Scotland recap, at LAST

Well, I must apologize for the month of August—life has interfered mightily with my duty to report on our trip to Scotland. And that created a logjam that led to a whole lot of not posting. So here, at last, is the scoop.

Once again I had a great time on a tour run by Bike Vermont. Seven days of touring, with six of them spent more or less on the bike, four different inns in four different regions, great food and some serious scenery. The two guides, one a Vermonter and one a local Glaswegian, were fun people and awesome leaders through everything. Just about all of the inns were top-notch too, although there are a lot of weird ideas about showers in the Old Country. The concept of the full shower door or curtain doesn’t seem to have caught on there. On the other hand, the electric towel bar is a grand thing—why don’t we have these in New England?

As for Scotland itself, I was impressed. Glasgow was a great little city, with tons going on and easy navigation. I really dig that you can order glasses of wine in two different sizes. Yeah, I’m easily wowed. The landscape, though, that’s the real star of the place. We saw the rolling lowlands of Perthshire, cycled our way up the River Tay, took a ferry from Oban to the Isle of Mull, and came back via the truly highland moors of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. Pictures of each below, respectively. For the full spread of photographic record, see my Flickr link on the right over there. ->

Photo 1: Perthshire fields as viewed from the battlements of Huntingtower Castle

Photo 2: The River Tay, outside of the village of Murthly en route to Dunkeld

Photo 3: The port of Oban

Photo 4: A view of Duart Castle from the Oban-Craignure ferry

Photo 5: On the Ardnamurchan Peninsula

The cycling was a little nuts, I have to admit. I don’t think the terrain was significantly tougher than what I’d seen in Vermont (except for the day on Ardnamurchan), but there were fewer little towns to take breaks in, and most of the roads on Mull and in the highlands were what’s breezily referred to as single-track: in other words, a strip of road just one narrow lane wide, but used in both directions, with occasional tiny semicircles of shoulder where two vehicles can pass each other. That was quite nerve racking. But having a half pint of cider at lunch usually restored the courage.

In general I also thought the food was first-rate. Maybe that’s because we were always staying in swanky places, but I really ate and drank well. I also had haggis for the first time, which is very tasty! It’s funny that it has such a reputation. I ate weirder things in Manila, that’s for sure, heh. I also tried a couple of different single-malt Scotches, although hard liquor isn’t usually my thing. For the newbies to Scotch, I’d recommend the Tobermory 10-year, and if you’re into peaty, funky Scotch, the same distillery also makes Ledaig. Both were distilled at this here spot on the Isle of Mull.


So to sum up, it was fantastic. I was impressed by how beautiful the country was, with some very stark landscapes and amazing views. And the people all seemed incredibly friendly, too. Definitely worth a long visit, and I would go back in a second!

Vermont kicked my ass

Well, I’m back from my not-quite-a-week in Vermont! Just to start the bragging up front, I cycled for five days in a row for a total of 162 miles, completed in 13 hours and 38 minutes. That adds up to a whole lotta riding. And you dear readers might not know this, but it’s kind of hilly in Vermont.

The tour started in Stowe on Sunday evening, where we met the two tour leaders and the other people crazy enough to vacation in this manner. It was absolutely pouring rain down in buckets, which is good because we didn’t ride the first day. So the recap is as follows: Monday morning we rolled out ridiculously early to head to Montpelier, which was about 38 miles of back roads away. Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at the Inn at Montpelier, which was really nice (and the rooms had TVs that got the Tour de France coverage, yay). Tuesday we did a 36-mile loop from Montpelier through a few minuscule towns and lots of fabulous countryside, hills and bucolic settings galore. Here’s a shot of a friendly goat—no moose spottings, though.


Wednesday we packed up again and headed from Montpelier to the Highland Lodge in Greensboro, about 33 miles away. There was a damn serious hill we had to slog up to get to Greensboro, let me tell you. Actually, the day started with a miserable hill but I took the van for the first three miles. Hey, the van is there, why not take advantage! Swami took the macho route and sweated up the hill. Thursday was a loop from Greensboro that included a visit to a little town called Marshfield, where there is hidden a totally awesome pastry shop and cafe called Rainbow Sweets (see photo below). Best damn spanakopita I have ever had. I cut that day’s riding a little short at 23.4 miles, and Swami did about 33 just to show off. That gave us a little time to check out Caspian Lake, a beautiful blue lake just across the road from the Lodge. (Somehow I neglected to photograph the lake, whoops! But here’s one by someone else, and here’s a site with a lot of cool aerial photos.)


On the last day, even before I got out of bed I could hear some ominous rumbling outside. And a peek out the window revealed some seriously black clouds. But hey, there’s breakfast to get before we have to worry about the weather. During breakfast we got to experience a pretty spectacular mountainside storm: first we noticed that we couldn’t see the lake anymore, then we noticed that we couldn’t see the road just outside the lodge. In a final dramatic flourish, the power went out. Fortunately the breakfast food had already been cooked—at that point I was guarding my potential calories pretty intently! Although as time went on, it was looking unclear whether we’d even get a final day’s ride at all—riding in the rain is doable, but not in a ridiculous thunderstorm. But either by van or by bike we were heading back to Stowe, because it was checkout time.

Finally after breakfast the sky cleared, and we started to get our stuff together. Everybody’s luggage got loaded in the van, and a couple of people who were fed up with cycling got in as well and started back to Stowe. Then, as Swami and I were headed to the shed to get our bikes, another storm blew up and stranded us in the shed for about 20 minutes. Were we going to end up riding or not? Weirdly, after four straight days in the saddle I was feeling like I needed another!

Fortunately the storm did blow through and for some reason the tour leaders thought it would be okay if we got on the bikes. So ride we did, kicking up spray and generally getting wet and gritty. And the rain did stay off in the distance, for the whole 32.6 miles back to Stowe.


Back in Stowe it was time for a quick shower and packing up. A huge storm squall even washed the bikes clean on top of the car on the drive back (although it was actually a damn scary trip—at one point we even had to get off the interstate because there were tree branches coming down around us and it was decidedly Not Safe). But overall it was a great week and I’m proud that I survived. I didn’t even take any painkillers and I still have full use of my legs! On the other hand, sitting at my desk at work doesn’t seem like such a bad thing at this point. Anyone up for a ride next weekend?

Time killer

I blame Danielle for sending me this link. I got past level 10 once! Highest score so far: around 420K. Swami is kicking my ass up and down, of course.

Prepare to waste massive amounts of time

Pardon me, I need to go scrutinize a map of Africa.

Buko tarts and final thoughts

I’ve been meaning to write one more post about the Philippines trip, and finally have gotten around to it. Ignoring any sense of narrative, I give you a completely unorganized list of things that I remember the best, now that it’s been a whole month since we got back.

Tropical tennis: One of the most fun things we did while we were there was play tennis with Kaskasero and his parents at their club. The courts were covered with crushed gravel and shell, which was kind of like a clay court in terms of play. It was nice to play some doubles for the first time since last summer, even though my internal clock was telling me it was three in the morning! And as the sun went down, any tennis ball that was hit high in the air was immediately dive-bombed by bats wondering if their sonar was pointing out the biggest insect of all time. So neat.

The ring of fire: My number one goal of the trip (besides seeing Kas get married, of course!) was to see a volcano—a trip to the Pacific Rim wouldn’t be complete without that. So the day after the wedding we drove to Tagaytay, a bustling resort town a couple hours’ drive outside of Manila. The town is perched on the ridge of a huge volcanic crater, at the middle of which is a big lake with Taal Volcano in the middle of it. Totally awesome views.

The town itself kind of reminded me of the Cape around Hyannis, with lots of people and lots of places selling stuff. You could get all kinds of food by the roadside; this photo shows some people selling hot corn on the cob.

But the number one thing you’ve got to eat in Tagaytay is the buko tart. Buko is young coconut, and the tarts come packed in boxes so you can grab a stack to go. Definitely tasty. Here’s a fellow blogger’s account of a buko tart from Tagaytay.


The wedding: Of course, the main reason we went to Manila was to see Kas get married. I’m so glad we did, too. The whole thing was really great, seeing him and meeting his fiancee/wife for the first time. They’re really good together and I wish them all the best. Congratulations, you two!

Beer for breakfast, and other indulgences

It’s high time I talked about one of my favorite subjects in the context of the Philippines trip: food. I consider myself pretty adventurous for an American, which I admit isn’t saying much, here in the land where ketchup is considered by some to be spicy. But growing up, we ate all kinds of weird things: tongue, liver, kidneys, and every imaginable vegetable, including the infamous brussel sprout and ones you ain’t even heard of like kohlrabi. So I was well prepped for Filipino food, which seems to consider just about anything edible, including crickets. (Note: it is damn near impossible to Google anything about the eating, rather than the sporting, kind of cricket, so no link for you.)

First off, let me be clear that I did not try the crickets. And I didn’t cross paths with balut, although I admit that after a beer or two I might have actually tried it if someone had plunked it in front of me. But I was spared. Anyway, having said all this, the food was consistently awesome. Besides the daing na bangus I already mentioned, another seafood standout was inihaw na pusit (grilled squid). Just damn good. I was also glad to have tongue again, which I haven’t had in ages. Yay kaskasero for having it at your wedding! Also great was sisig, which is probably best when you have no idea what’s in it. (Everything is chopped up nice and small, though, which helps with any urk factor you might feel.) You can see the squid and the sisig in the picture below: sisig on my plate, and squid two serving dishes away from the camera.

Don’t forget the rice, of course! Rice with every meal including breakfast. And everything is eaten with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other; you use the fork to push food onto the spoon. And if you’re paranoid about food safety like I am, you wash everything down with San Miguel, which is a pretty good beer considering that I pretty much hate beer. (Even Jet Li and Stephen Chow like it, so who can argue?)

As for nonnative food, well I have to laugh, because there are heaps of American chains in Manila, and I studiously avoided them all just like I do at home. Shakey’s is apparently popular there, which is amusing because I think they have almost no presence in the U.S. these days. And how funny is it that I traveled almost 9000 miles to eat the first Krispy Kreme doughnut I’ve had in a long while?

I leave you with a link: This article has a lot of interesting stuff in it about eating in Manila. And based on my own experience, I have no doubt that it’s all true!

Crowd control

First off, happy new year everybody! And now back to the Manila report.

I should backtrack a bit from the previous post and spend a little time describing our arrival on Monday night. It was a four hour flight from Tokyo, which definitely qualifies as insult to injury. We arrived around 10:30 pm local time, and you could feel the warm humidity from the jetway, of course. It was probably about 75F/24C and balmy, with a strongly funky overtone. Or maybe funky, with a slightly balmy overtone. Anyway, once we slogged through Immigration, waited an eternity for our bags—I think each person on that 747 was shipping eight boxes full of Christmas presents home—and got through customs, I figured we’d see the smiling face of kaskasero waiting to pick us up.

Not quite. I need to provide a little background on the scene, though, and explain about balikbayans and other overseas workers. Lots and lots and lots of Filipinos work outside the country all year, and then come home at the holidays. By lots I mean gazillions. So the international airport around Christmastime is a total madhouse (although for all I know, it’s like that all the time). For a lot of overseas workers, their whole family will come to meet them at the airport, and so there’s an outrageous mob of people waiting for arrivals at any time. So in order to handle the crowds, all the people waiting to meet arrivals are kept in an area away from the airport, behind a big fence and gate. If you’re the one arriving, you follow signs for the family waiting area and then get sorted by last name. Then you come out into an open area where your family can spot you from a distance, and persuade a guard dude to let you through the gate to meet your peeps. Kind of complicated, but totally necessary, I suppose. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to figure out on no sleep!

In general, Manila is ridiculously crowded. Apparently the hordes are at their height around the holidays, so we saw the scene at max capacity. Besides the vehicle traffic on the roads, there’s also nutso amounts of people packed in the malls, and pedestrians randomly crossing streets whenever there seems to be a tiny break in the cars. (Or no break at all; I swear people were actually nudging pedestrians out of the way with their cars.) Occasionally the government sees fit to try and discourage people from walking across the faster highways; hence this sign:

Roughly translated, it says “Don’t cross here, you will die.” Of course it turns out that others have noted these signs. Funny, and yet not. People actually do cross any road, any time, even the elevated highways like EDSA, and apparently they don’t always make it.

Another thing I experienced that ties in with this theme is security. It was everywhere. You couldn’t walk into a mall or hotel without opening up your bags and often walking through metal detectors, and there were bomb-sniffing dogs and armed security guards in a lot of places, too. It was somewhat reassuring, given the unrest that the country experiences now and then, but also unnerving, since you recognize it’s all there because there’s a need for it. When we flew out, there were three separate security checks to go through at the airport, including one just to get into the building. Although, that wasn’t what bothered me about the departure. What bothered me was that they charge you 750P/$18 cash before they allow you to fly out. What the heck?! Fortunately we were warned at the hotel. Kaskasero, I’ll pay you back, I promise!

Daing na bangus and traffic

I’m back on the blog at last! First, a technical note. At first I thought of methodically going through each day of the trip, but then I wondered whether it might make more sense to do themes instead. In the end it looks like this first post has a little of both. Anyway, over the next several days I hope to post as much about the trip as possible, and if it appears at all organized, so much the better. If not, well, ya got tags you can use to find your way through.

The first full day of our trip got off to a good start, with what’s apparently a typical Filipino breakfast: daing na bangus at a local chain, Pancake House—yeah, quite the exotic name! Anyway, the dish is a fried marinated fish served with a pile of garlic rice that has a fried egg on top. Awesome hangover food, I imagine, and good jet lag food as well. In fact, after just one plate of this I wish I could have it every morning. (Here’s a recipe, here’s a pic.)

The first day also gave us the trip’s theme song, which is good—every trip needs a theme song. Thanks to kaskasero playing it incessantly in the car, it was track 9 from this disc: “Awitin Mo Isasayaw Ko”, a disco song covered by Pedicab. (Not that the band name means anything to me!) The beat moves a hell of a lot faster than the traffic in Manila, believe me. In fact, if you had to choose one word to describe Manila, it’d be traffic. Goddamn, I have never seen such traffic.

It’s hard to describe. Imagine a four-lane road, with at least six cars abreast. Imagine mopeds buzzing in between all the cars. Imagine a huge fleet of these crazy vehicles called jeepneys, full of people and decorated with all kinds of wacky designs. (Pic below.) Now imagine everything traveling at about 5 mph. Oh, and diesel smoke and pedestrians everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there are people who live in their cars permanently, trying to get to a house they haven’t been able to reach in years because of the awful traffic. In fact, traffic is so slow and heavy that vendors just roll their carts of stuff in between cars and hawk everything from peanuts to cigarettes. Totally insane.

Greetings from Narita

I’m currently sitting in Narita airport in Tokyo, operating on about two hours’ sleep, and my internal clock says it’s about three in the morning, just to keep you all informed. The long flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it could be, though. Swami and I snagged one of the rows right at the back of the plane that has only two seats across, so it was nice not to have to share a row with anyone else. I saw a cool sunset out the window of the plane when we landed—picture forthcoming when I get back home.

Edited on 30 Dec. to add: here’s the photo.


Now it’s on to Manila, an additional four hours in the air that’ll probably seem much more like punishment. And the Great Asian Adventure of 2007 begins!

On the edge

Whoa, it’s been well over two weeks since my last post. I’ve been frantically getting ready for the trip to Manila and D.C., and at this point I think I’ve achieved Batman-like levels of preparedness. Anti-malaria drug, antibiotics, bug repellent, sunblock, hand sanitizer. Based on that list one might think we were heading for the middle of the Amazon, but no, it’s just bourgeois risk aversion over here. And speaking of bourgeois, I also have the portable DVD player, the digital camera, a schwack of movies, and lots of easy-to-read geeky sci-fi books.

I do wish we were blowing off the family Christmas, though, but maybe experiencing it through a haze of jet lag will actually turn out to be better than the usual lucid suffering. See you all on the other side—hopefully, though, I’ll have a chance to post from the road. Regardless, I promise a full report at the end of the month when normalcy returns!

Nice view

Here are two pics from a recent trip to Asheville, North Carolina, both taken from the parking lot at the top of Mt. Mitchell. It’s the highest mountain east of the Mississippi.

How high is it exactly, you might ask?

No speaky da language

After studying foreign languages for more than fifteen years, I just bought plane tickets for my very first trip overseas ever. (Those two facts together demonstrate most of all, perhaps, the extent to which I’ve faked it so far in my life.) I was supposed to go to Ukraine in June, but that fell through in spectacular fashion. But this time, no screwups allowed: I gotta ticket for Manila in December and I intend to use it. Why Manila? It is a pertinent question. The simple answer is, kaskasero managed to get himself engaged to be married, and there’s no way I’d miss that wedding. Even though it means 25 hours of traveling—one way—and lord knows how many vaccinations. Oh, and I know one whole word of Tagalog: tinga, or something stuck in your teeth. At least I’m ready to eat out, right?

Tour de Vermont

At last, a travelogue from our recent trip to Vermont! It was a four-day cycling tour, about 25 miles a day, through some of the most ridiculously hilly terrain I’ve ever ridden. We stayed at two different inns, one nice, the other extra-swanky, and had breakfast and dinner included.

So the day’s routine was: crawl out of bed at 7 a.m., breakfast at 8, start cycling at 9, a sandwich in a tiny Vermont town for lunch, cycle until about 2, lengthy shower and lengthier nap, dinner around 7, collapse in bed and fall asleep around 9:30. It was like being in the bike army, but in a good way—no uniforms or discipline. Also, there was the all-important support van. Driven by one of our two guides, you could flag it down at any time for food or snacks or a rescue. It also came in handy when I bought a quart of Grade B maple syrup from Plummer’s, since I wasn’t about to carry that on my back for the rest of the day. (Speaking of tiny towns, this next photo shows the actual, official U.S. Post Office in Jamaica, Vermont.)

Now for some details. You might be aware that Vermont is kind of hilly; in fact, one might call it downright full of mountains. And just about every day there was a hill of such staggering proportion, with a grade approaching 6 or 7%, that I did end up walking some of the way in lieu of feeling my heart explode. But then on the other side of most of them, there would be a descent for the record books: my max speed was clocked more than once at over 39 mph, which is definitely the fastest I’ve ever traveled on a bike.

The scenery was fantastic: totally bucolic, lots of chattering streams, mountain peaks and valleys, covered bridges, cows, cute little towns with nothing in them except one country store (where you could always get potato chips, the most essential cycling food there is). Not one whisker of cell phone service. And I only realized after we got back that I didn’t see a traffic light the entire time we were there. Another thing which I didn’t know beforehand is that most of the secondary roads there are still unpaved, which made for some seriously hairy moments on my road bike. There was one stretch that was so unbelievably muddy that we had to take the van for a couple of miles because it was just too dicey. Amazingly, I did remain upright the entire tour.

Before we went, I was completely unsure of whether I’d be able to take four straight days of riding, but it turned out to be just right. The third day I was pretty sore in the morning, but the itinerary centered around a three-mile hike to see this fabulous waterfall. And then on day four, I felt great. I think maybe my muscles just gave up complaining when they realized I wasn’t going to give them a break.

All told I logged over 100 miles in four days, improved my mad skillz at climbing, descending, and off-roading, and purged all thoughts of my mundane life. And in a true stroke of fortune, it never rained on us during a ride. I would definitely do it again. How soon can I take another vacation?

P.S. See more pics at my Flickr page.

Showdown at the Woodley Cafe

The night was dark. I was slouching through town, feeling unfamiliar in a crowd of strangers, trying to forget myself amid the crush trying to get noticed. I needed a stiff drink, there was definitely a stiff drink out there who was head over heels for me, and I knew there had to be a place where we could get acquainted. I walked into the nearest bar ’cause the farthest one was too many steps away.

Then I saw them, three goons that weren’t looking for trouble because trouble had heard they were looking and skipped town on the next Chinatown bus. That was trouble’s mistake, because everybody knows the Chinatown bus is as likely to leave you by the side of the road with your luggage on fire and soaked with antifreeze as drop you on a stinking street corner with a chopstick up your nose and a wonton up your ass. But never mind that. Back to the goons. It was like the Dating Game in one of Chuck Barris’s cocaine-fueled fever dreams: Bachelor #1 was probably the one they called the Kid, his innocent face all smiles after beating the latest murder rap with the help of a few guys named Ben Franklin. Bachelor #2 looked like he dug his bivouac next door to the Unabomber and made his own moccasins out of Ted Nugent’s hide. And Bachelor #3, well, he was the softspoken one, which means he might ask your opinion of Freddy Adu but shiv you even if he agreed with your take on the kid. I knew I should have kept on walking past that dive but then I caught their eye and it was too late to leave early.

The Shiv gestured to a seat next to him and I had to sit down. At that moment the waitron cashed in her years of training and asked for drink orders.

“What Scotch do you have?” the Shiv asked, and I hoped for my own sake she had whatever swill he was hoping to swig.

“We got Jack Daniels,” she responded, and then I knew it was all over for her and me both.

Then the Kid leaned forward. “They say you got quite an arm.”

“Do they,” I responded, playing it cool. If things went my way I might have a chance at getting out of there without it being feet first. “I wonder if they know what they’re talking about.”

Unabomber looked up from his half-sized glass of beer. I wondered if I was dressed as Dorothy because that bar was sure starting to look like Oz. “You see this nose?” He pulled a giant plastic nose out of his pocket and slammed it on the table.

Now I knew I was in crazytown but I thought it best not to point that out to the natives. “Yeah, I see that nose.”

“You beat the Kid at arm-wrestling, you get the nose. You lose, Shiv here gets yours.”

“Simple proposition,” I remarked. It might have confused the teetotaling waitron but it was crystal clear to me. “Let’s go for it.”

I clasped hands with the Kid and we planted our elbows on the table. At first, he was holding back on me, I could tell, letting me wear myself out early and then he could swoop in for the kill. So I kept it low-key, not showing off, knowing that the longer it went the more likely I would keep one of my favorite facial features. Actually, who am I kidding, I’m not a huge fan of my nose but I wasn’t ready to give it up for adoption to that bunch of jokers.

Time was ticking by and the Kid was looking a little less confident. I didn’t have him yet, though. I just kept my eyes on that nose and hoped that my arm didn’t leg out. At last I saw him start to crumble like Big Dig concrete, and finally I banged his arm to the table harder than Woody Hayes punched out Charlie Bauman in the Gator Bowl.

For a minute it was quieter than a room full of people sleeping through Elvis Costello’s North. Then I stood up, picked up the nose, and gave a salute. I figured I’d hit the road before their patience ran thin like Gene Keady’s combover. “Here’s to otolaryngology,” I said, picking up my drink and draining it in one shot.

That was one hell of a night in Washington, D.C.

Notes: cross-posted to Costello-l; visit here for a couple more pics!

Bicycling, blueberries, and booze

With that threesome it can only mean that last week was our mostly annual trip to Maine. If you don’t know anything about Acadia National Park or Bar Harbor, start Googling. This year was the fourth visit, and it was great to be back. Now let’s break down the three Bs.

Bicycling: Most of the cycling potential in Acadia is on unpaved carriage roads, so we usually rent mountain bikes so it doesn’t matter when they get outrageously dusty and banged around. But this year we brought our road bikes with us and had ambitious plans to ride the Park Loop Road. That’s a 20-mile loop that rings the eastern part of the park, with fab ocean views and more than a few serious hills. This is the first year I’ve been fit enough to ride that kind of distance, so I was looking forward to seeing how tough it would be. We tackled it on Day Two, and it turned out to be fantastic. There were three climbs that totally kicked my ass, but they all paid off with amazing views of the ocean or one of the lakes at the top. People driving by us were giving us the thumbs-up and calling out encouragement, which was really great. And I hit my fastest speed ever on a descent: over 33 mph.

On Day Three, which was supposed to be recovery day, we rented the aforementioned mountain bikes and hit some of the more difficult carriage roads. I’d been on some of them before, but we did two sections that we hadn’t done before and that had some great views. It’s really satisfying to dog up a hill and realize that it’s the same one I had to walk the bike up a couple of years ago. And we went much farther in terms of distance than anything we’d tried before.

So all in all, because we had gone on a ride the day before we left for the trip, it was a week with over 60 miles of riding. Boo yah!

Blueberries: It’s not a trip to Maine without those little blue things appearing everywhere. I think the breakfasts at the B&B managed to include them every single day. Then there was the always divine Blueberry Oolius smoothie at Gaucho’s, and the blueberry-lemon tart at Eden that rocked my world. Somewhere in my head I hear Yosemite Sam exclaiming, “New England boiled blueberries!” Of course, right now in the fridge there’s still some Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale—which leads us naturally into the third B.

Booze: The best part about biking (or
hiking, since we did some of that, too) to exhaustion every day is that you have no guilt when it comes to dinner. And man, dinner was way over the top every single night. The mood was international: a South African sauvignon blanc, a New Zealand pinot noir, California merlot, a viognier from that largish country in Europe where they make a lotta wine, and oh yes, the Cuban mojito. There was food paired with all of those beverages, but frankly, the details are a bit hazy. I raise my glass to restaurants that let you recork your wine and schlep it home, by the way. And another toast (hic) to New Zealand for making screw-top bottles, which facilitate schleppage.

So now the real question is, should I quit my job, move to Bar Harbor, and become a mussel farmer? Because as I drag my carcass back to my damn desk job, that’s looking mighty appealing to me...