honeymoon - day 9

well not only have i fallen way behind on the honeymoon blogging, but i think it's a safe bet to say they are going to get less interesting as the details start to fade away. anyway, today we went to mt. washington. we decided to drive up instead of taking the cog train because laura is sorta afraid of heights and thought that heading up a mountain at 45 degrees would be upsetting. how this is better than driving up a road that is not quite wide enough for two cars, 6000ft in the air with no guard rail is better, i'm not sure, but that's what the wife wanted so that's what the wife got. mt. washington is known for it's erratic weather and it did not dissapoint. clouds rolled in and out all day and the winds at the top of the mountain were sustained at about 40mph. looking down on clouds is an odd sensation. the peak is also above the treeline which is interesting. as you go up, the trees get smaller and smaller to the point where they look like mini christmas trees but can still be hundreds of years old, and then they eventually disappear altogether and there's nothing but rocks and brown grass.




on our way back down from the peak, we stopped to do a little hiking on the appalachian trail with runs from maine to georgia. it turned out to be more like an aisle of randomly strewn large rocks than what i would normally consider a trail and so we didn't make it too far before it started getting dark and we had to turn around. a photo of the so-called "trail" is below.



we had heard that there are moose in the area and apparently tend to mess up peoples car's pretty bad. i have a friend who has hit (or narrowly missed) deer with his car on several different occasions. he should be glad he does not live in moose country, since a large moose can weigh about 1600lbs as opposed to the deer he has weigh maybe 1/10th of that. fortunately, or unfortunately, we didn't get to see any.

honeymoon - day 8

today we woke up in our temporary house in pemaquid point, provided to us by one of my mother's wonderful friends. after hanging around for a bit and having some coffee we decided to head into the nearest town (damariscotta, me) for some eats, where once again we ran into some sort of fall festival. they had giant pumpkins, carved and uncarved up and down the street and i heard someone talking about a regatta in the harbor. we had a great meal at the salt bay cafe and then walked around to look at the giant pumpkins.




then we walked across the street and behind a row of buildings where we found the pumpkin growing contest winners. basically, they are some sort of unholy radioactive miracle-gro pumpkins that given the opportunity would probably try and overthrow the united states. they were so big they had to be brought in on a trailer. the winner was 1129lbs.



then we walked over to the water where we saw a few of the remaining regatta entrants straggling up the boat ramp.



yes, you are in fact looking at what i presume to be a father and son motoring around in 6hp pumpkin. this was not just any old regatta. this was a pumpkin regatta. here are some pics of a few of the other "boats" that had already been pulled out of the water. i have no idea where to begin describing how awesome an idea this is. i'm pretty sure i would enter if i was a local.

honeymoon - day 7

	today we spent the day in boston. the plan was to hit the MIT museum and then stroll on over to the harvard square oktoberfest and get hammered. we woke up a little before the museum opened so we went for a walk.
	we walked across the charles river, which is the one where you see all the snooty harvard kids rowing down the river and really healthy young college people jogging along it's banks.
	on the other side of the river is newbury st. which is like if you took georgetown and made it trendier. someone had this really awesome house with this even more awesome dog chillin' on the front steps.
	the MIT museum was pretty small, but pretty cool. the first floor was not that exciting but the second floor had all their cool robot displays. they had cog and kismet, a bunch of the old hopping and walking robots from the media lab and they happened to be showing an episode of scientific american where they were interviewing my AI professor from CMU.
	they also had a whole bunch of what i will call kinetic sculptures by arthur ganson where were all totally mesmerizing. for some reason, laura thinks people will be able to save the world with them. i just think they are kinda neat to look at.
	after the museum, it was beer-o-clock, or so we thought. time to head to the harvard square oktoberfest and get smashed, right? wrong. these bastards don't have any god damn beer at their oktoberfest. i mean, not to sound bitter, but wtf? no beer? after walking around in a state of bewilderment we found the john harvard brew pub and proceeded to take matters into our own hands.

honeymoon - day 6

saturday morning we left chatham and headed for salem, ma. we were going to head into boston and go on the sam adam's brewery tour but decided to rearrange our schedule a little bit, which turned out to be a pretty bad idea. apparently salem is the place to be for the entire month of october and as we rolled into town we were greeted with bumper to bumper traffic and $20 parking for their october harvest festival or whatever it was. we were hoping to go to the witch museum and pirate museum but they had lines around the block waiting to get in. we did manage to see the house on the left, which is the "house of seven gables" and apparently is famous and in some book. i had to google "gable" to figure out precisely what that meant. after fighting crowds for a long time, i called the 800 number for the sam adam's brewery to find out that they were already closed for the day and not open the next day.

we left salem and headed for boston, where the roads make even less sense than the mixing bowl and the new woodrow wilson bridge interchanges. we checked into our hotel in cambridge to find a gay jewish wedding going on in the courtyard. we sat for a while, watched the last few minutes of forrest gump on hbo and then hopped into a cab to visit my friend rahul and his wife emily and to check out their new house and get dinner. i had spoken with rahul earlier in the day about what to do for dinner and made some flippant remark about ethiopean food, which is how we ended up at an ethiopean restaurant for dinner. rahul and emily treated us as part of their wedding gift and it was quite delicious.

after dinner we hopped on the T, rode back to the hotel and passed out.

honeymoon - day 5

friday we made it to martha's vineyard. it was about an hour and a half drive from our place in chatham to wood's hole where the ferry departs from. we hopped on the ferry around noon and we were dropped off at oak bluffs in martha's vineyard around 12:45.

laura was hungry so we stopped for lunch. not many places were open since it's the end of the season. i tried to order a bunch of things that they ran out of and hadn't bothered to reorder since they were closing for the winter. laura decided to get fish and chips because the ones i had earlier in the week were so awesome. as you can see from the picture (which i will pay dearly for having posted), hers were not as good as mine.

we walked around for a bit and encountered a village of miniature houses painted in random colors and over-sized, suspicious squirrels.


later we walked about two and a half miles from oak bluffs to vineyard haven. we spent some time there checking out the shops and then caught the bus back to oak bluffs to take the ferry back to woods hole. i got some really cool sunset pics from the bow of the boat.

it's different here

rich people live different lives. but it's little differences. like in newport, where we would have rats, they have minks scurring about. and like us, they also must share the road with bicyclists. but instead of our ubiquitous minivan or suv, this guy is driving a damn ferrari.

honeymoon - day 3

no big adventures today. we were going to try and go to martha's vineyard, but didn't due to poor planning. we realized we missed the morning ferry and if we took the afternoon one we'd only have about two hours there. instead we ended up driving to hyannis to go to "raw bar" which is supposed to have really good lobster rolls. sadly, i cannot confirm this because they were closed. instead we went to spankys clam shack.



on the way back to chatham we stopped for mini gold where i destroyed laura and made a new friend in the process. she's vowed to never play mini golf again after suffering total humiliation on the course.

honeymoon - day 2

today we was our first full day on the cape and we made our way all the way out to the tip. we stopped at first encounter beach, which i can only assume has something to do with pilgrims and native americans, but it could have something to do with high school kids making out. i'm not really sure.




we made our way further up to provincetown (actual landing spot of the pilgrims if you recall) which is cute little new england town and extraordinarily gay and has an unusually large number of "massage parlors". we walked around for a bit and had some lunch. we found a restaurant called "bubalas" and i had fish and chips and laura had lobster salad. i have to say, it was probably the best fish and chips i have ever had in my life.




the highlight of the day, was without a doubt, the whale watching trip. we had to bundle up because it was quite cool and windy out on the water and it was about an hours trip out to where the whales were but it was incredible. they are absolutely incredible animals and they are *huge*. we followed around two or three different groups of whales, including one group with a mother and a calf which was about the size of a small bus and according to the guide aboard the ship was still nursing. i can only imagine how sore it's mothers nipples must be. at one point one of the whales actually jumped completely out of the water, or in nautical terms, a "full breach", which of course i missed entirely. from what i understand, it was kinda a big deal.

on a whale related note, i am advocating for use of the term "blowhole" as a replacement for the overused and played out insult "d-bag".

honeymoon - day 1

on monday, we woke up at 4am to catch a flight out of bwi. my dad kindly also woke up to drive us there. we flew into pvd, and unlike the first time we flew here, i remembered which company i had made rental car reservations with so we only had to go to one desk instead of six.



the first place we went was to see plymouth rock, which, as it turns out is a total scam. the pilgrims in fact landed near provincetown on cape cod first. they later sailed to plymouth, but the "rock" was not identified until nearly 120 years after the fact. furthermore, it has been moved from it's original spot and was broken in half in the process.



after plymouth rock, we headed off to the newport cliff walk, which is pretty much what it sounds like. the other side of the path is lined with really really rich people. as we walked around, we saw some people leaning over the railing looking at some rocks. we asked what they were looking at and they told us they saw a mink (as in coat) running around on their rocks. these people are so rich, that they have fur coats running around instead of rats.



we had a few beers and a bite to eat at a local tourist trap and headed to our temporary home in chatham, ma. it's a little one bedroom cottage, which is fine, except for the fact that it has no microwave. the lack of which has basically rendered the entire kitchen useless. we're told that it rents out for $200/nt during this time of year. you'd think the owners could cough up the $60 for a microwave.

another free vacation

so i just worked out a trade for a week at my parents place in hilton head for a week in a cottage in cape cod for laura and i. bartering is cool. we're headed to cape cod for a week and then a day or two in boston. after that we make portland our home base for a few days while we hit bar harbor and the white mountains of new hampshire. it's up in the air after that. we may call it quits or we're thinking about a few days in burlington and adirondack state park and lake champlain to find champ!