Dinner was in Bar Harbor at a restaurant that used to be a house. We sat at the bar in what used to be the parlor and ordered more locally brewed beer and more excellent food from what used to be a boy.
The very knowledgable bartender was doing a good job of fetching drinks and grub for the assortment of patrons bellied up around his little domain. He WAS doing a good job until a waitress (from another bar/restaurant) arrived and ordered “the same beer I had last time”. They were out of it, he told her, and put so much emotion into the phrase that I expected to see him wipe away a tear. She came back with, “Oh, I really liked that one…” Long pause. He tried to think of something so say. More pause. “Well, what do you think I should have?”. He started naming different options (their beer selection was extensive and he really was very knowledgable) while she looked at him blankly. She asked him what each one was and he gave thorough explantations.

In the mean time, while this little exchange was going on, my beer was dangerously low in my glass. My Better Half was done with his and the man to our left had finished his martini and was toying with the olive pick. The Distraction finally settled on something. Our man poured with care and consideration, obviously overcome with the gravity of the situation. They began to chat lightly of this and that; speaking of parties, of people being too drunk to find their way home, of mutual friends who had drank away their rent money and had to move in with other mutual friends. I thought that for all the imbibing she claimed to be doing she may have been the worlds most persnickety drunk.
I had expected that our formerly attentive drink-slinger would glance over to our little corner every once in a while but, no. I drained my glass and banged it on the bar. He was telling her an engaging story of how he had almost run over a bicyclist who was “checking her out” on Tuesday when she was walking to work. It was clear that The Almost Running Over was intentional, not accidental. I held out my glass: “Excuse me, can I have another beer?” The Distraction glared at me like I was interrupting a private conversation, which of course, I was… The Distracted seemed to notice that he was actually supposed to be working and Hopped To.
I’m all for budding romance and flirting and stuff but please don’t try to get laid while my glass is empty.
After dinner we bought a bottle of wine at a handy wine store next door. This bottle.

Dragon wine.
Notice the quaint wood stove in the background. Notice the rustic quilt.  We didn’t finish the wine.

Because it has a dragon on the label, of course.

We had the long, dark, desolate drive back to Dog Pee Heaven to look forward to. I felt that wine was in order to help me see the humor in the situation. We drove back and drove. And drove. The visions of spending another night climbing in and out of the bed valley (and then another night after that, which is what we had planned) made me feel cranky and anxious. I blame these feelings plus the following incidents on what happened next.
We got to our humble accommodations. The small parking lot was filled with giant SUVs. The Other Guests had arrived. Good thing the car was small. We maneuvered it behind Something Really Big and next to Something Even Bigger. We went inside and climbed the stairs to our room. All the other bedroom doors were closed. There was Someone in the bathroom. My anxiety increased. We borrowed a corkscrew from the kitchen downstairs. It had been raining on the drive home but had since stopped. I thought we should sit on our deck in the outdoor chairs and enjoy our wine. One chair was soaking wet and the other had a Major Hole in the seat. I perched myself as best I could away from the hole. It wasn’t very comfortable. My Better Half chose to stand. We sipped our wine out of plastic cups. Every time someone flushed the toilet it was audible from the pipe that was positioned at the edge of the deck. There was a lot of toilet flushing.
I suddenly had a Nervous Breakdown. I couldn’t stay any more. I wanted to pack up and drive to Portland and sleep at the airport. I wasn’t relaxed, this was not how vacation was supposed to be, vacation is supposed to be relaxing. I can’t take this. I want to go to Mexico or anywhere else where I can relax. I don’t want to spend my birthday here. I can’t take it. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. And WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IN THIS GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE?
My Better Half took all this quite calmly which is pretty remarkable since I sprung it on him without warning, while quite possibly speaking in Tongues.
We decided we would leave in the morning and just catch whatever flight we could back to NYC. Could we catch a flight to Mexico? I became a little more calm. The absurdity of what I was saying was starting to hit me but I didn’t care. I just wanted Out.
I took my turn in the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I believe I held my breath the entire time (out of necessity). In that place and at that moment nothing was absurd except sharing a 2 foot wide bathroom with strangers and a bedroom with spiders; I felt I was the most rational person on the planet for insisting we leave.
In the morning we got up early, I hadn’t slept much and so neither of us slept much. Better Half went downstairs as I finished putting stuff in the suitcase. He came back up, “they don’t take cards; cash or check only”. He left, found the only ATM on the island and handed over a huge wad of cash. He had said that there was a minor emergency which made it necessary for us to return to New York (which wasn’t a lie; I was my own emergency).
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I even skipped free breakfast of cold cereal, et al. The flight we were trying to get on left at 4 something so we had a lot of time to kill.
We drove back to Portland on the freeway because it was raining and grey skies and grey water and grey trees weren’t much fun to see. Also it was faster…
Portland in the rain wasn’t as much fun as Portland in the dry. There were still hoards of cruise ship passengers to contend with. We walked in the rain without an umbrella; I had gotten the idea that I wanted to buy some candles. I looked on Yelp. The was a shop that sold candles about 3 blocks away. This shop also sold blindfolds, nipple clamps and fuzzy handcuffs. Shopgirl explained that the candles could be used as massage oils, too. Interesting, but not the type of candles I was looking for. We left to explore other options and walked by a couple gazing in the window. She grabbed his arm; “Oh look! Penises!”
The next place yielded less exotic but more practical results: a balsam scented candle and a bayberry scented candle. Hand poured in Maine, claims the label.
We went back to the pub we had visited on our arrival and found that they had inexplicably changed the names of their beers. We sat and watched the rain make the harbor even wetter for as long as we could. We looked at the time; 2 hours before we should even think of being at the airport. We looked at the harbor. We looked at each others half-finished glasses. One can only drink so much beer before one starts to feel constantly full and irritable. I toyed with my phone, looking for places to stay in Mexico. My Better Half looked at the available seats on the flight. Down to two empty and someone was ahead of us on the list.
We left in search of a coffee shop where we could pass some more time. Up a couple of blocks and to the left was a place with fair-trade organic coffee. They also had a lot of people sitting in their comfortable chairs, using their free wifi and generally taking up all the space. We ordered coffee and sat next to a man who was asleep on a couch. He looked like this may be his home. Every once in a while he woke up to ask if it was still raining. An ironically hipsterish dude who seemed to have been writing a screenplay assured him it was. Neither of us finished our coffee, we were too full of beer and anxiety to pack anything else in.
We walked back to the car, jumping over puddles. Rain poured off my hat when I looked down. Water was beading up on my borrowed coat. Thank goodness for my borrowed coat…

I navigated us back to the airport in an altogether different way than we had come. The airport seemed to have moved a good 15 miles beyond where it was when we left it. We drove past historic sites, important houses, parks full of fountains and statuary. I was afraid we were driving to some other Portland International Jetport; say, in Portland Oregon or maybe Nova Scotia. We did find our way eventually, dropped off the car, and walked to security.

Security was notable in that it was so unusual. Let me give you background information: my Better Half is a Seasoned Traveler. He Does This For A Living and it’s always the same: if he is In Uniform he can walk through the death radiation machine metal detector wearing his shoes and all things that he has to wear to do his job. If he is Not In Uniform he has to strip down like everyone else and pay tribute to the TSA. However, no matter what, with a Crew Badge he gets to walk past the guys checking boarding passes and IDs. His badge is Both in One. This time, though, he was delayed when he showed his Badge to the ID-checker. The guy didn’t want to let him through without a boarding pass. He actually had to call his supervisor over and double check. Don’t get many Pilots in Portland? First day on the job? Forgot to study the Process And Procedure Manual? Usually I’m the one getting the TSA stink-eye. In Newark they always tell me that I have to stand in line with everyone else and I can’t sneak through behind a crew member. My Better Half has to assure them that I am traveling with him and I’m not some crazy line-jumper looking for a good opportunity.

There are two perks to being a Pilot. The first is that you can fly free-ish if there are seats available (and no one senior to you wants them and the moon is in the correct phase and the gate agent takes pity on you and you dress nicely and are polite to everyone and everything). The second perk is that you and the people with you are able to jump the line in security. I’ve gotten death-stares many times because we just sidle up through the crew line and save time by not doing the old roll-aboard shuffle through the twisting, turning elastic ropy area. However, you passengers with actual seats aboard an actual plane, please note that the benefits are limited to these two things and what seems like a Really Good Gig is, in fact just a big pain in the ass.

We got to out gate and waited. We didn’t get seats so we had the privilege of waiting around for 3 more hours for the next flight. At least they had free wifi. Oh, and rocking chairs.

We discussed our options. I decided that I just wanted to get back to our apartment and Mexico, while fun, would be more of the same experience that we were having at the moment (the watching-the-plane-take-off-without-us scenario). We got on the next one and made it back to NYC about 11 pm.

I can look back on this now and laugh but it seemed a lot less funny at the time.
The really great news – birthday wise – was that my actual birthday day was so much fun!
Next post will have much less psychotic behavior, I promise!