Portland, Maine
My first flight had me leaving Tampa at 6AM through to Portland, Maine, with a quick layover at JFK. When I arrived at JFK, I got a twitter message from Chris Butz, some with whom I was planning on traveling in about a week in Oregon. Apparently he had a quick layover in JFKas well for about 20 minutes, checked my TripIt itinerary, and met me at my arriving gate to say hello. This would be the first of many AYCJ related meetings; some random and some planned. We chatted for a little while about the upcoming trip together, squaring away some details, before he had to take off. When in the terminal I saw, as would be the custom for the next month, someone had sent out a Twitter message basically saying "I'm here, who else in in the area?". After a few days, most people figured out to add the hash tag of #aycj to their messages to make it easier to filter posts related to those using the pass. 
Coincidentally, this person also mentioned that they were heading to Portland ME as well. I looked around but didn't locate them before I had to head to the gate and board the plane. Just by chance that same guy was seated next to me. He lived in NYC and was going to use the pass today simple to go to Portland for lunch, do some work for a while on his laptop, and then fly home later in the evening with some fresh lobster to take home. He was just planning on taking a taxi, but I offered to drive him into town for lunch since I was planning on heading downtown anyway. After walking the docks and fish market for a while, we headed over to Three Dollar Deweys just in time to make their opening to enjoy a scrumptious lobster roll and some local seasonal beer. While eating it was a great feeling to realize that just a few hours prior I was waking up in Tampa and now having a fresh lobster lunch at the waterfront of Maine.After eating, Eric headed off to work for a while at a local cafe and I headed to the coast to take some pictures and enjoy the scenery. I headed over to a famous local landmark, the Portland Head Lighthouse.
I got a few pictures for a while and sat out on the rocks enjoy the sea smells once more before decided to find a couple of geocaches nearby. There is a geocaching iPhone application that has made the hobby much easier than it used to be. Then the hobby first started, one had to load geocache coordinates into a GPS using serial cables and then print out cache info and descriptions. Later I got a Palm PDA just to load up cache information for paperless geocaching, but still had to make database queries every few weeks to get updated cache information to upload into the GPS device. Now everything is done in real-time using one application. Since the 3GS has integrated GPS and a magnetic sensor, finding caches is much easier. I can now search for local caches, get descriptions/logs/hints and then make a log entry once it is found. Often when I went out caching, I'd carry my phone, GPS, camera, and PDA as separate devices, now it is all contained in one unit! sometimes being a geek is fun and useful.
After making a couple of finds, I headed over to a vista overlooking the coast for some more pictures. I was taking a few shots when I started getting some error messages regarding communication with the lens and camera body. This did not bode well for me. After another dozen shots I started to hear a whirring and the lens would no longer focus. Apparently the drive motor for the focusing of the camera decided to finally give up the ghost such that even manual focusing didn't work. Unbelievable. The first day of a 31 day trip and the camera lens that had been working perfectly well on even recent events had now completely quit functioning. This very same thing happened when I was in Sydney in March of 2008. Just as I first arrived and took a few shots there, the camera lens I was using locked up completely without any prior indication of a problem. At that time, I had someone back home that I relied upon to graciously overnight their personal, identical lens, so that I could take pictures on the trip. This time I really didn't have many options, so I used the iPhone to locate a local Canon dealers and to provide me with specific directions to get to the store across town. I tried looking through Craig's List with a local search (using a convenient app), but could not find any used Canon lenses for sale. 
The iPhone Google Maps app became a lifesaver many times on this trip, overwhelming exceeding my expectations. I headed to the camera store and ended up purchasing a new Sigma 18-125 3.8-5.6 lens and mailing back home the carcass of my old lens. I certainly wasn't expecting to spend this kind of money, but I was in a bind with no other option available to me, but did end up getting a decent deal since the lens was on sale and it was technically better than my old lens since it had a better zoom for the same speed. On the way back through downtown Portland I picked up Eric once again to drop him off at the airport since I had to meet up with another AYCJ traveler. On the way there I mentioned that I was going to be in New York City in a week or so and was going to find a hostel in which to stay and Eric simply said "Well, I'm going to be out of town that weekend using the pass, you can just stay at my place". And just like that I had a free apartment in which I could stay.
Mike G and I had communicated over the past few weeks through Facebook and would be traveling together through Maine and Buffalo/Niagara and later in the month on another trip. I hit another couple of local caches since I had time to burn before Mike came it. Since the flight was pretty late due to a missed connection, I was able to get a little sleep before he finally came in late in the evening. We immediately hit the interstate to head north so we could get to Bar Harbor and Acadia NP as early as possible. We ended up driving for a few hours before getting pretty tired and then pulled off on an exit and drove for a short while before finding an empty field in which to throw up the tent. The first day ended up being pretty eventful (and expensive due to having to purchase a completely new lens), but it was overall a decent start.
1 comment:
Great pictures!
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