Thursday, July 12, 2012

Tales from the road.

  1. While in Maine getting gas in the car, I saw a sign in the attached Circle K that all sized fountain drinks were 69 cents. There was only one size cup though.
  2. When I told my kids, D1 commented "Circle K is a real place? I thought it was some sort of historical place from Bill and Ted. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K." I had to bring them there to prove it existed.
  3. I am still a bigger fan of 7Eleven.
  4. I found a 7Eleven in Maine! Brunswick in case you were wondering where.
  5. There is very little air conditioning in Block Island. Most of the time this isn't an issue due to the sea breezes but our hotel had a rooster who announced his presence starting at 5:45AM. I was unable to shoot that damn bird.
  6. My wife a reservation at a Comfort Suites in Freeport, Maine. When we checked in they told us we weren't allowed to smoke in the room nor have any pets and we had to signed that we understood these rules. I got the bikes and the front desk clerk said they didn't let bicycles in the room but don't worry they had a space behind the hotel for the bikes to be stored. I explained that these were $10K of bikes and that wasn't going to happen. She said we couldn't have our money back since the room was pre-paid. She saw my New Yorker this is going to get ugly face starting and changed her tune by crediting our card back. We went next door to the Super8 hotel and saved $50 for the night with no bike issue. Bad job Comfort Suites.
  7. The next night we checked into a Comfort Inn in Augusta without a bike issue.
  8. I found these places to "run." First, the Kennebec River Rail trail:
  9. Then I found this sign along the Androscoggin River:


  10. This path had a little outhouse:

  11. Before we left I couldn't get my camera to work (I took these pix with my phone). When we came back my wife found the receipt and we were less than 1 week before the warranty expired. She took it to Olympus and they said that "someone took" out the battery and put it back wrong. IT WASN'T ME. They put it in right and everything worked again. Isn't technology wonderful?

6 comments:

Kate Geisen said...

No bikes in the room? WTF? I guess too many road bikes have stunk up the rooms and ruined it for the rest of us who've housebroken our bikes.

There are some Circle K's around here. Don't see 7-11 except inthe STL area...but QuikTrip (not to be confused with KwikTrip, which is vastly inferior) is by far my favorite gas station/convenience store.

TriMOEngr said...

My husband and I loved southeast Maine (drove through many of the towns you mentioned here). But we weren't traveling with bikes so maybe that is why we had it so easy. Pretty bad when the bikes are worth more than my car. Hmm...

LOL about the Bill and Ted comment. We don't have 7-11's around here. Mostly a chain run by MFA called Breaktime. All of their fountain drinks are a $1 this summer - and you can get 20, 32 or 44 oz for that. LOL And if you get the punch card, every 7th soda is free.

Technology is great. Glad it was only a minor user error.

Unknown said...

Ooh... the bike issue would have also had tested my patience. I am glad that it worked out for you. I like that bike and run friendly area. I wish we had something like that here in Honolulu.

Unknown said...

I like how the angry New Yorker face gets things done in ME. I've gone running on that rail-trail in Augusta with my mom; it's so nice and wholesome and clean, ha ha! We're headed out there at the end of the summer. I'll keep an eye out for Circle K.

Carolina John said...

Battery problems can be hard for the technologically challenged to diagnose. I get that. But dumbass undocumented hotel bike policies are just unacceptable.

Ransick said...

That sucks about the bikes.

The battery story reminds me of a story from college. My roommate, who was also studying engineering, bought new batteries for his calculator. When he got them out of the package he said "crap, I bought three positive batteries" :-)