Mother Nature Is A Whore And I'm Never Calling Her Again
-OR-
Ayah Saves The Day: Redux.
It rains here Way too much. That makes you want to stay in, and that
leads to cabin fever. Facing the following two choices this weekend, I
decided to take "70% chance of rain" over "100% chance of severe
boredom with flurries of depression." I hadn't seen New Hampshire yet,
and the radar said that the garbage stopped north of Boston, so I
geared up and headed north Sunday at about 10am. Sure enough, after 20
minutes it was just cloudy, and by 11:30 the wind had dried my pants
out.
Lemme just say that I was not terribly impressed by New Hampshire,
having been to Vermont. The two are not equal. It's nice, but in more
of a flat, touristy way. Vermont has these kickass twisty roads that
follow a river for, say, 400 miles. If New Hampshire has those, it
hides them well. Mostly I saw RV's, chain resturaunts, and roadside
tourist traps that couldn't decide if they were in the Wild West (wagon
wheels, teepees) or on the Cape (ship wheels, anchors). Just be New
Hampshire, guys. Somebody has to.
Then I check my voicemail, and Laura / Stacey wanna get their dinner /
drink on, down in Northampton, which is way down southwest of me. The
bad news is no fast roads go that way, but then that's good news, too -
the fast ones suck. I like the back roads anyway. So I started
trekking southwest, taking a few pictures along the way. I'll put more
up on Flickr, but here's one or two.
I stop by a lake to claim New Hampshire in the name of Bobbo:
(Chase, check and see if this means you can tax them now)
Spreading Democracy, Freedom, and Mark Richt to the godless heathens of
New England:
Stumbling upon an amazing guitar sales / repair shop in the middle of
f'ing NOWHERE:
...this place was killer - and it was open on a sunday! You open the
door, and a pick over your head strums an open chord on a guitar
mounted on the ceiling. The guy running it was phenominally
nice. "Play anything you want." He does e-commerce at
www.vintagefret.com, and he'll take anything back that you buy from him
online for like 30 days, no charge, if you don't like it. Saw some
killer Fenders and accoustics in there. These places are endangered,
and it breaks my heart. This is what Service is all about. Really
reminds me of the pre-Guitar Center era of highschool.
Anywho, I got caught in yet more rain in VT / Northern Mass, so I
arrived at Ayah's soaking wet ("take off those clothes, mister!"). She
dried all my stuff, took us to a great mexican place, and gave me a bed
for the night. Got up early this a.m., drove through more rain, and
got to work on time. I'm going to wind up being her indentured servant
by August at this rate.
Miss you all.
-Cap'n.