Best Thinking

I have MS and Chrone's Disease, both are immuno deficiency diseases, which essentially means that like HIV, without the contagious aspect or the death sentence that HIV carries, my immune system is very low and I am capable of catching pretty much anything that I'm exposed to. With the H1N1 flu currently hovering, my physician thinks that he should take all possible measures to make certain that I don't get the flu, pneumonia, and whatever else is out there right now. So, he rightly infuses me with Methotrexate every two weeks to shore up my immunities. His medical office also happens to be located 2 1/2 hours south of where I live. So every two weeks, I get up and get into my car heading south on Route 1.

While there are times when this trip is inconvenient, financially troublesome as the price of gas, the appointment and whatever medications the doctor may or may not prescribe during that visit has at times totaled more than $200.00 for the day; or I just don't feel all that well and have no one to take me there, I generally enjoy the ride. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that Rte 1 in Maine runs along the coastline and through many towns, mostly small and many of which are serious tourist attractions from late May to the day AFTER the last leaf falls off of the last tree.

After that bleak occurance, we get a not so bleak break of about three weeks before the Christmas shoppers descend upon the many great outlet stores, primarily in Freeport. Then, they are of course followed (in recent years it has overlapped) by the skiiers who inhabit my area of the state and that goes on until our next brief brake, which begins, depending upon the snow fall of the season and how long it remains on the ground (this year that was until early April), when the snow melts and ends when people begin arriving to get their 'camps' (Maine-speak for summer homes) in shape for the season; and the ferries have been known to start filling to capacity with SUV's stuffed with Pottery Barn's stock for that season, as early as the beginning of May.

So, during most of the year, this can be a frustrating drive. It can take anywhere from the 2 1/2 hours advertised by Google, to (once) close to 4 hours, one hour of which was spent creeping through Camden averaging 10 mph, because the parade of tourists on Main St. was so bad that day that no one could successfully negotiate it without stopping several times to permit slow walkers to cross the street (Maine state law says STOP if you see a pedestrian stepping off the curb).

At first, because I arrived here after spending a decade in California, which although far more crowded every day, than Maine is on it's worst day of any season, has some darn good highway systems. So, in Cali unless it's rush hour you can be relatively assured that you have the choice to take 280, a highway, and scream to your destination; or Route 1, which again, runs along the Coast, and putting your brake pads through their paces. However, there it's a choice, and that is what I was used to. In this part of Maine, it is not a choice, it is actually the fastest way to get from Surry to Brunswick. So, as you might imagine, when I first began making this bi-weekly trip, I was alternating between screaming 'go back to (wherever the license plate in front of me was from)!!' at the top of my lungs, or yanking on my hair so hard that it brought tears to my eyes.

Now, after six months of doing this, I am simply resigned. I leave earlier, make a couple of stops along the way, and have come to accept that I will be driving at the speed limit or an average of 10 mph slower than what is posted, and no faster!

Of late, I have also come to discover that during these rides I seem to do my best thinking. Depending upon several different factors which aren't print worthy, I often find myself thinking of new story ideas. During my last two trips, I came up with what I thought were some darn good ideas. I even had the articles partially written in my head by the time I was halfway home. Alas, because one of my MS symptoms is cognitive and I have developed some memory problems, and because the state of Maine frowns upon people who put their eye makeup on while driving or write on pads that are propped on the steering wheel, I have also once managed to forget the whole thing, including the primary idea, and this time all but the primary idea for the article itself.

So, when I arrived home last night, after hurriedly writing that idea on paper and having vowed that I'd be making road side stops for five or ten minutes at a clip for the time being, I informed my husband Bob that all I wanted for Christmas (surely the first of many such 'only' requests of the season from me) was a digital hand held voice activated recorder the size of my cell phone, and no bigger (as I think that if I can't make the purchase myself, I should be obsessively specific). He was actually quite nice about it, he didn't sneer at me anyway.

Yesterday's ride, although a rain slicked one, wasn't bad. I was able to pass all of the little old ladies, lost Columbus Day weekend tourists, and passive aggressive jerks who were only driving the speed limit (usually 55) when the lines in the middle of the road indicated that they might be passed with no oncoming traffic to prevent this from happening, and at all other times the usual, if I am very lucky, 15 miles under what was posted. So I was just a bit less frustrated than usual, in fact I think that my blood pressure was near normal!

The thing about tourists is that they appear to arrive at their 'exciting' destination, seemingly carefully chosen, worthy of much planning, budgeting, even discussing with (in the case of Maine, admitting to) their friends with preconceived notions about the inhabitants of their idillic vacation spot. These ideas are generally not only wrong, they are also borderline ignorant because they are so far from the truth.

When we lived in California our visitors usually had something to say about the fact that the water was 'cold', the beaches not only scarcer than presumed, but generally required some ability to descend cliffs to access. Rare was the comment about the beauty of the views or the excitement of driving so near a 70 foot drop into the water on Devil's Slide.

When noting that we lived during most of that time, in or around San Francisco, we were asked where 'the gays' lived, much more often than our guests asked to be taken to the Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park, or expressed any fascination about the golden gate bridge or the often unexpected mini climates found from block to block. Oh, they did want to know, but it was generally the salacious that trumped the interesting.

Now that we are in Maine, surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Hill Mountains on one side of us and Penobscot Bay on the other. With Acadia National Park's Cadillac Mountain that consists primarily of Pink Quartz, and Bar Harbor mere minutes away from our home, we find that those very same friends and relatives, so grateful that Bob and I always seem to live in 'resort areas, tee hee', as well as the many other tourists that we encounter daily, appear to be under the impression that most of Maine's inhabitants dress in flannel year round, have several of their deciduous teeth missing permanently, and are suppposed to be giving lobster away at their road side stands. When they encounter the many great Art Gallerys that can be found on almost every Main Street in our state, they walk in to them expressing shock that it's not Aunt Glady's paint by numbers hanging on them walls, but work done by 'real artists' who must somehow have gotten lost along the way.