Lobsters' Short Lives

The part of Maine with everything except palm trees.

In New England

New York:- Monday, 4. August 2003:- Linda Thalman wrote this morning - early this afternoon in Paris time, when I read it - to say it will be 40 degrees in Bordeaux today. She said, "Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle." She didn't say what the humidity will be because it dosen't exist in Europe.

On this side of the Atlantic inflated temperatures are common on account of the 212 equals 100 thermometres. Without it seeming to be hot yesterday it was 86 in Brooklyn - but with a humidity level yo-yoing somewhere between 85 and 95 percent. Being a sensible person, I passed out for the whole afternoon.

Then I walked the usual 'few blocks' from Kings Highway to the Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst to see a local pizza spa with terrace in action. It was a fine experience, and the 'few blocks' walkback to the 'U' line subway didn't raise too much sweat.

New York's subway wagons are air conditioned. They are freezing cold. The 'U' train trundled around Brooklyn for a half hour before giving up at one of New York's several 59th Streets, one still in Brooklyn. This then required a change to the 'Q' line. Luckily the wait on the superheated underground platform was less than the eternity it seemed to be.

Today's weather has been interesting. Fresh, but stinking and hot, asphalt was laid on the street outside and I got away from it by walking the usual 'few blocks' to my favorite Cuban sandwich place. In the midst of my well-earned 'café grande' a monsoon swept across New York, even turning the street underneath the elevated subway into a raging torrent.

Luckily Paris' late July weather prepared me for most of this, except for the extreme contrast in climates between subway platforms and subway wagons. New Yorkers are more worried about which subways are running where and when, but this doesn't seem to have caused me many problems so far. Nearly everything is only a 'few blocks' away.

Café Life

I finished off the club report on Friday, 25. July about 02:00 and got up about 05:00 to go to Roissy to fly to New York, where I landed about 10:30 on the same Friday morning. It was a normal, almost routine, 36-hour trans-Atlantic day.

Early the next morning I was at another airport with my lawyer who rented a Buick from some nice Avis guys and we drove most of the day north on autoroutes ridden by hatless motorcylistas and surrounded by trees, until arriving in Gloucester, Massachusettes, where we found a diner - the Catfish Inn! - that gave us food for a price and let us use a washroom to change into go-to-wedding duds for free.

The wedding was a small affair for one couple and about 80 onlookers, facing the Atlantic Ocean and, I guess, Portugal. Lobster was served and I chanced to sit beside the only other guest who chose not to get ikky fingers. After the gala meal, a discoman from Beantown charmed all with many wrong pieces of music, all played at very high volume.

Before the evening had worn itself out, we followed other guests even further north to Portsmouth, in the lovely state of New Hampshire - motto - a free lobster in every pot. This motto only applies to its coastal areas - the rest of the state calls for free bears in every pot.

After visiting the site of another, earlier, wedding at an adandoned fort by the seaside - also opposite Portugal - we crossed an antique bridge into the state of Maine. This state is well-known for its 'moose in every pot' motto. For most of a day we hardly ventured further, other than to see a classic '38 Buick parked on a lawn behind a church, and to swim in a salt-water pool with a 'black hole' in it.

How it happened that I was the only one to brave this 'black hole' I have not figured out. I have never done anything like it before. Having done it, I will never do it again. I do 'learn' from experience!

If any readers are planning on visiting these parts I feel it worthwhile to warn you here that mosquito country starts just north of the Bronx, and there seems to be no anti-bug machines that are familiar to Europeans. If you get as far north as southern Maine, these flying brutes are truly vicious and give no quarter.

Following an overnight return to Portsmouth, we - my lawyer is a road addict - we plunged even further north into Maine, with the fabled Maine Diner as a goal. After having my first grilled cheese sandwich in over 30 years - verdict, I should have waited 40 years - and observing that the average native in residence or transit, of any age and sex, universally wear baggy short pants and baseball caps, I received a phone call.

By chance my lawyer had a phone, and I removed myself to the rear of the Maine Diner to be able to hear what it had to say. Aha! The caller was none other than Metropole reader and Café Metropole Club member Dana Shaw, just co-incidently calling from nearby. No. not true. Returning a call, but one we wouldn't have heard if I'd still been eating a so-so grilled cheese sandwich in the Maine Diner.

The route directions to cover less than 2.78 miles were slightly less complicated than MTA's subway map of Brooklyn, with the main item to emember being, 'don't try the speed-bumps at high speed.' On the way back we forgot the first one, so I can vouch for this advice.