9/27/00 - On to Portland, Maine
Woke up early to a bracing cold morning and walked quickly down to the ocean. Sunlight flared up from the water and I could hear the soft swooshing of water against the rocks. It would have been amazing to have a camp site by the ocean, but the only sounds lulling me to sleep last night were occasional cars swooshing across the highway, which did sound oddly similar to the ocean.
On the road by 8:30am so I wouldn't have to rush and worry about the brakes too much. Stopped at WalMart for a few things along the way. Had a lunch scheduled with women entrepreneurs from the Portland area at the Stone Coast restaurant.
Got lost on the way because the directions I was given by the restaurant were for if I was driving from the south into Portland instead of from the north down through Portland. So as I headed out of Portland toward New Hampshire, I realized I'd better turn around and suddenly their directions made sense. I always seem to have an interesting experience with directions - most people give them to you leaving out all the crucial details because they figure you must know them.
Arrived at the restaurant parking lot in time to get a good parking spot, and to make some phone calls, to change my clothes out of my trusty black running suit which I had purchased back in Richmond, Virginia at Target when visiting my sister - the same time I purchased the RV.
The lunch was great, talking about entrepreneurship with six women with interesting points of view. The whole thing had been arranged by a woman named Christina Merrill who worked at a company called ViA who I had met through a reporter in Boston who upon hearing that I was headed toward Maine said "You must meet Christina - she knows everyone in Maine." And she does!
Got the Berts out of the RV after lunch and headed to Christina's office up the block, did email, interviewed another woman entrepreneur - Meredith Burges - who is also a breast cancer survivor and very active in the awareness community. Then returned to the RV to find that the battery was dead.
Dead battery. My fault. I had been thinking all day "Remember to turn off the headlights. Remember to turn off the headlights." I was planning on making little stickers to put at strategic locations around the dash and door to remind me because when I would leave the headlights on, there was no alarm pinging like in the cars I've rented over the years. So inevitably, a nice person outside would say "Your lights are on." Then they'd probably look at my license plate and thing "Those folks from 'away' sure are dumb." ("Away" is the term those in Maine use to refer to anyone not from Maine.)
Anyway, I sure am dumb. I left the headlights on all afternoon and the battery was truly dead. So Christina took me to her house where I met her husband Christopher who took me back to the parking lot where he jumped the RV (with my spanking new jumper cables ordered from Amazon.com). Then we drove back to the house where he happened to have a charger which he used to charge up the battery some more. Then he noticed my right headlight was out and ran to a parts store before it closed, returning with a new halogen bulb to fix the headlight. Wow!
With my limited cooking skills, honed by camping in the RV, I made spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner and the Berts had some of the meat mixed with barley, zucchinni and yellow squash. Oh right, I haven't yet mentioned what the Berts eat - not just on the road, but all the time. Grains, ground meat, and grated vegetables with powdered vitamin and mineral supplements. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't cook at all, but cooking for them has motivated me to cook for myself. And besides, they don't have delivery anywhere else like they do in New York City.
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