Ploafmaster General

I don't have quite the energy of my evenings in Maine to write about this little weekend away, but Valerie and I are in Charleston for the weekend alone as a slightly late celebration of our anniversary. The kids are with my mother-in-law in North Carolina and we're staying at a B&B (not the house above - that’s a private home for some wealthy NewYorker). This afternoon and evening were chill; walking around The Battery, meandering up Bay Street until we dropped in to an incredible (and incredibly renovated!) favorite from our first visit 10 years ago: The Gin Joint. This place is still the absolute jam. I wish they were open on Sundays so I could go again tomorrow night.

We caught a Lyft all the way to the other side of town for our dinner reservation at Chasing Sage, an impossibly cool vegetable-focused restaurant that did almost everything right. The decor, the menu, the music, the dang bathrooms! This place was cooler than me. The food was great, the cocktails were great, and Valerie and I felt like we were on the verge of 30 again like our first visit, instead of nearly 40 as we are now. Turns out this place is in the super-hip neighborhood of Cannonborough/Elliotborogh which, as you can predict, is a post-gentrified district of Charleston. Now the gentrifiers are complaining about the encroachment of college students, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway we have a light itinerary for tomorrow that includes lots of walking. The weather turns sharply autumnal tonight which should make that walking lovely. But most of what I'm looking forward to tomorrow is sleeping in without my kids climbing in bed before 6 AM.

A few shots from Chile's Peach Orchard back in the summer shot on Kodak E100 slide film using my Hasselblad 500 C/M.

The Westland Shopping Center was built in what used to be the "Far West End" on West Broad Street back in 1963, and boy does that sign place the strip mall marvelously in that decade. I know being way out in the counties was considered the hinterlands at the time, but a saguaro cactus? Hilarious. Anyway, this was shot on Kodak E100 slide film with my Hasselblad 500 C/M.

And here's the final post of my film shots from the Maine trip. If you read the proper blog post for that day then you’ll remember it was the Portland day. I don't have any photos of the incredible bagels or coffee I consumed, but I still managed to snag some goodies along the way.

Tandem was, of course, a highlight of the day because of its thematic resemblance to Richmond's own Lamplighter (bike themed, first cafe in an old service station, etc.).

Of course, Tandem is all about the two-person bike, not the tall bike. But you get the idea. Really missing that pistachio cake I ate there. Chef's kiss, man.

After hitting one more coffee stop we drove to the south end of Casco Bay to Fort Williams Park so we could check out the Portland Head Light. I loved this park so much.

And we headed back to into town for one more coffee stop which we enjoyed in Post Office Park while a busker played the harp.

Everything from this day was shot on a roll of Lomography Color 400. I think I let this film age a bit too much as its saturation and contrast bumped up a bit too high for my taste, but that last photo still managed to retain some natural-is skin tones and dynamic range. Anyway, as I’ve said before - I didn't got to Maine for the sake of photography, but I'm going to bring a camera with me wherever I travel, and these three days' worth of photos are exactly why. The memories are truly great, but the images provide that extra reference, texture, and detail to my recollection.

I head to Charleston, SC for an anniversary weekend with my wife this coming Friday and I'm sure I'll fire off at least a roll or two while I'm down there. We’ll see whether I get anything worth sharing :-D

And here we go with my film photos from the 3rd day in Maine (really my 2nd full day if you recall). These were pretty much all from Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Loads of time on gravel roads, stopping occasionally for some gorgeous sites, and high-tailing it out of there once we realized the storm was headed our way :-D

All of these were shot on Kodak Portra 160 using my Hasselblad 500 C/M.

This isn't the most beautiful photograph I took that day, but it was the most fascinating thing I saw - naturally-occurring, triangular slate formations that protruded near-vertically from the river bed.

Unlike Acadia, with which my friend Robert is deeply familiar, I don't know what all these places are called. Somewhat anonymous beautiful spots, I guess. Whatever their names, it was the most breathtaking scenery of the whole trip.

You can consider this a companion post to my second Maine post. Sure, I included a number of iPhone photographs, but my next few posts are all about the film I shot on my Hasselblad 500 C/M when I was in Maine.

I got a few keepers I was happy with from Acadia, and a few additional fun shots after we left.

I didn't visit Maine to take photographs, of course. But I do take a decent camera with me every time I travel because I'm an enthusiast. And the weather really cooperated each day I was up there.

That weather, of course, made for some pretty fine meals outside.

Honestly, the weather was so exactly my jam (chilly in the morning, perfect low 70s and low humidity in the afternoon) that it was almost as significant a part of my vacation as seeing my friend and the beautiful landscapes of Maine.

Today is my wedding anniversary and, as the title indicates, I’ve been married to Valerie for 17 years. I don't have anything profound to say this morning, so I'll share an anecdote. Yesterday while the kids were at school, we went out to lunch and enjoyed great food and beer in some glorious weather. We followed lunch with some relaxing at a cafe sipping coffee and passing time with conversation. It was a real treat to have such calm and unhurried time with my wife to talk, take in a meal, and be comfortably idle together.

We're taking a weekend trip in two weeks to truly celebrate, but days like yesterday are what reinforce how much I still love my wife and the years we’ve had together.

I think Apple's silicone MagSafe case might be one of the more comfortable cases I've ever used; soft to the touch but not squishy, good grip, and rigid enough that I'm confident it’s protecting my phone. I'm a big fan of orangey-pink tones that we frequently call "salmon" or "coral", so I got the similar "pink pomelo" color that seems to complement my pale blue phone.

I didn’t really step outside today until I grabbed my Chipotle delivery off of Robert’s porch. As I said yesterday, he had to teach today so I was mostly heads down sneaking in some distraction-free work. Once he wrapped up his day he dropped my at the airport shortly before boarding. I got lucky on the first leg and had a two-seat side of the row to myself. Now I’m just wrapping up a layover in Philadelphia before the final leg back to Richmond.

This has been some of the best travel and friend time I’ve had in ages, but my bed is going to feel great tonight.

About to Eat (or A.T.E.) is a relatively young YouTube channel from some of my favorite Buzzfeed food people. The channel essentially features a number of themed series based around interesting concepts such as cooking only one type of food for 24 hours, examining the different ways the hosts cook certain ingredients or dishes at home, or one of my favorites, the "Day in the Life" series. Day in the Life is produced by Alvin Zhou (who has his own channel that is a true delight) and shares his experience in the kitchens of various restaurants in New York City across a variety of cuisines and styles. I love this series because a) the videos center almost entirely on the chefs and restaurants featured, b) you get an inside look at highly skilled people making delicious food, and c) I think Zhou's genuine curiosity and enthusiasm come through in each video. If that video at the top of this post doesn't make you want to find the nearest Ghanaian restaurant, you aren’t hooked up right :-D

Today was Portland day! We headed out early for the long drive from Bangor with a two-pronged morning mission: Montreal-style bagels from Forage and a coffee crawl involving some of Robert's favorite roasters in Portland.

Let's start with them bagels. These were cooked in a wood-fired oven as befits the Montreal-style process, and while they vary a bit from the NY-style I grew up with in the Tristate Area, they were no less delicious. That characteristic crisp, chewy skin was still there, yielding to a tangy sourdough interior that had fermented two days prior to baking. One sesame and one sea salt, each with butter, and I was in my happy place. I haven't eaten bagels this delicious in a couple years. Seriously.

Then it was on to coffee, and we had to start with Tandem Coffee Roasters. Did they bit a little style from Richmond's own Lamplighter with that bike theme and converted service station cafe? Who knows, but their coffee was delicious, and the pistachio cake I shared with Robert was incredible. It tasted like a lemon poundcake with pistachio meal, and crushed pistachios, lemon juice, and sugar syrup on top. That pic at the top of the post was my cappuccino. Next up was Speckled Ax who—completely new to me—wood-roasts their coffee. This cappuccino was even better than Tandem's and I bought a bag of some fruit-dried Ethiopian to take back to Richmond.

Side note: yes, two cappuccinos in a row, no sweetener added. I normally prefer espresso or pour-over, but in Portland as in Richmond, the shops are still using disposable only cups and no dine-in. I feel like paper cups mess with the flavor of espresso, so that’s out. And none of the shops we hit in Portland were doing pour-over because of the time involved.

We interrupted our coffee crawl for a surprise stop at Portland Head High and Fort Williams Park on Casco Bay. If my film turns out okay, the shots I got at this park will be some of my favorites, I think. For now, check out this vertical pano of the lighthouse, and the registry plaque.

Our final coffee stop was Bard Coffee in the Old Port neighborhood, and boy was that great. One more cappuccino, and also a nitro cold brew. The cap was certainly tasty but the nitro was some of the best I’ve ever had. All the rough edges were rounded off and while most nitros have that "virgin Guinness" taste of toast and chocolate, this stuff was still fruity and crisp.

With so much caffeine in our systems, we headed out of Portland to Freeport for a visit to the massive L.L. Bean campus in Freeport. They had pretty much everything you could imagine, including a pair of stuffed moose that had been found dead in the woods with locked antlers. Macabre! After a little light shopping (and not buying) we drove a short hop to Maine Beer Company for some truly delicious beer and pizza. Our final beer stop was Side by Each Brewing Co. in Auburn on the way back. This brewery takes care of their people and makes delicious beer, so it was a fitting final brewery on my trip.

The vacation part of my trips is pretty much over now since Robert has to teach starting at 8:00 tomorrow. I'll be sneaking in a work day where everybody thinks I'm off so I can get stuff done without distraction. Then around 4 PM I'll head back down south to Richmond. Not sure whether I'll publish a final post tomorrow, but I can tell you it’s been a helluva time up here in Maine, and I hope to return before too long.

Addendum to yesterday's statement about "too much delicious food and drink to recount": let's just say I had enough to drink that my sleep was transient last night. I woke up sore and tired, but excited enough for what today would bring that got dressed right away and sat down to chat with Robert about what today would bring. The weather looked iffy, so we decided to start with breakfast at a great gas station diner-like place called Dysart's.

As I was eating a tasty breakfast sandwich with French toast for the bread, we decided to chance the rain and head up to the relatively new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in north central Maine. It was a long drive to the park and along gravel roads, but road trips are the way Robert and I love to hang out. The photograph at the top of this post was taken within the park, and there are (hopefully) some choice photographs shot on my Hasselblad to be seen at a later date. We eventually made it to the picnic area with an expansive view of Katahdin itself and numerous other peaks at the top of the Appalachian Trail. We got some great photos, but we could also see some serious weather headed our way.

So what did we do? We hit up some more of Maine's fine craft beer offerings, like Bissell Brothers in Milo. We snagged some suds and enjoyed the rapidly cooling weather on their covered patio while the rain picked up.

The staff were friendly but the bathrooms were another story...

We returned to Bangor and grabbed another round at Bangor Beer Co where we ran into some of Robert's delightful colleagues, then decided to take a chance on a newish barbecue joint. I won't name it because then I’d have to shame it, because it wasn't great. Us two Virginia boys knew what we were getting into, but had to take a chance just in case it was actually good. So with the smoked meat a failure, Robert called an audible and we wrapped up the evening with some seriously good ice cream from local joint, Gifford's. So tasty.

Tomorrow is my last day of exploration with Robert (I'm here all day Monday, but he has to teach all day) before heading back. The rough outline includes Freeport, Portland, loads of coffee and beer, and more glorious exploring. Whoohoo!

Today started with a casual and delicious breakfast in Bar Harbor before heading to Acadia. The weather was perfect the entire day and started chilly enough to warrant wearing my flannel shirt. Summer sticks around until the 22nd, but it already feels like autumn in Maine. Bar Harbor is a fairly cute town even if it occupies a "wealthy tourist" slot in my mental filing cabinet. Visiting the ocean shore always feels like home, and the gulls, sea air, and site of boats helped as well.

The highlight of the morning, however, was our visit to Acadia National Park (my second National park of 2021) and climbing around on the top of Cadillac Mountain. The views were beautiful and expansive if not always photogenic, but I felt so alive up there in the fresh, cool air. Robert knows his way around and we managed to explore quite a bit of the summit while avoiding the more crowded tourist walkways. After Cadillac we took in the sites around the loop road, stopping at various overlooks before parking near Thunder Hole to take a look around. Yeah, I smirked at the name, too, but at high tide the waves crash into a rock formation in such a way that it sounds like thunder. The rock formations were breathtaking and I can't wait to see some of the film shots I exposed around the park.

What comes after a busy morning of hiking around and taking in the sites? That’s right, taking in the lobster.

I had a hot lobster roll - only lobster and clarified butter - with chips while we relaxed after the park. It felt recklessly indulgent but, if you visit Maine without eating lobster, have you even visited (Yes, yes you have)? It was pretty tasty, and just the right amount to fill me up for a late lunch.

After lobster it was time for some breweries and hang out time at various locations from Belfast to Bangor. We hung out beside the Passagassawakeag River sipping brews from Marshall Wharf Brewing and watched birds and boats drift by.

On the way out I caught a short video of a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture:

The rest of the afternoon and evening were filled with too much delicious food and drink to recount, but we returned to Robert's house with the sort of contented exhaustion you only get after a full and enjoyable day. I think I'll sleep a bit better tonight than I did the night before. Tomorrow? Miscellaneous adventures all over the map from Freeport to the deep woods while the weather is unpredictable.

Today was the first travel day. I actually used a packing checklist this time which means I’m pretty sure I have everything I need. My 8 year old daughter was pretty upset I’d be away for several days, but I’m so excited for this trip that I had to console her the best I could while tucking her in last night and heading out the door this morning. My flight started late in the morning which made security quick and easy. After a pleasantly uneventful flight I’m finally in Maine visiting my best friend Robert.

He’s a bio professor in Bangor and, while he’s been up here for years it hasn’t been possible for me to visit until now (he’s come back home to VA plenty—it was my turn to get on a dang airplane), so we have big and adventurous plans for the next several days ahead. But today itself was a bit of a whistle stop tour of Robert's highlights of Bangor, Orono, and the surrounding area. We enjoyed some beers from a few local breweries, drove around a university campus (where we stopped to admire a huge wind turbine blade!), and finished up with some incredible dinner at a brewpub down by the Penobscot river.

Almost all of my photos will be on film, so it will be a while before I can share anything, but I’ll try to sneak in an iPhone shot here and there like you see in this post.The leaves are changing, there’s lobster to be eaten and beer to be drunk. We’ll be covering a lot of actual territory from Portland to Acadia to Lubec, and maybe even Stephen King’s house. I can’t wait to report back tomorrow.

My kids were so pumped for their first day of school, and I can't blame them. Maddie just loves school (a growing nerd like her dad before her) and is particularly pumped to be going back to her school building to see her friends in person as she starts 3rd grade. She doesn't mind the COVID mitigation policies, she’s just happy to be back in the school she loves for the first time since early March 2020.

And Wilson! My sweet little boy is starting kindergarten today! It feels like the end of his "little kid" years as heh starts his time in elementary school. I can't wait to talk to them about how each of their days went after we collect them from the bus stop this afternoon.

My kid's school uses an app called ClassDojo to manage intra-school communication and light social features. Teachers and staff post school-wide announcements and photos to share, teachers post messages to the parents of their students, and parents can communicate directly with their children's teachers. It’s pretty useful and, to the benefit of underfunded school systems everywhere, it’s free to use. But a crucial fact remains that my wife and I don't choose to use ClassDojo. We feel compelled to use this app because it is what the teacher uses, what the principal uses, and we would feel distantly out of the loop should decide to abandon it.

Why the heck would I mention that? Because ClassDojo utterly abuses their captive audience by frequently attempting to upsell parents on out-of-school features, paid access to "memories" from prior school years, and other premium features. I'm not interested in any of that stuff! But I can't ignore the app if I also want an effective line of communication between my house and my kids' school. This is dirty pool in my opinion.

Geez, eight years, right? That’s how long my daughter has been around now. That’s how long my wife and I have had the privilege (and frustration, and exhaustion, and wonder, and anxiety, and joy, etc.) of experiencing Madeline in our lives. This kids who is somehow an athlete. This kid who is absolutely a nerd like her dad. This kid who still surprises us with her generosity, curiosity, and humor.

She starts 3rd grade next week. She’s genuinely excited about learning cursive and more multiplication, and any science she can get her mind on. Over this past year she’s weathered school at home away from friends. But she’s also grown smarter. She’s come a long way with both her gymnastics and swimming (front flips off the diving board!). She has turned into an absolute rollercoaster enthusiast. I think a lot of parents expect to be thrilled by the rapid, early childhood developmental milestones. But I don't think we talk enough about the ongoing joy of experiencing the ways our children continue to grow and mature. It’s really something.

Happy birthday, kiddo.

Today I realized it was over SEVEN years ago that my friend Phil introduced me to Project Binky (itself having started summer of 2013), the baffling and exciting car project from Bad Obsession Motorsport in the UK. This marked the first time I subscribed to a YouTube channel and, because the videos were nearly always longer than 20 minutes, also marked the first time I started treating YouTube videos like other screen entertainment. Ultimately, this series probably fits under the heading of "competence porn" wherein you watch highly skilled people perform highly skilled work that’s presented in an engaging format. Over the years my YouTube subs have certainly grown to include a whole lot of that.

At any rate, yesterday these two blokes from Bedford dropped episode 36 in which they fired up the engine for the first time. The series isn't over (I could see there being at least 2 or 3 episodes more), but I think we're nearing the finish line. It’s been a helluva thing to watch a project of this scope (the complete restoration and enhancement of an old Mini while at the same time retrofitting it with a fully restored and enhanced Toyota Celica drivetrain!!!) from the start up to this point.

I'm not even a "car person", for what it’s worth. So if you like watching skilled people do impressive stuff with some dry British humour laced throughout, give it a peek.

My kids go to Richmond public schools and, until this year, elementary students started latest in the region: 9:15 AM. This year that changes and the first bell moves up by 1.5 hours to 7:45. As you might expect this means a pretty big adjustment for the entire family who has worked around particular wake-up and departure times for a while.

In hopes of reducing the negative side effects of this change, today was the first day of family practice for the new schedule. Well, really last night was the first evening. The kids picked out today's clothes last night while Valerie and I got their backpacks in order (except for meals of course), and then we made sure to get to bed by 10 PM ourselves. Our kids will most likely get on the bus by 7:15 (or get in the car around 7:15 if the bus is a vector for COVID spread 😬), so my wife and I get up at 6 and focus on getting the kids ready first. Get 'em dressed, get 'em fed, and throw on whatever clothes we're okay with wearing out of the house because, honestly, we’ll have plenty of time to get ready for our days after we say good-bye to the kids.

And today worked pretty well, actually. My rising 3rd grader was slow to get up (she’s normally out of bed any time between 6:15 and 7 AM), but she gets dressed pretty quickly. The rising kindergartner was a snap, but I gave him direct supervision. Since the kids aren’t actually getting on the bus this morning, now they have a bunch of time to relax and watch cartoons before they start their days, and Valerie and I are ready to roll earlier than usual.

In the long term I don't know whether Valerie or Maddie will ever quite adjust to the earlier wakeup time, and my ongoing struggle will be to put down the dang phone at night and stop playing sudoku so I can go to sleep. I bet we run in to some bumps between now and September, but I can't imagine just switching to this new routine when the kids actually need to make it to the bus stop and get to school on time. I'm hoping this means we’ll have somewhat adjusted by day 1 so that we're less wiped out after a stressful first couple of weeks back to in-person school with COVID protocols and fear of the Delta variant grinding us down 😐

YouTubers, please. This editing style of machine gun jump cuts to clean up sentences or whole spoken passages makes my eyes dizzy. It’s a visual medium! Why ruin the visuals to fix your audio? Are you so fast in your video editing suite that this is more efficient than practicing and recording a few takes of each paragraph?

Sorry, no photos this time. Not much to photograph from the driver's seat all day :-P

If you’re one of the few people that regularly reads my blog, you know I haven't written consistently for years. I certainly never do this sort of day-by-day travel diary. I wanted to try something different for a couple of reasons:

1. I take a lot of photos of my travels and activities, but I don't usually record much more than that. As I get older and think about activities I share with my family, I want to remember more about it than a handful of my choicest visuals. This doesn't mean a thorough, super accurate recollection of every day; my details will be pre-filtered by my moods and sense of what's important at a given time. I just want more data, so to speak. I want to remember some more about what we did, how it felt, and the impact some choices had on a given day or the rest of the trip.
2. Speaking of those photos: I usually only post my best pictures online when I can help it. If it’s on Flickr, or gets its own post here on the blog, it’s because I’ve been super picky about my own work. Most of the pictures I shared these past few days are unremarkable (I do like a few quite a bit), but they do capture a lot of what I enjoyed in Tennessee. They may not be my best photographs, but I think they're pretty good vacation shots. And I still want to share those as detail and/or context for the perambulating words I write each day of the trip.

So today we packed everything back in the car and headed home. I feel like I’ve been driving all day for 5 days, and I'm actually looking forward to staying home for a while. Travel is great, but travel often reminds us how much we love home (super original and profound, to be sure). And I love home.

Happy to be back in Richmond, Virginia for a while, and looking forward to my Maine trip next month.

Sunday morning brought another slow start, but today was by design. With my sis-in-law and her family gone, only my mother-in-law remained with my family. She’s in no shape for hiking, so we took it easy. We only really got started once we left for lunch at the Greenbrier Picnic Area in the national park. After dodging way too many yellow jackets at the picnic tables, I walked the kids through the trees to the bank of the Little Pigeon River. This is where we found all the magic and wonder. Fluorescent orange fungi, a wide variety (and abundance!) of butterflies and dragonflies, and plentiful skipping stones covered the ground in every direction.

We even managed to catch a huge cluster of puddling swallowtail butterflies before we left!

After a detour through the arts and crafts community (and a terrific demonstration of paint marbling), we decided to take a chance on the long and winding Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. I say "take a chance" because, per the past couple entries, this whole region is BUSY, just chock-full-of-people. I’d heard it could take forever on this path because it’s one-way, and there's no way to turn back after you commit. But today was a Sunday, and with the exception of two particularly popular trailhead parking lots, the trail was terrific. Of course we stopped at a breathtaking view of the valley where Falls Branch runs (officially "Roaring Fork Interpretive Marker 3 Overlook" - really rolls off the tongue :-D ).

On our way out we stopped by the remains of the Ephraim Bales farm and explored the structures and surrounding land. The kids loved it, and I thought it was amazing to be able to walk around and inside this old Appalachian home.

It was a pretty chill day by the end of it, and the evening has been focused on unwinding and packing up most of our stuff for tomorrow's return trip. The primary motivation for this trip was getting together with family we haven't seen in over a year. The location was selected because my sis-in-law's family could camp and we could be close to "stuff to do". I don't think we’ll do Gatlinburg again any time soon, but we all got a lot out of this trip anyway. The family time was great, and while I felt like I spent the whole trip driving from one place to another, the views and natural splendor at the end of those drives were truly worth it.

Off to bed soon. LOADS more driving tomorrow, and right back to work on Tuesday...oof.

Today started off with rain. Thunderstorms moved in and around Gatlinburg until about lunch, so we took it easy at our rental house with the whole crew. My sister-and-law and her family hung out with us and we had sandwiches while the weather took its course. As everything tapered off to a trickle we decided to take a chance heading to some scenic views and gentle hikes. And wouldn't you know, the sun favored us when we needed it. The Chimney Tops picnic area and nearby Chimney Tops overlook were just gorgeous, with sun dappling the the northern slopes of the mountain itself.

We followed up the scenery with the shortest hike I’ve ever done, a mere 0.1 miles, to Cataract Falls. It was pretty nice, but nothing to write home about. I needed to fuel up the Honda after the waterfall, and Gatlinburg stood between me and every nearby gas station.

THE TRAFFIC in Gatlinburg is otherworldly slow. I don't understand how so many cars move through this otherwise rural, mountain tourist town. I think it took us 14 minutes to drive 1 mile? My sister-in-law suggested they just shut down the main drag to vehicle traffic and have folks drive on a bypass instead. Can't say I disagree.

With fresh fuel, we really just needed to head home and feed the kids. It was a simple day, but it was ultimately a pleasant one. And the back porch vista upon our return gave us layers of fog and clouds weaving between the distant trees and ridges.