Yes, I’m never going to get anywhere at the rate at which I’m travelling. Albany is still a good several hundred miles away from Skowhegan and The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav tells me that I can get there by 19:00 tonight if I put my foot down (ha ha).
And so after a healthy three or four miles I come to a sudden halt in a traffic jam. It’s not a traffic jam really but roadworks, and this sets the pattern for the morning’s route – roadworks everywhere as they prepare the road for the winter. It’s really not my day.
But taking my time to successfully negotiate the chaos I can, in fits and starts, begin to put my foot down every so often and try to cover the road as quickly as possible taking all kinds of circumstances into account, more of which anon.
This area is pretty good however if you are the kind of person that suffers from multiple personality disorders though – you can each of you travel along your own road and yet stay together in the same vehicle.
But if any of you think that I am taking the … err … mickey unnecessarily, just ask yourselves why I always hire a seven-seater vehicle when I’m over here. It’s so that each one of mine can have his own seat.
Other things of course contrive to get in my way, like they do. Seeing a load of campers and hearing a load of noise, I go over to investigate.
I find myself at the Oxford Plains Speedway and it seems that there’s racing, a kind-of mini-Indy500 racing series this weekend, and I have stumbled upon the practise sessions. No spectators admitted, but that’s not the kind of thing that has ever stopped me before, has it?
But only one car spun off the track and there were no multiple pile-ups so it wasn’t all that exciting. But someone watching with me did ask me why there are no successful women Indycar racers. I replied that it’s because they have to keep on stopping to ask for directions.
The next thing that interrupts my passage is encountering the Winnipesaukee and Pemigewasset Valley Scenic Railroad at Meredith, and so I stop to see if there are any steam locomotives here. Apparently not – it’s not like Chama, where I was in 2002
– just old diesel shunters.
But I had an interesting encounter nevertheless, something so rare in the USA that it’s worth recording.
I went over to Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe. It was closed but there was someone behind the counter happily twiddling her thumbs – she saw me try the door and eventually came over to open it to talk to me. She wouldn’t let me in, and told me “sorry, we’re closed, I’m just here to wait for the return of a train that’s gone out with a party of tourists feom Indiana – you’ll need to come back tomorrow”
I replied “well, I won’t be here tomorrow”, so she just said “sorry” and closed the door.
Sounds just like Medicine Bow in 2002 doesn’t it?
So, hours behind time, as the sun goes down, I encounter Mascona Lake here in New Hampshire.
There’s a big camp site here just on the edge and so this is where I’ll plan to stay the night. The trouble with pressing on farther in the dark is that you never know what you might (or might not) encounter, and what you might miss out on along the way.
In the meantime, to our new reader who sat down the other day and read over 200 pages from start to finish, a big hello. Why not introduce yourself?
