THE WEEK THAT WAS

Wow. The week was crammed full of happenings, and we had no internet, so I've not able either to keep up with my friends or enable them to keep up with me.

Now we're in a different place and we're connected. So here's the update. After which I'm going to bed because I'm whupped.

We stayed the whole week in Bar Harbor, ME. I became a walker: 7 miles one day, 4 another, 6 another. Walking is..... well, slower than running.

It rained a lot while we were in Bar Harbor. But it was still beautiful, maybe more so in a moody sort of way.

One of the sunny days, we rented mountain bikes and rode around the dirt "carriage roads" in Acadia National Park. Lovely. It's been years since Steve went biking with me.

The plan was to stay Wednesday - Sunday, and leave for Gloucester, MA on Monday. But Saturday Steve discovered a major problem under our camper, requiring welding, and of course we couldn't contact a welder till Monday, so we stayed some extra days. On Monday, to kill time waiting for a welder to call us back, we decided to drive around the island (Bar Harbor is on Mount Desert Island) to see all the harbor villages. We turned the wrong way, discovered it after about half a mile (we were going to drive into the ocean if we kept going that way), and turned into a parking lot to turn around. We saw a couple running toward us waving their arms. Flick, focus.... holy cow, the young couple who own/manage the campground in Winchester, VA, where we worked all last winter!!! She's the one who arranged my whole work schedule (and thus, everyone else's) around my Ironman training schedule. So here we are in Bar Harbor due to a crippled camper when we thought we'd be on the way to Gloucester, turning around in a parking lot after a wrong turn, and we just happen to run into Karl and Selena, who were on a cruise of the New England and Canadian coast, and their ship was moored in Bar Harbor for just that day. Of all things!!!! That's their cruise ship in the background. We stuffed them into our truck and all went out to a great seafood restaurant for lunch.

The welding guy fixed our trailer that afternoon. But we still hadn't toured the harbor towns, so we stayed one more night (7th night free after you stayed 6) and drove our final tour of the island yesterday.

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

Finally we packed up and left for Gloucester today. Long ride, and with about an hour (or what should have been an hour) to go we saw this happen right in front of us:

That's one car, not two; his right front end hit the truck's left rear and stayed there and the rest of him went spinning. I thought at first the truck had a blowout, debris flying everywhere. Luckily we weren't so close we became part of it. I called 911 on my cell phone and told the dispatcher the driver was breathing but unresponsive (the dispatcher told me to calm down -- I hadn't realized I was yelling.) He regained consciousness in just a couple minutes and was coherent and oriented although he didn't know what had happened. Amazingly, he appeared to have only minor injuries, at least to the naked eye, even more amazing since he hadn't had a seat belt on. Steve and another driver (who was a paramedic) held his head and we all just kind of stayed there with him reminding him not to move, till the ambulance came.

Irony:

The driver of the truck that was stopped on the side of the road said, "I pulled over so I could reach into my cooler for a soda. I wasn't about to do that while I was driving.... didn't want to take a risk."

Well, now we're in Gloucester, or, more correctly, Cape Ann. And we have wi-fi. And it works. And I'm whupped. So I'm going to bed. What a day. What a week.