The House of Horror in Bangor, Maine

Maine Week Travelog #14
Bangor, ME - Thursday, 17 Jun 2021, 3pm.

Bangor, Maine, is home to what I dub The House of Horror. No, it's not a circus fun-house with warped mirrors and cheap fog machines, it's a home. An actual home that someone lives in.

That someone is Stephen King.



Stephen King is a bestselling American author of horror, mystery, and supernatural suspense stories. His books have sold 350 million copies and been adapted into numerous movies and miniseries.

It should be no surprise that Stephen King actually lives in Maine, in a small-ish town, as a good many of his stories are set in small-town Maine.

It should also be no surprise that King's house looks spooky. Even aside from the wrought iron fence with figures of bats and spiders, the Victorian style house itself looks like a classic set-piece for countless horror stories— by King or other authors. For example, you could totally imagine Psycho filming here. Or The Addams Family (a TV show which played a horror setting as camp).

Calling an Audible when Traveling

Maine Week Travelog #15
Bangor, ME - Thursday, 17 Jun 2021, 10pm.

I've written before about how it's important to remain flexible when traveling. In American football it's called "Calling an audible". The players take positions on the field with a particular play planned, but as the quarterback scans how the defense has lined up he realizes the plan won't work well and calls out a new play on the spot.

Being ready to call an audible when traveling is important for anyone; for me and my style of travel, it's crucial. My style is based around going places and doing things— doing things much more complex than "Yes, another piña colada, please" in a beach chair, that is. Complex plans are always subject to change as conditions change. A day of bad weather or a closure can require calling an audible.

We called an audible earlier today. While we were hiking the Beech Cliffs trail we decided to bail out of Acadia a day early and head to Bangor. We'd already toughed through poor weather earlier in the week, and a closure of one trail we really wanted to hike left us with fewer interesting things to do than we'd allotted time for. Right there on the trail we decided to leave town a day early— and even checked hotel availability and rates right from our smartphones.



Tonight we're in Bangor a day early. We booked an extra day at the Fairfield Inn we already had a reservation at for tomorrow night. We've got a full day of hiking planned for tomorrow, so this move actually makes our travel easier. We'll save over an hour of driving time in the morning to get to our hike, plus we'll save the time of packing up, checking out, and checking back in. Tonight we're just relaxing at the hotel, using the pool and hot tub pictured above.

The need to be ready to call an audible on this trip was evident from the planning. Not only did this trip get completely rebooked three times with different dates (due to Coronavirus) but within each set of dates I changed plans numerous times as we rearranged things we'd like to do. If I'd ever had the notion to say, "Okay, after this change, everything's final!" I would have been quickly disabused. In fact I literally wrote as we started this trip that I expected we'd have to call at least one such audible along the way.

But... Money!

"Okay, you like being prepared to adjust plans on the fly," you may note, "But what does that cost?" 

Sometimes changes are free. It's awesome when they are. This one wasn't, though. We're paying for two rooms tonight: one at the hotel we left, because it was too late to cancel, and one where we're staying tonight. Fortunately the dollar cost is not huge compared to our travel budget. Partly that's because for tonight/tomorrow we picked an inexpensive hotel that just happens to have a nice indoors pool and hot tub. But that's also one of the keys for how to be ready to call an audible when traveling— don't spend your entire travel budget on obvious up-front costs. Hold some in reserve to seize cool opportunities that arise or fix setbacks that occur.

To the Flanks of Mt. Katahdin

Maine Week Travelog #16
Baxter State Park, ME - Friday, 18 Jun 2021, 10:15am.

Today we've driven up to Baxter State Park in north-central Maine. The park is home to Maine's highest peak, Mt. Katahdin, elev. 5,267'. We're not here to summit the peak. With an ascent of over 4,000' the trek is beyond the shape we're in. But the peak clearly looms above us as we embark on the trail with a ~1,000' gain to Katahdin Falls on its flank.



Getting up to Mt. Katahdin was a fun little road trip this morning. From our start in Bangor we were closer than our original plan of staying Bar Harbor. (See blog about calling an audible on this trip.)

The first hour of the drive was a pleasant trek up I-95. Once out morning rush hour traffic in Bangor it was smooth sailing. In Medway we turned off the interstate and drove most of the rest of the way on country highways.

Overall the trip took longer than the 2 hours estimated by Google Maps. That's because the last 10 miles of the trek were on a narrow, dirt/gravel road inside the park. A sign at the entrance informed us that keeping it "primitive" was a requirement of the person who donated the land for the park decades ago. That person also happened to be the governor at the time. 🙄

The primitive road didn't bother me much until we reached the pay station and were socked with a $15 entrance fee. $15 and they can't even pave the dang road?!

Oh, and there were questions. Lots of questions. Where were we from? (Out of state residents pay more.) Did we have any pets? (Not allowed.) Firearms? (Also not allowed.) Phone number for next of kin? (Yes, they really asked for a phone number.) The ranger dutifully noted all of this on the pass he filled out in triplicate, tearing a copy off at the end for us to display on our dashboard at all times while in the park.

Oh, and the ranger pronounced it "Kataaaaaahdin". It was fun talking to a Mainer who still speaks like a Mainer. I was getting tired of all the Minnesota trills and Texas drawls making Bah Habbah seem too much like the midwest.

Trainwreck at the Airport

Maine Week Travelog #Ω-1
Applebee's in South Portland, ME - Monday, 21 Jun 2021, 10:30pm.

I'm jumping my backlog of blogs about our Maine Week trip to post an entry in real time. It's Monday evening and we're supposed to be almost home right now, but instead we're eating late night dinner at an Applebee's restaurant off I-95 nearly 3,000 miles from home before driving in the wee hours of the morning to Boston for an 0600 flight home.

We had a good plan for getting home today. Emphasis on had. We were supposed to fly out of Portland, Maine (PWM) to SFO with a connection in Chicago. We managed our schedule cautiously today and arrived at the airport over 2 hours early. Our aircraft arrived on its inbound flight. Everything looked good to go. But then just 5 before we were supposed to starting boarding the delays started.

Rolling Delays

At first it was a delay of 10-15 minutes. No problem; these things happen.

Next it was a delay of 20-30 minutes. That would make our connection in Chicago short but still totally doable.

Then it was a delay of 45 minutes. Connection getting really tight.

The delay stretched to 1 hour. "Your connections are all safe," the gate agent told all the passengers. "There's a ground stop in Chicago, so your connections will be delayed, too."

...Except while the agent was saying all flights at Chicago were being delayed, the facts were showing otherwise. Flights were mostly running on time. Ours was one of few delayed.

Next the agents admitted that connections were going to be missed and started rebooking everyone. The first choice we had was to wait in Chicago tonight for two days and continue to SF on Wednesday morning. "Or you can figure out how to get to Boston," she offered, "And take a flight out of BOS tomorrow at 6am."

The flight to Chicago was starting to board so we stuck with it. We even booked a nice hotel for two nights— at our own expense— to try to stay productive at work while waiting out this ridiculous travel snafu.

On the Plane, Off the Plane. More Delays.

Once we'd all gotten boarded the crew announced we had to get back off. Our previously full flight was now only about half full as many of  passengers had already rebooked to other options. The remainder of us filed back into the terminal for another round of rolling delays. The flight would leave at 6pm. Then 6:30. Then 7. Then 8. We stuck with our reservation knowing that we'd already arranged a place to crash in Chicago.

Then they canceled our flight.

I saw that coming. When an airline needs to cancel a delayed flight they first try to get as many passengers as possible rebooked onto other flights. Then, when they do cancel it, the stats they have to report to the DOT look better because fewer people are stranded. Well, we were part of those stats.

Because I saw it coming I'd already put in a placeholder for Plan D. I booked last-minute tickets on Southwest leaving tomorrow night for a not-awful price.

Plan E: Same as Plan C, but Worse.

At this point we could have asked American Airlines to cancel our reservations and refund the tickets. We had alternate flights already booked on Southwest for Tuesday night. But first I figured we should see how AA offered to reaccommodate us. Surprise! It was Plan C: get ourselves to Boston and take an 0600 Tuesday morning.

The Boston flight has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it leaves at 0600 and arrives SF 0930, so the disruption to our work schedules is minimal. On the minus side, it leaves at 0600 so we're looking at a sleepless night tonight. Also on the minus side, we have to get to Boston on our own. There's an inexpensive bus, but the next departure— at 3:15am— arrives too late at BOS for us. Lyft was about $150 but said it'd take 2-3 hours for a car even to pick us up. WTF? And rental cars had become very expensive— around $350.

Ultimately we chose to rent a car for $350ish and drive ~2 hours to BOS. At the rental depot we saw several familiar faces from the gate. We got our car: a shitty Toyota C-HR. It's tiny, the engine is asthmatic, and the road noise in the cabin is thunderously loud even at 35mph. 2 hours on the highway to Boston is going to be a looong drive.

And that brings us to where we are now: at a roadside Applebee's. We decided to wait out part of the time before our 6am flight at a restaurant open late. We needed dinner anyway. This will put us on the road until after 1am but at least we'll have full stomachs. And lots of caffeine.

But hey, Applebee's didn't suck. This time. And while I ate my supper I got through to someone at the hotel in Chicago who assured me that they wouldn't charge me for having to cancel my non-refundable stay. I hope they mean it; it's almost $350 down the drain (in addition to the $350 rental car) otherwise.

Keep reading: 2am at Boston Airport

2am at the Airport

Maine Week Travelog Ω
BOS Terminal C - Tuesday, 22 Jun 2021, 2am.

Right now I should be home. The flight I should have been on arrived 25 minutes early, and I would have been home— as in through my front door— by 11pm California time. Instead I am 2,700 miles away, at BOS airport, where it is 2am and I am sitting on an uncomfortable chair in the ticketing area because nothing is open for a few more hours and kids are running around screaming because nothing is open for a few more hours. This is what can happen when the airline first delays, then rebooks, and then cancels your flight.

Well, at least the drive from Portland went smoothly. About as smoothly as renting a piece-of-shit car for what worked out to be over $100/hour can be. As we rolled into the densely packed BOS airport, with bridges and electric lights overhead, I felt immediately comfortable. I was in a real airport. It was like, "Chewie, we're home." 

....Except we're not home. We're still 2,700 miles away. But at least we're at the spaceport airport. We'll see if this old bucket of bolts still has it where it counts— I mean, now we just have to wait it out for a few hours until the check-in counters and TSA checkpoint open. That'll be, what, 4:30am?

Update: The counters and security checkpoint opened at 3. Yay. We shambled through them and waited out 1.5 hours at our gate for our 6am flight to begin boarding at 5:20am.

Update 2: I arrived home only 12 hours later than originally planned (read next blog).