Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

We conked out around 7 on Sunday night so Monday started as the best of both worlds: early and well-rested. It promised to be a scorcher, so we hastened through some much-needed cleaning before the sun warmed things up too much. Our apartment gets a ton of sun and thus very hot; hopefully in another few years, if we're somewhere similar, I'll be over myself enough to just get the damn AC unit. Soon, we headed down to the water, hoping for some breeze.

I commute over the Little Bay Bridge and watched with interest through the early spring as the bridge it replaced, the General Sullivan, was worked on through the winter and early spring. Cranes shifted by the every few days and spindly new paths grew towards landfall in Newington and Dover.

Why? The work actually had nothing to do with non-motorized traffic - which was temporarily left without a link between Newington and Dover -and everything to do with the Little Bay Bridge Expansion. Believe it or not, there's room to fit a new four-lane span between the two current bridges. Construction of the center span requires the space used by the former General Sullivan approaches, so new approaches needed to be built off to the side. The center span construction will last well into 2013 and promises to be interesting.

Already, machinery is starting to be put in place to build the new span. The Hilton Drive underpass of the Little Bay Bridge, connecting the two sides of Dover Point and Hilton Park, will probably remain closed for a couple of years.

The roadway on the bridge is vaguely reminiscent of The Road, but that world was never this sunny. I have a memory of driving across the bridge, but it closed in 1984 so it's a false recollection.

Great Bay was full of boaters; a few struggled with the stronger-than-ever tides but most powered through with incident, some with a little help from a larger friend.

There were a mildly unnerving pair of signs on the Newington side, even though the section wasn't close to capacity.

There was a nice breeze on the bridge, and it was fun to watch the cars and boats, so we hung out until it was time for Alicia to go to work. On the way out, I noticed an old sign - a relic of the days when the Spaulding Turnpike was at times un-numbered and NH-16 was the local alternative (today's Dover Point Rd, for instance) between Newington and Rochester. I noticed on my way home from work today that there is at least one similar sign east of the highway in Newington, but there must not be many more.

I can't find a date for when the numbering switched, but I think it was sometime in the early 1990s. There was a ripple effect: NH-125 was extended northwards from Rochester to northern Milton to replace the old 16, NH-108 was extended from its intersection with Dover Point Rd through Dover and Somersworth, all the way to Rt 125 in Rochester. Dover Point Rd lost its state highway designation, and Old Rochester Rd ceased to be NH-16B. I think Rt. 33 was modified as well.

Today, the NH-16 vs. Spaulding Turnpike lives on for one brief stretch: ramps to / from I-95. This is visible both north- and southbound, but is most obvious southbound, where Rt. 16 is signed as leading to the traffic circle and the Spaulding takes you to the interstate. My guess is that this is to establish unique names for 911 caller location.

After Alicia left, I spent some more time in the relative cool of the park, picked up CSA veggies, and eventually joined the crowd at Henry Law Park for the Dover Independence Day celebration. The band, Locksley, played pretty good pop songs with nice vocal harmonies but seemed to struggle to find energy; the crowd was understandably more there to have fun with family & friends than for the show. A medley of "Last Night" and "American Girl" stood out for being a cool and unique similar-songs connection. I got a good start on a promising book before it got too dark to read and fireworks from all around served as taps for the holiday weekend.

Underwater

On Sunday, I woke up around 6:00 but shut my eyes for a catnap. When I opened them again, it was 8:41. Oops. Better today than a work day, I grumbled to myself and tried to shake off a disturbing dream. A shower later, I struggled to set a "we might only have time for one peak" expectation without turning terse and abrupt. Although Alicia's robust enthusiasm helped get me out of my own head a bit, the gray clouds overhead were still a decent match for my mood as we got underway.

The route matched the prior day's to West Ossipee, where we turned west onto NH-25, then north onto NH-113. This is an area with both windy old routes and modern state highway designations that jump from road to road; a sign points you to the left or right to stay on the state road while a local road continues straight ahead. With Waterville Valley and Sandwich Notch restricting access on the north and west, and highways 16 and 25 bounding things on the south and east, the state highways in the Tamworth / Sandwich area (113 and 113A - particularly the latter) have to curve all over the place to get anywhere at all. If you lose the thread (easy to do), you pretty much need local knowledge or a compass to find your way back.

Our route to the trailhead is marked and was easier than expected. Turning onto NH-113A, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that we were on the Chinook Trail. The picture of the dog was indeed on the road sign. A very cool image, and it solves the mystery of the existence of the now-closed Chinook Cafe (which featured an image of the same dog on its sign) in Conway village.

One of the great things about the White Mountain region - and rural life in general - is the sort of local heroes that always seem to emerge. Real renaissance men and women, usually with feats of physical strength or endurance that set them apart from similarly notable city folk. Arthur Walden, husky trainer (Chinook was his best dog, a real legend) and his wife Katherine Sleeper Walden were two such individuals. Today, they are remembered in the best ways one can be in this region - with trails (the Walden Trail up Mt. Passaconway, the Sleeper Trail) and mountains (East and West Sleeper) named for them.

I suppose most rural heroes probably lacked some of the people skills that helped Really Famous People become so well-known; I guess I value such skills less than the self-motivation required to do so much for the public good in relative obscurity.

The sky had started to spit as we arrived at the trailhead, so we bagged Mt. Whiteface and its open ledges in favor of the more wooded Mt. Passaconaway. It'd be about a 9-mile round trip with a little under 3,000 feet of elevation gain - a nice moderate day.

The Dicey's Mill trail is mostly flat for its first couple of miles, doing little to prove that today's housing / forest line is naturally mandated. Indeed, a river crossing about two miles in is near the site of a 19th-century sawmill (no visible remnants). Across the river, the path steepens but remains straight with a near-constant grade; the usual marks of a logging road. Probably the whole mountain, or close to it, could have been logged without too much trouble.

High and low clouds combined for a dreary day, but we maintained a good pace and got into the physical side of the hike. Eventually, we climbed to some interesting between-the-clouds views, although you can barely tell from this photo.

There are usually a few steep, wet rocks on even the kindest trails, but we passed without incident. A moose or two had made it as well.

Soon, we reached a SW outlook - the best view of the day.

After tagging the viewless summit and a lunch break, we started down. The rain, which had mostly held off, intensified before long. It was a loud, but not all that wet trip down; the thick canopy kept most of the rain off. Along with the ol' "raincoat over the backpack" trick, my stuff stayed pretty dry, helping the trip squeak out "rainy adventure" over "big bummer".

Alicia really found her stride on the descent and we were quickly back at the car. It wasn't the right day for the Sandwich Creamery, but we'll be back - and delicious nachos featuring leftover chicken from Friday and 12 (!!) hours of sleep were worthy post-hike indulgences.

The next morning, I got a huge kick out of the current issue of the Wonalancet Out Door Club (WODC - the area's trail-maintenance organization) newsletter. Part of the joy of reading about rural heroes is that those who write about them tend to share common stylistic preferences - dutiful research, understated prose, occasional rambling, and a fiendishly clever word here and there. Like a small town, it appears languid until proper attention is paid. Then it becomes quaintly fascinating, with interest leaping and bounding past what's merited. Finally, it levels off; where it does so depends on the reader, and may as well be a mark of his or her urban vs. rural preferences.

Or, the last may remain unclear. A favorite passage: (the author is uncredited, but may be editor Susan Goldhor; the subject is Dave Bowles)

"And here we’d like to insert a little digression into snowmobilers and hikers/skiers. Dave has been an avid snowmobiler (as well as hiker and skier) for a long time, and many hikers and skiers have a knee jerk negative response to snowmobilers. But there are snowmobilers and snowmobilers, and Dave is clear in his response to the overpowered speeders we see too often today; some of whom he’s had to rescue after they misjudged a curve or sped into trees. For a long time, Dave’s machine of choice was a Motor-Ski Zephyr (now regarded as a vintage classic); a motor perched on skis, and a body pretty much amounting to a front fender with headlights, that he took everywhere at a average speed of ten to fifteen miles per hour. He speaks fondly of going up to the ridge between Paugus and Chocorua with a few other snowmobilers, and just sitting there and enjoying the view. It was the old way to snowmobile -- on little machines, going slow, brushing out the trail, building bridges where needed, and enjoying the woods and the view."

The Honda was up to about 500 miles for Friday - Sunday; staying close to home on the 4th was indicated.

The Enemy Within

On Saturday, I drove to Bartlett to help Meredith (my step-sister) and her husband Colin move into their new digs.

I'm a big believer in making hay while the sun shines, but I wilt on hot summer days. So, I love getting an early start and enjoying some quality hours before the humidity sets in; this day was no exception. One drawback to going from South Berwick to Dover is the loss of options for heading north. Rather than being able to willfully spurn the highway by taking Rochester / Salmon Falls Rd (boy, do I wish I had a picture of the old 'Rochetser' Rd sign), any route but due north on the Spaulding looks pretty silly. Well, I guess it's nice to not suffer the embarrassment of taking yet another wrong turn in downtown Berwick.

Admitted, highway speeds on a gorgeous day with the windows down aren't anything to complain about anyway. The house is across the Saco River and up the side of Cave Mountain from the main drag. It was neat to see actual residences in the town (there is very little housing, or anything else for that matter, on 302). Dad speculated that the older houses near the river were formerly for railroad employees; the line is very close the river near the center of town. These days, the Conway Scenic Railroad runs a tourist train up to Crawford Notch a few times a week. In its heyday, though, it was part of the Portland to Ogdensburg Line. There is a video about getting the line through Crawford Notch (requiring several great feats of engineering) at the Portsmouth library that looks totally awesome. Shockingly, the line was never built to Ogdensburg as chartered, perhaps because of an exchange like this:

Railroad middle management: "Hey, the knowledge that our industry is badly overbuilt is hitting us like a speeding locomotive.

Railroad upper management: "Tee-hee."

RMM: "So, do we still have funding for the line from Lake Champlain to Ogdensburg?"

RUM: "Sure, sure. Just one question."

RMM: "Shoot."

RUM: "Where's Ogdensburg?"

RMM: "Not sure. Oh, I see what you did there."

Later...

RMM: "So, looks like the plans to extend our Portland - Vermont train to Ogdensburg have been derailed."

Railroad lower management: [Guffaw].

RMM: "Can it. Anyway, inform the men."

RLM: "Actually, customers have been transferring themselves to the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain for years - that is, the few of them who actually want to go to Ogdensburg. Say, where is that place, anyway?"

The world survived without one more line towards Ottawa.

Back in the present, the list of work to be done on the just-four-years-old house shook, but did not topple, my excitement about eventual home ownership. The work was quicker than expected, I got a good sweat in, and soon we were enjoying delicious pizza flatbreads with a mountain view.

Sunday's plans were cancelled due to lack of lumber, so I moseyed on south in the late afternoon. I started out with Bear Notch Rd - seasonally closed, but well-paved and suitable for driving fast. It was especially sweet with the deciduous trees forming a gorgeous green canopy and since I hadn't been on it since finding moose with ABenn almost five years ago.

I was sandwiched between two groups of motorcyclists and quickly noticed the first ones following a pattern; whenever they passed other riders, they'd take their left hands off the handlebars and stick them out, slightly angled downwards. The riders coming the other way would usually do the same. It made me feel great! I'd love to have unconditional waves coming my way. I actually got my motorcycle permit a few years ago and rode a bit on Jim's scooter, but I can't see "buy a motorcycle" leapfrogging "save for a house" anytime soon.

A bit of googling turns up many sites with similar explanations of this phenomenon (a sign of community, though with some variations to mark one's place in the herd); I have to link with the one with a Rush lyric in its title.

The change of plans allowed me to stop by a party at Jim's back home in Wells and, just as importantly, to take the back way to Milton Mills (in reverse).

That's not nearly enough granularity - in sections:

The last stretch into downtown NB (and whatever is chosen to get back to Wells) is omitted; you get the idea.

Historically, we only went this way on hike days or (rarely) other White Mountain trips. This mean that I was usually peacefully half-awake and headed for an awesome day. What wasn't to love? After learning to drive myself, I continued to use it for hike trips or sometimes when heading to Ann's (now also my Dad's) house, but much less since moving away from Wells.

Here are some of the reasons I love this route:

1) It's remarkably direct

Apart from the jog over to the highway, the route is nearly as straight as an arrow. You're on Lebanon Rd, then Milton Mills Rd. They just feel like the roads you are meant to take.

2) It's fast

Most of Lebanon and Little River Rds through North Berwick are 45 mph. That's as good as it gets for a non-state-highway in Maine.

3) Five Corners

Coming from North Berwick, the route gets off to a great start with a five-way intersection with Old Sanford Rd (there signed as Governor Goodwin Rd) and the 5th wheel, Turkey St.

4) Make Way for Ducklings

Once, Emily and I had to stop while a mother duck and her flock strode primly across Little River Rd.

5) Bailout Route

In 2005, the first time I got confused by the worst signage ever coming into downtown Berwick on Rochester Rd (you're basically told to turn left on Pine Hill Rd to get to Wells), I kept going the wrong way all the way to Little River Rd before this route got me home safely. My mistake for not turning around far sooner, but it was sure was good to see a familiar sign.

6) The deer

When I was young, we always looked for the deer who lived in a pen in the front yard of a house in Acton at the bottom of the hill. Ironically, a child growing up at that house at that time later became one of the Acton kids at Wells High and eventually one of my best friends.

7) Lebanon speed trap

The area around the Bakers Grant Rd intersection in Lebanon is marked as 25 mph. Strong stuff given that there's almost nothing (one restaurant) in the area and Lebanon didn't even have its own police force for a while. Still, I always slow down, just in case....

As an aside, in 2007 I discovered the Emery Mills Rd back way to a different part of Acton. This takes you across Bakers Grant Rd a bit to the east. I was excited to avoid a 25-mph section....zounds, there's one out here, too!

8) Foxes Ridge

Tbe long hill in the Acton section of the road offers a test for your engine, great views into the foothills (a portent of what's to come), and an awesome name for a road. What's not to love?

9) Milton Mills

This tiny village is incredibly quaint (and probably very poor) as the namesake mills (and shoe factories) are long gone. Still, the library building is nice and the village is a distinctive landmark on the route.

10) The cemeteries

I hadn't really noticed these until this Saturday, but boy there are a ton of tiny cemeteries on this route. Somewhere in the 10-15 range. I'm sure there's tons to be learned about who used to live in the area; probably many of their descendants are still nearby today. They also reaffirm the route's status as the "main line" between its two endpoints.

That's a nice round number, so we won't bother getting into the scattered businesses on Little River Rd, how you bust out of the wilderness onto Rt. 16, and how the route provided me with the coolest way to Mayocraze 2004.

Once in Wells, I made a quick detour over to Perry Oliver Rd to verify the location of the CMP / gas line right-of-way; it was where it was supposed to be.

Jim made steaks (what a food day it was) and then a huge bonfire (helped by copious pre-pouring of gasoline), I survived baggo with the cool kids, and made it home to Dover before Alicia arrived with reports of huge crowds in Portsmouth. A great holiday weekend day.

Announcement

Since today I got to drive among the many very green trees on Bear Notch Rd in Barlett (more on that later) and talk about the Yellowstone-->Salt Lake City drive last fall where I played it incessantly, it seems like a good time to declare Neil Young's "Big Green Country" to be the official song of this blog.

I don't love this live version but I can't find the studio one anywhere online.

In Through the Out Door

On Friday, we got a solid B at navigating Massachusetts State Highway 60 en route to Arlington, MA.

More importantly, the lovely Alicia was linked to on noted craft blog One Pretty Thing. If you're a craft blogger, take the survey!

Whichever weekend is closest to July 4th has long been the unofficial start to "summer" - tourist season, really - on the Seacoast. Still, I was shocked to see cars backed up from Portsmouth more or less down to the Mass. state line. The next barrier northbound is the Maine Turnpike barrier toll that must be 7-8 miles into Maine and God forbid...well, maybe there was an accident. It was kind of amusing to see cars stopped in the high-speed toll lanes in Hampton; I believe the cool kids would call it a "fail".

I-93 in the Medford ("Meffa") area is under ongoing construction this summer. It's already steered me towards the dreaded Route 1 Sonic-->Kappy's stretch once and could have forced us to go all the way around to Route 2. Admittedly, this is the way I'd always gone before after receiving a dire warning about the local roads between Medford and Arlington being hard to follow. But, it's a new summer and I'm freaking trip-blocking these days, for heaven's sake, so the more direct route was indicated.

Note that the marked stretch of Route 60 has several jogs. More on those later.

All was well - great, even - up to exiting Route 93. Not even a backup or tense moment at the weave lane. The northbound traffic wasn't even that bad - I suspect that some folks have made a habit of avoiding the road this summer to the benefit of schedule-checkers.

Our destination in Arlington was only 3.7 miles from the highway on MA-60, but the road manages to pack in four messy intersections and three rotaries into that space. Now, I've always heard that there are a zillion rotaries in Massachusetts and have certainly come across quite a few, particularly on the Cape and en route to the airport. But this was something else entirely - particularly the back-back rotaries on both sides of the Mystic River.

Also, note that both cross-streets are labeled as the Mystic Valley Parkway. Yeah, that's not confusing at all.

We actually made it through those without incident since our rote was fairly straightforward. It was back in Medford at Winthrop Square where we got off-track.

Odd angles and a random extra street...bad news. Not surprisingly, we ended up on 38 but found our way back to 60 on side streets with the help of Delorme's wide definition of what belongs in a Boston city zoom-in map.

After arrival, we had a wonderful night at Meredith's house with her and Chris. We were all friends together throughout college, but I've talked to each one about the other quite a bit over the years, so to see them both together was especially nice. Not to mention that they are both great, great people who I wish I saw far more often. We (those two plus Alicia, mostly) made a delicious dinner spread, drank delicious gin + lemonades, and enjoyed a very very awesome half-hour on Spy Pond in borrowed canoes.

We drove Chris home to Allston on a route that was as much if not more dizzying than the route to Arlington, but I was taking directions rather than really driving and one dissection of rotary minutia per post is enough. I did take pleasure from Chris enjoying a couple of selections from the mix CD I've been overplaying recently.

Later, as I conveniently took the opportunity let the CD continue playing, Alicia (who's had to hear it a few times, now) declared that it did have a theme, and that the theme was "overwrought male voices". I countered by saying the voices were "just wrought enough".

Overwrought or just wrought enough? You make the call. By the way, the real theme is "rock songs I've always loved but have never heard very often...plus a few extra songs to fill out the CD."

It was a beautiful night for Storrow Drive, and although northbound traffic on US-1 was pretty heavy for almost-midnight, it wasn't anything serious. What a great Friday!

A Sunday Drive

Saturday's shenanigans up in Lincoln suggested sleeping in, but Alicia had to get up for work so I ended up with a reasonably early start. Seal was still cranked pretty far up when I started the engine so I took the opportunity to blast the practically perfect pop song en route to the gym; we were off to a good start. 100 free throws and some upper-body lifts later, the sun had come out and I had my sights set on the beach.

I cut across Somersworth noting the great road names (Cecile St, Rita St, the ridiculous Congress St / Alicia St 4-way) and wondering how Indigo Hill got its name and why Old Indigo Hill Rd is so far south of the current model. Cruised past the recently-visited Somersworth Riverwalk (a few pretty spots, but short) and the wastewater treatment plant and into Maine. I had a hair to try traversing Love Brook Rd from its NW end, with the four-sign intersection at its endpoint and the ridiculous Berwick Rd / Town Rd setup as additional attractions, but worried about mud. Not remembering which side of New Dam Road all of this was on, I left things to fate by turning right and was in downtown South Berwick before I knew it.

Well, it had two years since my last visit to Dennett Rd, I was curious to see what (if any) memorial was up for Camden Hughes, and it seemed like enough time had passed since the tragedy. Scooting up Rt 4, I was thrilled to see a new sign for a business with Lovers Brook in its name, although I didn't catch the full sign text. In my view, if you've got a chance to connect to a name like that, you gotta take it, although Alicia believes the name to actually be rather mundane.

(As an aside, the name of the brook and the dirt road that crosses it seem to be out of sync; I suspect that the -rs ending is correct. Google Maps is off-base and lame with "Old Blackberry Hill Rd".) The brook isn't very impressive as it crosses under the railroad tracks and Route 4, but it gets a bit more formidable before flowing into the Great Works.

Anyway, Dennett Rd came soon. It has an awkward reverse-curve (or something) relationship with Route 4. Dad has told me that it's probably part of a former alignment of Route 4 that was replaced with a smoother-curving version. My Delorme Atlas shows the other half of the old alignment as a road as well, and a North Berwick tax map actually gives it a name - Allen Rd.

Note that the unlabeled portion of the loop is the beginning of Dennett Rd. You can see a hint of the power line / gas line Right of Way - yes, the same one as three posts ago - and I left my car there in front of these signs.

I took it as evidence that this area was also seeing an unusual amount of activity in conjunction with the Power Reliability Program.

First, I walked up the pipeline / power line right of way in search of indications that a train (the PS&P) once ran through there. There was passage over a nearby brook (later confirmed to be Hussey Brook) but it was too huge and grass-grown to be called a bridge - maybe the brook ran through a culvert?

There were a fairly long row of stones like this one in a row on one side. I don't know what they were for. To define the edge of a bridge, maybe - there was a marginal drop-off behind them but I didn't sense that they were on an edge. Fearing ticks (I forgot to bring anything but my gym shorts and swimsuit), I didn't venture far into the tall grass of the ROW.

Back at the car, I exchanged expressionless glances with a guy on a scooter and looked for signs of the other half of the old alignment. There wasn't much resembling a road, but a short, narrow path led to this.

That's today's Route 4 in the background of the second picture.

In my unprofessional opinion, the pile of wreckage didn't seem like it could have once been a bridge on the main drag, the Portland Road. But, I don't have any ideas on what else it could have been. Interesting, the Google Maps Satellite view shows something that looks like a still-standing bridge.

Sorry about the inconsistency of image sizes; at least they now link to larger-sized images, at least.

Later, back at the homestead, I was searching for ways to confirm that the "Allen Rd" / Dennett Rd combination was in fact an old Rt 4 alignment. Fortunately, the 1941 map of Wells that was a "you'll be leaving here soon" Christmas present several years ago also showed this corner of North / South Berwick.

Route 4 is labeled. Near the "B.M." intersection in the lower left, it intersects with Dennett Rd and almost the PS&P! It's labeled B&M since Eastern had long since gone belly-up and the B&M had taken over the line. We see that the old alignment did track today's "Allen Rd" and end of Dennett Rd, that the gas line right of way continued to follow the old PS&P alignment this far, and that Dennett Rd really does chop off a lot of distance if you're headed to the Wells / Ogunquit area. Too bad it's a dirt track and barely passable for much of its length today.

Also, the dashed line that runs between Rt 4 and Dennett Rd is shown on the North Berwick map as Gould's Bridge Rd (Rt 4 end) and Company Woods Rd (Dennett Rd end). Google Maps does not show a bridge over the Great Works River on Gould's Bridge Rd, but the name is an obvious suggestion that there once was one. Something for another day. After crossing Dennett Rd, the dashed line on the full map goes all the way to Thurrell Rd but today it just runs to a few houses before disappearing completely.

Anyway, I left the car and hoofed it up the road a ways. I reached my planned turn-around point of the Company Woods Rd 4-way and thought there was nothing to see before noticing the memorial site off to one side.

A baffling, sad incident, to be sure, that provoked some interesting reactions.

The walk back went by faster, despite having to studiously avoid eye contact with more drivers than I would have liked, and I headed for Ogunquit. North Berwick, like South Berwick, wound up with main roads a short distance away from where its railroads intersected but unlike South Berwick, its "downtown" was built around the railroads. Today, now that there is no railroad station, the town suffers from the lack of a clearly identifiable downtown. The Main St area by the train tracks has more of a "downtown" feel, but is on neither of the town's two state highways and is not on the road to anything except Ogunquit.

Just over the modern B&M tracks, I saw a sign for Eastern Ave - highly suspicious! I swerved down it but didn't get too far before it was gated. Looks like there's a wastewater treatment plant beyond the gate. The map confirmed my suspicions - Eastern Ave runs on the former route of the Eastern Railroad!

That's it for points of interest, but it was a nice rest of the day. I learned via mom she was bringing my grandmother (90 years old) up from Mass. for her annual two months in that side of the family's old family summer house in Ogunquit. The house has been falling apart for years, but it withstood another winter and through August will house my grandmother and three European summer workers, including one we've known for several years.

I spread newspaper under the bird cage and fiddled with the ancient radio until it was once again blasting WBach - the birds love it and my grandmother doesn't like to wear her hearing aid. Later, Mom and I walked the Marginal Way and it was like one of those movie scenes where they quickly pan from some deserted scene to a crowded city street. Tourist season...well, it's not all that bad, really, at least for one day. A trip to Newington for groceries and softball gear and the Spaulding over The Bridge completed the loop back to Dover.

Picture post

I recently added a picture to my Blogspot (Blogger, now, I guess) profile not only because I love tuxedo cats but because I found the text on the photo's webpage to be randomly compelling:

"Let’s look at the beauty of a tuxedo cat. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of knowing a tuxedo, they are black cats with white paws and bellies, and they often have white on their faces. The stark contrast between the shiny black fur and the glistening white patches creates a strikingly handsome animal. I don’t want to imply that black is negative and white is positive — they are both beautiful, but opposite. No gray exists anywhere on their bodies. Tuxedos are black and white — no in-between. The colors blend together to make an individual full of character. Tuxedos teach us about loving and learning from both aspects of life. Every situation has the potential for a positive and negative outcome — it is we who determine what that outcome will be.

Tuxedos show us not to resist duality, but to embrace it. There is nothing in life that is free of a positive and a negative dual nature. The good news is that despite being in the midst of negativity, there is a positive solution. In every cloud, there is a silver lining waiting to be discovered. And within that same cloud is the potential for a rain storm.

The gray zone of life is an illusion; it is a place of our own making. When situations become uncomfortable, our human nature requires that we find an underlying reason for our circumstances. We often blame someone else for creating our drama. We don’t want to look at both aspects — the black and the white, the good and the bad, the positive and the negative."

http://qdfriends.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/a-%E2%80%9Ctuxedo%E2%80%9D-cat/

The Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway

Writing about walking the old Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth (PS&P) right-of-way got me jazzed up about South Berwick's railroad history. An evening at the library revealed many sites to check out and I had a chance to head to some of them earlier today.

First, let's review:

Three railroads ran through South Berwick at one time. The PS&P, the Boston & Maine (B&M), and the Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway (PGF&C since I guess we must).

The PS&P came first in 1842. It is primarily associated with the Eastern Railroad, which competed with the B&M for about 40 years; however, the section between South Berwick and Portland was jointly leased by the Eastern and B&M for about 30 of those years. Both of those companies wanted to offer a route to Portland and it was easiest to use the existing track. I suspect that whoever built the PS&P did so with such a lease arrangement in mind. Its track is now the gas line / power line right of way, although the gas line seems to be more consistently aligned as evidenced below:

As an aside, you can learn so much from tax maps! Viva l'internet and thanks to the town of South Berwick for putting them there!

SW of Emery's Bridge Road (the route of the recent walk), the gas line land (12-80) and CMP land (12-95) are side-by-side. But, then the CMP cut turns more sharply east while the gas line continues over the Knights Pond causeway, which we know to be the old railroad route. You can see that they come closer once again, then go their separate ways near Dennett Road, with Google Maps' satellite view. Try it!

Anyway, so we've got the PS&P running from Portland to Agamenticus Junction, south to Kittery, into NH over a predecessor to the Sarah Mildred Long ("Middle") bridge, and onto Boston. The track on the bridge is still used occasionally to transport waste from the Naval Shipyard.

Today's trip began with a drive over the Sarah Long bridge. No pictures, but I conveniently have some 2-year old video from a boat trip up the river with Mom, Jim, and Jim's brother Chip.

Railroad #2 is the Boston & Maine. It had run track from Dover to South Berwick, but not beyond there. Upon entering into the PS&P lease agreement, it built a spur to Agamenticus Junction to join with the PS&P main line. After the lease agreement ended, they built their own line and that's the line now used by the Downeaster.

The third railroad is the most confounding and mysterious, and thus of course the most compelling. The track in South Berwick was originally built to connect to Great Falls (remember, that's Somersworth) but didn't serve much of a purpose before it was folded into the larger PGF&P project. It left the PG&P at "Jewett" - near today's 91/236 intersection - wound its way to downtown South Berwick, crossed the river near the B&M and road crossings, and merged with some B&M - constructed track a bit south of Great Falls, where the merged line met the line from Conway.

Fun fact: That B&M line was a spur line to Great Falls that left its Dover - South Berwick train in Salmon Falls (remember, that's Rollinsford), so there were actually two trains between Salmon Falls and Great Falls for a while. Strange, but for about 10 years there were also two trains between South Berwick and North Berwick. The jury's still out on which of those is most guffaw-worthy.

Funner fact: When Rt. 236 swings left near the Rt 91 intersection, it is actually moving onto the former route of the PGF&P! So, as you drive north from Marshwood High, you move from one old rail corridor to another. Where you leave that corridor and where it goes after that is less clear.

Funnest fact: The PG&P and PSF&P combined at Jewett with the help of a turntable; the turntable "pit" remains are very much visible and are actually just off of Rt. 236, at Fife Rd. I can't believe I never noticed it in 8 bazillion trips up and down 236.

I really hope that isn't a giant mushroom in the last photo.

The sign in the second one is too cryptic to be of much use to me yet. Need to spend some more quality time with the books to get all the name changes, bankruptcies, and buyouts straight. I think "dizzying" is the operative word here.

The lawn around the pit was very nicely mowed. Thank you, landowner!

From here, I took Fife Rd to Oldfields Rd and Dover-Eliot Rd (101) to avoid downtown South Berwick. A nice side effect is having to had Oldfields Rd to the "places it'd be okay to live" list. Lots of interesting old houses.

After crossing into NH, I took Sligo Rd (named by the region's Irish settlers) through some absolutely gorgeous woods / farmland. Maximum verdance. "Very reminiscent of the Seattle area" says this somewhat-elitist-for-having-lived-there (however briefly).

Eventually, I ended up in Salmon Falls village and set off in search of PGF&C bridge remains. I was armed with memories of last night's big breakthrough.

Jackpot!, even though I have no idea what "Northern Line" refers to. This map is from 1925. Thank you, Dover library online resources! Your local library...even more awesome than online tax maps. Well, that's debatable.

Having not printed the map out, I couldn't remember where to start and first went too far south, around the back of an old mill turned into small businesses. There was a nice view back up-river but nothing that looked like a bridge.

One book had said that a station house on the line had survived until 1995 (50+ years after the line was abandoned) and was being turned into a park. So, I looked for a park.

I found one N of Main St just over the bridge from Maine. The image ahead looked promising. I doubted very much that the railroad had left an underpass in its trestle for what is today a heavily pot-holed dirt road. It must have been the PGF&P. Indeed, the 1925 map confirms this.

(The underpass on the left is for Church St, which was Dover St in 1925 but was a relatively major road both then and now.)

Now I knew roughly how the line ran in Rollinsford but still had nothing on how it came from Maine. So, I headed for the Main St bridge, paused to respond unnecessarily frumpily to a friendly phone call, and finally spotted some evidence.

With the Main St bridge on the left:

Now, this could just be part of an old road bridge, but I really don't think it is. Its placement is just too perfectly in line with the "steel trestle" from the map. Nothing that looked like an abutment on either side jumped out; returning with a printed copy of the map might help.

With the rain having cancelled the evening's softball plans, there was time to search out where the PGF&P met with the B&M Great Falls spur. I had previously located it using Google Maps.

The B&M spur is closely tracked by today's Somersworth Rd (Main St on the Somersworth side). The PGF&P came in on a curving line from the East. They appear to have come together about where today's road and railroad cross. Not sure if that's a coincidence, or what.

Old Indigo Hill Rd was signed as such and paved, but in pretty poor shape and not really a two-lane road. There wasn't a great place to park and I was ready for dinner, but an obvious trail intersected the road right where the assumed rail corridor appears on the map.

Yes, there were signs, but no, I don't remember what they said. -1 for me.

I headed home pondering how one seems to cross train tracks so frequently when driving between Dover, Rollinsford, and Somersworth. No wonder, with the B&M main line and the Salmon Falls - Great Falls spur both in the area. The spur is still used as part of the Northcoast Railroad, but that one will have to be its own adventure.

Not bad for a Wednesday! Boy, do I love summer.

Power line dreams: Return to South Berwick

The past few weeks have seen me several times in my one-time hometown of South Berwick.

- My dad sold his condo after a year and a week on the market. I claimed some furniture and helped him move the rest. Memories of crowds at Aggie's Ice Cream Parlor and how best to get out of Old Mill bubbled up to the surface.

- Alicia and I toured the historic Sarah Orne Jewett and Hamilton houses on Historic New England's open house day. We shot twin evil eyes at the guy who refused to refrain from photography, pictured the often-backed-up Routes 4 and 236 concurrency as a cart path, and grinned at the serenity on the Hamilton's grounds and gardens. I don't know if it's particularly nice or if I just underrated river frontage, but the land on both sides of the area around where the Cocheco and Salmon Falls rivers come together to form the Piscataqua is Really Really Nice. There was a particular spot where gardens opened up on both sides of a stone path, with an imposingly broad side of the house in the background. Arrestingly near-perfect symmetry.

We enjoyed decent food and huge portions at the Asia Cafe (gotta love those Chinese-place lunch specials) and picked up a couple of overstock books at the new-ish Mercantile shop. One of those early-summer days which detaches itself from the calendar with everyone in a good mood.

- The next day, after we explored an old road on the Dover-Rollinsford line (a trip that deserves its own post), Alicia went to work and I had a chance to close out the SB experience. Bear with me as there's some personal back story and (hopefully more interesting) local railroad history to go with this one.

One of the first things I did after downloading Google Earth during the winter of '09 was to zoom all the way in on this image:

The south end of this shot is where Rt. 236 swings left after being unnaturally straight for a while after the Dover-Eliot Rd / 101 intersection. Dad had told me that that section of road followed an old railroad grade, but I hadn't really put two and two together until seeing the overhead shot. In the summer, there is a farm stand ahead on the grade where the road swings left towards downtown SB. Where it intersects Route 91 are three mailboxes, but no houses are visible down the good two-lane gravel road.

Over my year as a resident, I knocked off other targets - Great Hill Rd, Love Brook Rd, Dennett Road (especially from the Boyds Corner Rd end), and Crooker Lane. This one eluded me, though, as I couldn't decide whether to walk or drive and was afraid of meeting hostile homeowners some distance up the road. I was also convinced that the road needed to have a name - otherwise, how did the mail get delivered? I [very] briefly contemplated opening the mailboxes to see if there was anything inside with an address. The usually reliable South Berwick planning board minutes and dearly departed South Berwick Citizen didn't provide a road name, but the prospect of (literally) miles of good road/trail remained exciting and I really wanted to know whether there was a bridge (or any remnants thereof) over the Great Works like the causeway over Knights Pond.

Wait, what causeway? You betcha! The causeway, intriguing gravel road, and Route 236 alignment are all nearly perfectly aligned and were part of the route of the Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth railroad. Near the causeway, it intersected an old alignment of the Boston & Maine (now used by Amtrak for the Downeaster and freight trains) at South Berwick Junction / Agamenticus Station. Yes, there really were two railroads (and a station) near today's Junction Rd. Sadly, it took me until this year to realize that's where Junction Rd got its name.

The P, S &P ran from Portsmouth into Eliot and South Berwick, then turned northeast and passed through North Berwick, the Kennebunks, Saco, and eventually Portland. The Boston & Maine (today's Amtrak) also heads through North Berwick but then takes a more coastal route to today's large station in Wells and beyond.

Complicating the issue are two things:

1) The section of the B&M that ran to South Berwick Junction has been abandoned and is no longer visible (you can barely see it on some aerial shots). If you take the Downeaster from Dover today, you stay on the NW side of Route 4 until North Berwick and don't go near Agamenticus Rd. My guess is that this rerouting was done after the P, S & P was discontinued and there was no longer a reason for a detour.

2) A third railroad also once passed through South Berwick - the Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway. Dazzle your friends by asking them what Rollinsford and Somersworth were once named and then telling them it's Salmon Falls and Great Falls. Actually, Salmon Falls isn't too hard to come up with - the downtown village retains that name - and you'll find Great Falls in the name of many downtown Somersworth villages.

This confused me to no end for a long time because I got "two abandoned railroads met at Agamenticus" into my head and assumed that one of them must have been the Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway...but it's not. That one ran closer to the coast, but I'm not sure exactly where - or why it came into Maine at all. This could be helpful, but where is Brock's Crossing? And, why did the line cross into Maine for short stretches not once, but twice? Weren't bridges expensive?

Here are a couple of sites with more SB railroad info. Now, back to your regularly scheduled walk.

A new year brought a new approach: approach the Great Works from the Emery's Bridge end to the north. I didn't think there were any houses on that section of road - except for those very close to Emery's Bridge Rd. Crooker Rd (the road next to the cemetery across from The Lunch Box) runs almost to the ROW, but has a creepy house part of the way in. So, I cut through the purported future home of Our Lady of Angels church - for now, just a meadow.

I parked in one of the Willow St field lots and the walk up Agamenticus Rd was routine. I sweated lightly in my tick-avoidance long sleeves and windpants. Bore right at the sign; the meadow grass was about chest-high. As the trees converged, the remaining grassland aimed at the Crooker Ln house so I entered the woods. It got muddy for just long enough for me to wish I'd worn hiking boots, but quickly firmed up. I guess that's not a surprise; you wouldn't want to run a railroad or power lines through a bog.

The woods were fairly open and I'd guess that I wasn't the first to head this way. Nothing resembling a trail, but superior routes suspiciously presented themselves. It was probably only 10 minutes before I hit the ROW and turned right. The power lines were in a gully to the SE; the road sat high and was in fine shape, 10-12 feet wide. "Warning: Gas line" signs popped up every so often.

In my haste to get going, I forgot to leave something to mark where I'd popped out of the woods for reentry purposes. No matter, I could always just walk out to the road. Sunday afternoon with the Red Sox winning seemed like a pretty safe time to saunter out.

The road itself wasn't particularly interesting or scenic, but my adrenaline remained high as I wondered what would come at the river. Occasionally, four-wheeler side trails split off into the gully or the woods; the road itself was straight as an arrow. With nothing to obstruct it, the chain-link fence in front of the Great Works was visible from a fair distance. It was easy to go around the fence to the river's edge, and a rock structure built into the riverbank looked to be part of the remains of the old bridge, but nothing jutted out into the river except for the gas line; that's the faintly visible line on satellite photos.

Once again, rivers are really pretty! This year's high snowfall / runoff and May rains only helped the Great Works, I'm sure.

From there, I was able to get out easily to the nearest paved road and back to my car; in the interest of not publicizing every last adventure area, that'll be left as the proverbial exercise for the reader (you can also email me for more info, but it's basically the path of least resistance).

After reading more on the South Berwick website after getting home, I concluded that the houses across the river have York Woods Rd (Route 91) addresses such that the CMP road is effectively just a very long driveway. I wonder who plows it, though, and if you could build a house there given modern road frontage requirements......

On the other side of Emery's Bridge Rd, the power lines continue alongside a four-wheeler trail. Although the CMP right-of-way is less well defined so that adventurers need to stay more mindful of private land ownership, I bet there's some great exploring on that side, too!

This evening, I took a walk down Serenity Lane. You might remember that this is the "road" between Boyd Rd. and Cheney Woods Rd. that I asked each of you about after seeing it on a tourist map a couple of years ago.

The gate at the Boyd Rd. end, which had been closed last summer, has been open for at least a few months. I parked at the Finson Farm (the CSA that I'm a member of), a short ways up the road. The gate at what is now Country Time Kennels (and I believe used to be Marlee Animal Shelter) was ominously closed.

Serenity Lane is straight as an arrow for a while and quickly picks up a tall chain-link fence that marks off Pike's property. You can't see anything industrial through the trees. Maybe 3/10 of a mile in, there's a small cemetery on the right. It appeared to be a Jepson family burial ground, and someone had been added as recently as 2001. Apparently the Jepsons have been in Wells for almost 300 years--anyone know any of the current generation?

As an aside, ghost hunting back here would have been about 5x as scary as doing it back on 9B. For the psychology project where we had Emily (among others) dress up as ghosts and recorded people's reactions to seeing them, we could have used this graveyard and then had somebody close the gate, "trapping" us. And we could have had somebody over at the kennel/shelter getting the dogs riled up and barking like crazy. That was a missed opportunity.

At this point, the road was a good dirt road with some gravel sporadically spread on top. You could tell that typical passenger cars could and had been down it. Things were pretty quiet for a while, with only a few "Blasting zone--keep out" signs disturbing the peace. The one gate in the fence not only was locked, but had large boulders on the other side that precluded any vehicle larger than a scooter from getting out. An old stone wall ran down the other side of the road for a while before petering out.

Maybe 3/4 of a mile in, the fence and the road took a left turn--not quite 90 degrees, but apparently we had reached the back of the Pike property, when a red sedan was suddenly headed my way. It looked like there were 3 people inside but I avoided eye contact and breathed a sigh of relief when the driver didn't stop.

It looked like the sedan had pulled out into the road, and indeed a side road that looked less-traveled soon popped up on the right. Somebody had duck-taped an empty bag of Quik-rete to a tree and, a short ways down the "driveway", had clumsily attached a "Keep Out" sign to a too-thin branch. I still kept out. Soon, the fence changed from chain link to wire. The road became rougher, muddier, and more grown in and as the dusk set in, it got incredibly buggy.

Soon, I came to what I assumed was an old gravel pit. It was now a small pond with a steep rock face rising on one end and assorted boulders on another. Either they had been strategically arranged or mankind got very lucky as the boulders form a rough semicircle. As you approach, the boulders are covered in graffiti (the "Guitar Hero" writing and drawing of a guitar player is presumably fairly recent, and who knows about the picture of a cat and the scrawled "MEOW".) There was a fire pit and a bunch of trash. I thought that it was similar to, but not the same as, a spot I came to a couple of summers ago. I believe that one was on one of the trails between Cheney Woods Rd. and the Newhall Road extension, but my memory could be scrambled.

Here's a map of the area:



You can see on the map that the marked road ends at some weird purple stuff. Similar purple stuff just off of Route 9B between the Turnpike and Loop Rd. is labeled as "Sand and gravel pit". By the way, I got the map from http://www.digital-topo-maps.com/, and its get-a-map technology is great--once you have a topo map, you can zoom in and out and drag it just like a regular Google Map.

On another side of the pond was a large, very rusted piece of equipment. It looked sort of like a crane with a thin, circular piece of metal on one end that looked like it would have had run some kind of belt or pulley.

I wish I had thought to check what the fence did around this spot...is the piece of equipment now outside of the Pike boundaries? Or is this where you could"break in"?

The road turned into an ATV trail here, albeit one with quite a few recent tracks. I followed it for a while, bypassing a number of muddy patches, before the mother of all mud patches turned me around. I was surprised to not have reached Cheney Woods Rd, but looking at the map now, I shouldn't have been. One narrower but discernible trail had left to the right--looking at the attached map, it was probably headed for the Allen Rd. extension.

Having now been gone for quite a while, I was starting to get a little creeped out and didn't dawdle on the return trip. I was my garden work clothes (long-sleeved shirt and lined wind pants) and the air was not cooling off so I was sweating buckets. I won my race with the sun back to the car, but, surprisingly, the creepiness continued into the drive home.

I hadn't stopped sweating yet and soon had sweat running into my eyes, which stung to the point of me being barely able to keep them open. This was on the part of Thurrell Road where the road makes a few sharp turns and the asphalt is badly eroded. I kept it together for what felt like eternity before finally getting to a good spot to pull off the road.

It was getting foggy, and a short while after starting up again, I came around a turn and thought I had lost it. I was driving straight into the woods! No, it was just a branch that had fallen across the road. Fortunately, it was suspended high enough in the air that I could drive under with just leaves grazing the top of the Honda.

The really weird part (at least to me) was that 1) The branch hadn't been there when I drove through there about 8 hours before and 2) Had the branch been there 2/3 hours before, when I was driving to the farm, I wouldn't have seen it as I decided to take the "front way" of Route 4 for the first and only time in my life. It was as if those Jepson ghosts knew I was coming and conspired to make the experience as creepy as possible.

Next up is to wait until things dry out a bit and then try trails off of Cheney Woods Rd. until I find the other end of this one.

Sunday 3/15

Weather: Sunny, 50s
Music: OSI - Free

Sunday was warm and sunny from the start, but I was going nowhere fast. Finally, shortly after 1:00, I emerged from the blue room, threw open all of the shades, and stumbled out the front door.

Irregular melting has left monorails in some spots and muddy patches in others. I head out with the classic long-sleeve/short-sleeve t-shirt combo, but returned to grab the green fleece. After feeling cold so often of late, I welcome the opportunity to be a little too warm. I pace past the mailboxes, up Alder, and left onto Willow. It's remarkable how high a baby hill, nearly imperceptible in a car, can feel when you're on foot.

There's no doubt about this weather, so quite a few people are out and about, a few even carrying sports equipment. I spend most of the 0.75ish-mile Willow Street slowly gaining on a pair of woman in typical sweatshirts and tights, just frumpy enough to avoid the obvious yuppie pigeonhole. As I get close, I debated my options. Stay quiet and risk surprise or breath unnaturally loudly? Keep up the pace and nearly run them down or walk awkwardly slowly to stay back? I wonder about gender roles, sexual predators, and how scariness and skinniness interact before taking the first convenient opportunity to pass on the left.

Here's the route:



When you think about it, the Old Mill/Agamenticus Estates region has an awful lot of people living in a small area. It's no surprise that there are small crowds at the new "The Barn" teen center on the corner of Willow and Agamenticus and at the convenience store/"game center" across the street. After a few safe steps on the wide shoulders of Agamenticus Rd., I bear right past the Dead End sign onto an unmarked dirt road--Crooker Lane under the blackout above.

The road runs along the edge of a cemetery for a while, and then next to a field. For a brief stretch, there are clearings on both the left and right. Maybe a quarter mile in, I start to bear down on a lone house, and with a number of vehicles parked out front, it earns a "vaguely threatening." I swing right into a gully, ascend the tiny headwall, hop a chain-link fence, and walk back in the direction I came.

Soon, I'm confronted by a scattered front of recently-placed gravestones--the far end of the cemetery. Even though I'm headed for cremation, it's nice to see that there's some room for expansion. I turn down a central artery of sorts, past headstones dating back into the 19th century, a couple of mini-Washington Monuments, and even a tiny crypt. I think about what I'd do if somebody called me an intruder and decide that the dead probably like getting to observe a passing pedestrian from time to time.

Back on Willow, I'm plenty warm even after removing the fleece. And I'm real glad that it's all but Spring.

A chance to complain

Weather: Dark, mostly clear, 30s
Music: Frank Zappa - The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life

Sometimes, you try to look like a nice guy and you get stuck driving around uncharted Boston at night. Still, with any luck, you're at least not a complete jerk and you set off lightheartedly. It helps that there's no inner turmoil about whether or not a nice guy gets to pick the music.

Alicia tested my "I'm just going to drive and let you tell me where to go!" pronouncements right off the bat, sending us back through Davis Square to get to Elm St. right away instead of snaking through one-ways to avoid the square. I commented, but probably shouldn't have since it looks like that is the Google Maps-recommended route. A good demonstration of the principle of "get to the fast road as quickly as possible."

Anyway, we <3 Beacon Street and Alicia had been this way before, so we took off on this odd-looking route that, in retrospect, can't be that much slower than going through Harvard Square and the heart of Cambridge. It didn't take long for me to become completely disoriented. There's something about driving in cities that completely scrambles my sense of direction. Since I talk enough smack about how good that sense usually is, I'm insecure about this and want to tell you three possible reasons why.

1) I psych myself out about driving in cities, which leads to focusing on the moment and the next move above all else instead of devoting some mental energy to keeping track of which way we're going.

2) The bright lights and activity of a city are just too much for a Mainer like me.

3) I always think city grids are laid out NS/EW, but they almost never are, so me and the map are usually way out of sync.

Anyway, we ended up a couple of blocks south of Western Ave, but recovered nicely to take the second bridge and swing onto Soldiers Field Road. Brian Urlacher was nowhere to be found...


View Larger Map







Soon, there were a lot of signs overhead. The designers had fit in a regular grade-level intersection right next to a full interstate interchange, necessitating two turns to the right in quick succession. Alicia saw the a sign saying to turn right for Cambridge Street--unfortunately, the first right was for the Mass Pike. This seems to happen to me an awful lot--most notably at that Pine Hill Road /Route 9 left-turn bonanza in Berwick, ME that I told everybody and their townie dads about. I don't have the energy for another bulleted list of explanations--next time.

It seemed more likely that there would be a quick exit going eastbound than westbound, so east we went through a toll and on to the Copley Place exit. Well, Back Bay is sort of familiar. Alicia got off the phone with Regina, our destination. "She's clueless, huh?" No, not really, but the sense of entitlement was persisting.

Things were mostly uneventful from there--I "remembered" (guessed) to head North to Comm Ave and we took Reg's good advice to take Beacon St. to Washington. The only incident was white-knuckling for a minute at a red light while preparing to go straight from a left-turn only lane, but in the end I didn't even have to go over 3,000 RPM. You can go pretty fast in a city when the street is empty and the lights are going your way.

Dropped Alicia off at the corner of Washington and Commonwealth. Saw the sights of Newton and made it back to the Pike, 128, and on home. Pretty good ride, all told. Let's see if it sticks.

What's better, static image maps or dynamic insertions?