😉
The Abominable Photographer
When I told people we were moving to Maine, after the ‘Hope you like lobster’ comment, the next was usually ‘Hope you like snow’. Lobster’s alright, though it seems more trouble than it’s worth. I reckon you burn more calories in cracking it apart to get to the meat than you do digesting it. Like cucumber encased in concrete… I’ll take smoked haddock over lobster any day of the week. Actually, I’d take fish fingers over lobster too. But snow. I bloody loves it.
It’s feeling well Christmassy what with the 4-6″ we got on Saturday night. It only seems like yesterday that I was packing our fibre-optic tree into the back of a moving lorry in 3 digit temperatures. Now we’re in the cold and I’m back to using centigrade cos 32° sounds like a ridiculously high temperature for water to freeze at. We were up late on Saturday night watching Dollhouse (which has recently become unmissable and is a real shame that they’re going to cancel it) so I had 5 hours sleep and got up at 6 to see Brunswick in all its frozen glory. I was amazed that the roads had already been ploughed, and Bowdoin maintenance staff (bless ’em) had already shovelled and gritted the path from our door to the road. The ploughed bits were really icy and I nearly fell on my arse several times until I realised it was a lot easier to trudge through the unploughed bits and making full use of the boots mum bought me from LL Bean.
I took around 50 photos, half of which are on Flickr in this set. This is my favourite:
There should be a top-up of snow on Wednesday and if so I’m going to try and get to the coast because I don’t think I’ve seen that particular combination since Cape Cod in 2000 with Matt & Meg.
Also the snow’s a grand excuse for comfort foods here’s DrSita’s latest soup:
Also, just for his fans… here’s Atticus:
Newsround
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.
- 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…
(willard~beach~girl)
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”…
So, er, Bill Gates is standing in the doorway
Atticus is still at the kennel and we’re picking him up at 6. He was the smallest dog there, I’ve been worried about him all weekend, still, I’m sure it’s character building…
Sita’s presentation went well; I’ve seen it a couple of times before (and the dress rehearsals) so I nipped out to take a few photos in the rain instead, though me camera’s on the blink again… Had a bit of a nap at the hotel then went to the top floor restaurant, had some truly dire snacks and checked yelp.com for recommended nearby eateries on me iPod. It came up with the Purple Cafe and Wine Bar. Great food, good wines and if it’s good enough for Bill Gates and his posse, it’s good enough for me. If it had been more brightly lit and I’d brought another lense it’d’ve been perfect for stalking… He ordered some kind of citrussy cocktail affair, in case you were wondering. It completed the Seattle experience though. Coffee, rain and Mr. Gates, couldn’t have planned it better.
Landscaping
Martin just forwarded this picture of Sally making the most of a bad situation. Last time I was in Downey Sally mentioned she wanted the trees trimming. I started pruning them with the secateurs and then Martin suggested using his chainsaw… Long story short: them trees will never grow again. Looks like Sally & Martin have now removed the roots. Not an enviable task, it’s back-breaking work, so now they can plant lemons or limes or avocado trees.
Also I cut the lawn today. Spring is in the air.
*EDIT- 30-March-09*
This just in: It’s teamwork…
Just when you thought it was safe to plant your ‘zuchini’
Luckily this time I read the backs of the packets of seeds and a lot of them could be started indoors then transplanted, so I felt slightly smug this morning when it was whiter than usual outside. Not enough snow to cancel work though, but enough to make the place look suitably festive. Hopefully something’ll sprout soon… and ideally produce vegetables before we move to another timezone
Since it was already snowing when I headed to work today I took me camera in on the offchance there was something photographicable, to coin a word. I submitted one of them to this here Portland blog and they published it. I get the impression they’re not inundated with entries… On Flickr one of the comments was “Best watch where you put the rock salt down.” which I liked.