How was your vacation, kids?….MOM BARFED!!!

The beauty and majesty of North Atlantic whales. NOT.

If you ask my children how our trip to Bar Harbor, Maine was, the first thing they will start yapping about is how “Mom barfed”. Sadly, they are not lying.
The day started innocently enough: buffet breakfast at our hotel, some wandering around downtown Bar Harbor, a great lunch at Geddy’s. As we were leaving lunch, the Whale Watch pier was right across the street. “If we hurry we can make the 1pm whale watch” I stupidly said. Cranky Daddy ran down to where passengers board the enormous boat and asked if we could still get on. “Sure thing” said the friendly people there. We rushed upstairs to buy tickets while they held the boat for us. I informed the folks there that we weren’t Kennedys, and that this was so nice, and they were all “it’s no big deal”. Indeed. So we hustled onto the boat and the man at the ramp told us that there are 3 to 5 foot swells out there, to which I answered, “Well it’s no fun if there aren’t 5 foot swells!” How prophetic. We got some seats in the cabin of the second deck, and the boat started hauling out to where the whales supposedly feed. It was a very rough ride. The plan was to ride out about an hour, since the feeding grounds were about thirty miles outside the harbor. About 20 minutes in, people in the cabin started moaning and groaning and clinging to their “Sic-Sac” bags. (I looked it up and “Sic Sac” is still a widely available brand of leak-proof sickness bags that look like they were made in 1952). I wasn’t loving being indoors, so I stumbled my way outside for some air. Cranky Daddy and Cranky Son #1 wandered around, and Cranky Son #2 wasn’t going to leave his seat at any time. I went downstairs to buy some chocolate to make our tummies feel better, and the boys ate all of it. Now the temperature in the cabin had gone up about twenty degrees. I had my choice of freezing cold and wet outdoors or very nauseous hot and miserable indoors. At this time, people in the cabin were vomiting everywhere, and the heat plus the smell was horrific. Cranky Son #2 wasn’t budging, so I was spending only a minute at a time inside the cabin.

Finally we arrived at the mythical whale feeding grounds. The fog was very thick, and there was no way in hell we were going to see any whales. The naturalists use all their tricks (except sonar???) to spot some whales, but they couldn’t find any. I now understand that whales are expert at not being seen. Next course of action: relocate by traveling really fast again in choppy seas. Yay! I remained outside fighting the sea spray which was better than the alternative spray indoors. Stop numbers two and three did not yield any better results for watching whales, so the crew determined that it was time to go, after viewing zero whales for almost two hours on choppy seas. Don’t worry, though – they guarantee whale sightings or you get a voucher for another trip - for free! I’m almost 42 years old an I’ve never been seasick, but as we started the relatively smooth ride home, every bit of my digestive tract registered its displeasure. I asked the Cranky Daddy to get me a bag. What? “GET. ME. A. BAG.” In retrospect it was about as calm as the “Bring me a bucket” line from Monty Python fame. I puked my brains out with my sons on either side of me. During the wretched affair, one son rubbed my back and said “let it all out – you’ll feel much better” while the other son held my hand and let me know that I would “probably want to brush those teeth, or maybe rinse your mouth out”. It’s really funny to hear your own words come back at you in such a circumstance – I’ll never say those things again.  They were very annoying and unhelpful. The four of us enjoyed the rest of the ride back to the harbor on the outside deck, where a man erupted in a spray of vomit two chairs down from us. He almost got it over the side. I like to think I  just took care of business discreetly and moved on, as opposed to the poor folks who were moaning and retching and making lots of noise like BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAH - HOOOOWAHHAHH and ROWWWWWFFFFF. Seriously dramatic.

It took two full days for the world to stop moving when I shut my eyes. Good times. I’m sure this event will make the “What is did this summer” essays that are perennially required during the first week of school. If we’re lucky, Cranky son #2 won’t illustrate it.

Now THAT’s a Shirley Temple

The boys were introduced to the venerable “Shirley Temple” at Geddy’s on the waterfront in Bar Harbor.  Those were some serious drinks with five cherries, fake fish, and a crazy monkey straw.  We guessed that this type of drink is illegal in Massachusetts:  they’re far too large, contain sugar-based soda, have little plastic fish floating in them (the children will choke!).  No worries in Maine, carry on, boys! They’ll be disappointed with the meager offerings at other restaurants.

Atop Mount Gorham, Acadia National Park

Here are the Cranky Boys at the summit of Mount Gorham (elevation 525 feet).  They didn’t complain at all on this hike, even after the tougher climb to the South Bubble (elevation 766 feet) on the previous day.

Three Wise Men from Maine

Three Wise Men

A true Christmas story…..

Everyday activities with my Mother often end up as Lucy and Ethel shenanigans that make the most mundane trips, tasks, and errands into memorable experiences. The trip in question today was her annual pre-Christmas pilgrimage to visit her mother (my grandmother) to ensure that nobody has to mail any gifts under any circumstances. Guilt is a powerful motivator, and my Mom makes the trip every Christmas, no matter the rain or sleet or snow or darkest night. I was taking time off from work to undergo chemotherapy, and had the time to accompany my Mom for a rare visit to my Grammie and the rest of the family up north.

A trip to the great north always goes through Freeport, Maine, where we must stop for shopping and lunch before proceeding any further. It had just started to snow, so we skipped shopping and went directly to our favorite lunch. Giddy in the afterglow of butter-laden lobster stew and a rich chocolately dessert, we accidentally jumped on the wrong major highway. How many “major” highways could there be? More than one is all it took. This didn’t deter us, and there was no reason to panic. It would just take a little longer to get there; no big deal. The snow started coming down a little harder, but that didn’t stop us from stopping again for another coffee.

At some point, we decided to take a “short cut” to Grammie’s house that brought us further and further into the path of this snowstorm. The snow began falling even harder, as we stopped for some gas and another cup of coffee. It was slow going since we traveled secondary roads, and the snow was beginning to accumulate.

We finally slogged our way over the hills and through the woods to get to Grammie’s house, and in the home stretch, we turned onto her road, traveled about 200 yards, and went careening off the road into the woods, plowing snow and leaves all over the car. We came to an abrupt stop, though the airbags didn’t deploy, and we didn’t hear that “crunch” sound when you crash into something. It happened so quickly, that we didn’t have time to panic, or scream or anything. Mom just said “oh….oh…………oh!” It was completely quiet for about fifteen seconds, and then we began to panic a little.

Mom began to think aloud how Daddy would kill her if she accidentally killed me before I was cured of my cancer. We just sat there for a few minutes and thought about what we should do. There was no chance in hell of getting a signal on my cell phone, so communication was completely out of the question. It would also be hideous to hike up the hill on the icy, snowy road. We sat in the dark, discussing how we needed a Christmas miracle, when a street light popped on a bit further ahead. Well, having a street light AT ALL in these parts IS a miracle, so we felt lucky. Then two vehicles slowly approached from behind us.

Two men in a pickup truck stopped and gingerly hopped out of their truck. I assured my Mother that this was the part in our “miracle” where we are raped and mutilated and left for dead in the Maine woods. They knocked on the window and asked if they could help us get the car out of the ditch. A third man in a second truck joined them, and said he had chains in his truck to help. I was getting optimistic and assumed the chains were for the car. Indeed they were.

Together, our three wise men expertly hooked up the car (a nice ridiculous car with rear-wheel drive) to one of the trucks, and pulled it out of the ditch in just a few minutes. No bungling, no confusion, no cussing. Just precision car de-ditchification.

We were stunned. We didn’t know what to say except thanks (for the tow, and not raping and killing us); they wouldn’t accept any money for coffee, or dinner, or anything. These kind souls probably felt sorry for these fools from Massachusetts bumbling around in a snowstorm in their stupid rear-wheel drive vehicle. They said they would follow us up the hill to be sure we made it to Grammie’s house in one piece. This was a real blessing, since we went off the road before we even reached the hill.

Say what you will about “men from Maine”, but these gentlemen surely went above and beyond to give us a hand. Above and beyond from our urban expectations, maybe. Maybe they really screwed us by not giving us hot cocoa and a back massage while they heaved our car out of the ditch, while carving a commemorative plaque from the tree we hit – that’s probably how they would have helped the locals. At any rate, I am forever grateful to our wise men, and our Christmas miracle.

When we got to Gram’s house, it was way past happy hour, and we told her the whole story, and WE were told a thousand times that people in Maine are NICE, and that this would NEVER happen in Massachusetts. We discussed a zillion times how my Mother is RIDICULOUS for having a rear-wheel drive vehicle, and car talk invariably leads to talk of airbags. That is another storm to weather, and there was no avoiding that one, as we had used up all our Christmas miracles.