Friendship Day

The Petting Zoo

Every year, our little town of Friendship hosts a summer celebration called, appropriately enough, Friendship Day. It's a day filled with events and fun for people of all ages. This year, after nearly a week of rain most every day, the morning fog burned off to reveal a beautiful sunny day in the mid 70's.

The events planned are similar to other town's ideas of celebration. For example, there is a softball game for all comers, regardless of age or sex. There's plenty of food for all. There's a parade.

We started off our Friendship Day with a blueberry pancake breakfast at one of the (two) churches in town. Yummy! We got to meet other "summer residents" who came in from Northern Vermont and Eastern Massachusetts.

The difference between our festival and other towns are, in some cases, quite dramatic. For example, we were used to petting zoos filled with sheep and baby pigs in the midwest when we lived in Minnesota. In Friendship, the petting zoo includes lobsters, crabs, and fish. And just like the kids in Minnesota pet a sheep, the kids here had fun petting a flounder. Really!

Making lobster rolls at the fire department

And while some of the food is the same, the fire department gets lobsters donated, and they make the most yummy lobster rolls.

The parade is miniscule, compared to most that I've been to. But this year the theme of the parade was the Fire Department (all volunteer, of course). So the neighboring towns from all around us sent over their fire engines to join in our parade. I hope there were no fires in Cushing or Warren! We also had lots of antique cars show up.

The artists and artisans bring their wares, and sell them in booths in downtown. Wool is just as valuable here as in Minnesota, and wool crafted items are on sale. Other big sellers are Adirondack chairs, photos of blueberries, and fudge.

The softball game

The softball game is held near the grounds of the schoolhouse. Because of all the rain, the field was pretty muddy, and grounders which should have been short hops turned into short plops. But everybody was having fun, and I heard the familiar "Oh, I'm gonna feel this tomorrow" from the lobster fishermen who generally use their muscles to lift traps, not run bases. I left early in the game, I could tell it was going to get ugly.... muddy, dirty, and ugly.

Out on the water, races are held for both sailboats (The Chowder Cup) and lobster boats. It used to be that the biggest, baddest, fastest lobster boat would make the most money. They could set more traps, get around to them quicker, and place them farther from land. But the economics of lobstering have shifted dramatically in the past couple of years. Economy offers the premium these days. Cruising to your traps at 18 knots is far more fuel efficient than cruising to them at 30 knots. And some fishermen are staying out overnight to save fuel, and reach those far away places. So the fast boat is falling out of favor, and the races are becoming a reminiscense of the good old days, not a measure of the best. Fastest, maybe, but not the best.

Bill Michaud trying to auction off a sex book

Finally, our day uptown ends with the ersatz auction, moderated by our wonderful ersatz auctioneer, Bill Michaud. Like most ambitious people in Friendship, Bill wears numerous professional hats. He and his wife run "The Outsider's Inn", one of the (only) two B&Bs in Friendship. He also rents and guides kayak trips in the harbor and bays. And he also sells real estate.

But he seems to have the most fun being an auctioneer for a day, making jokes and enticing bidders to raise their bids by a dollar or two. All for a good cause, as the proceeds from the auction pay the annual fees for our ambulance service, and have for many years.

There's other things to do, like visiting the Friendship Museum, looking at the items to be included in the bicentennial time capsule at the town hall, and several attractions for the little kiddies. And after it gets dark, they promise to set off fireworks. What a fun day!

Doing the Maine Thing

The first midsummer visitors

The first wave of midsummer visitors arrived here last week, so the work we were doing on the house got wrapped up and we stowed our tools for a while.

The first hearty souls were Consuelo's old friends from Up With People, Cheri Cross and Deb Bruce who live in Northampton, Mass. They stayed two nights with us, we had cooperative weather, so we took our pontoon for its maiden voyage to Rockland Harbor to watch the Friendship Sloop races. It was a beautiful day and we had lots of fun out on the water. I took scores of pictures of the sailboats challenging each other in light breezes. After that, we found a wonderful seaside lobster joint in Owl's Head and they treated us to lobster. And after that, we went to the movies to see Mamma Mia, a bunch of fun movie.

Friedship sloop racing

As they left on Saturday, my son Paul and his family, with one cousin from NC in tow, arrived for an overnight. We took the pontoon out in Friendship and cruised over to Cow Island to see if we could find seals, and we did. They took us out to lunch at Moody's, and while we were there, my brother and his wife arrived from Brookfield, Mass. They fed us well on Sunday night, the most delicious steaks. We took the boat back to Rockland for another harbor cruise, and on Tuesday, we bought a bunch of lobsters here in Friendship and had a feast with all the fixins.

Wild blueberries

When they left on Wednesday, I took a walk with my camera back into the Maine woods, and found a place where I could pick blueberries. We had those this morning on cereal. Another treat!

And we're doin' the Maine thing, ayuh!

Bad, bad Garmin!

I generally try to give a company the benefit of the doubt when there's a problem. However, my patience has been overstretched with Garmin in the past 60 days, and I feel it necessary to make a public statement of my disapproval.

Last summer, I bought a Garmin 420S combo GPS/depthfinder. We boat in the waters off Friendship, which is littered with islands and several rivers feed Muscongus Bay, making visual navigation tricky. For safety reasons, the having the GPS and a depthfinder made good sense. I used it on my Bass Tracker several times and am satisfied with the device.

This spring, I needed to move the device from the Bass Tracker to our 20' Pontoon. I got the transducer moved, set up the wiring, and went to mount the GPS when I found that the mounting bracket had corroded to the point of unusability. The long, thin screw was frozen to the nut inserted on the plastic bracket. WD40 did not help, and eventually the plastic gave out so the nut spun freely. This should not happen to a marine part.

So I set out to get a new bracket. I found Garmin's online web site, placed an order (I thought) for th part, and waited two weeks. No part. Then we went off to Indiana to help with the floods. while there, I sent an email to Garmin support, and they indicated that they had no record of my order. Hmmmm.

The email also said to call the phone order line. I tried that from Indiana, but we were working 12 hour days, and they were closed at anytime I could call.

I tried to place the order again. No luck. Both of our credit cards were rejected without explanation.

When we stopped in Ipswich for a couple days, I checked into a marine store, which had a healthy stock of Garmin stuff, but no parts. The dealer implied that Garmin parts are only available from Garmin.

When we got home, I tried the phone again. I encountered a 35 minute wait time, and while waiting, I thought about the online order problem. I realized that when Garmin was aking for my shipping and billing addresses online, they really wanted the zip code for my credit card. Though they never said than, nor did the indicate what the problem was with the card. I re-entered the order online using our Texas address for billing address, and the order went through.

The online system said the part would ship in 4-7 days, and that they would send me an email when it shipped. 10 days later, I sent another email, asking about my order, with the number. 2 days later, I got a reply indicating that my part was on backorder, with no prognosis as to when it would ship.

Needless to say, I'm upset. We're now nearly 60 days from when this started, with no end in sight. If you have to ask me, don't buy Garmin. Their quality is doubtful, and their support is near zero.

Back to Maine

Fly in the Ferns

We got back home from Indianapolis on Saturday, July 5th. We stopped in Ipswich for a couple nights to celebrate Liam's and the nation's birthdays (though not in that order). Paul and I got out to fish a couple times. You can measure our results by noting all the pictures of fish on this page.

The Red Cross was pretty well transitioned by the time we left. We had shrunk to about 90 volunteers from a high of about 500, and a total of over 1000. We stayed a few extra days to finish up operations in staffing, leaving just 2 people to move everything back to the Indy chapter.

We both now find traveling by air to be an effort. Perhaps we're spoiled by having everything with us when we travel in our motorhome. Our air travel was not unusual, though were on standby on an overbooked flight from Philly to Portland until the no-shows were counted.

Flashy mushroom

I was glad to get my good camera back into my hands upon returning home. I took a long walk in the woods behind our house and snapped the photos here. It's a challenge to find interesting subjects in the Maine woods at this time of year. The ones here were trying very hard to be subtle and not be noticed, except for the yellow mushroom that was standing tall and bold in the middle of the trail in the woods.

We took a day of recovery on Sunday, and will get back to work scraping wallpaper and otherwise getting the house together for company coming on July 16th. We will have to make up for the time we spent in Indianapolis, but it is a labor of love.

Four corner Flower

Thumper stayed in a kennel for a week at the beginning of our trip, after which Paul rescued her and brought her home. She was very glad to see us, and even more glad to get back to the house in Maine, where she can wander through the fields.