Day 35: Portland, ME
Welcome
Yesterday we made our way to the one-syllable state to play at Portland House of Music and Events.
We met at 8am in the lobby, a nice early start to give us plenty of time for the 500km drive up to Maine. The previous night we had driven up to Secaucus in northern New Jersey and it was there that we set out from, getting back onto the New Jersey Turnpike’s eastern spur until we branched off to the east to cross into New York, right at the top of Manhattan Island. After crossing the East River on the George Washington Bridge’s lower deck we headed up into Westchester County, and the Hutchinson River Parkway, and it was there that a minor drama occurred.
Crossing George Washington Bridge.
📷 Tristan Deck
Our van has a clearance of 11ft – a consequence of the 11kW, high performance air conditioner that stands proud of the roof. As we were enjoying the weaving lines that the parkway cuts through Saxon Woods Park we rounded a bend and were rapidly approached a stone arch bridge that displayed a maximum height of 10’7”. It was too late to stop so I screamed and hoped for the best. The sign must have been exaggerated or denoting the very lowest point of the archway for we passed through unscathed. In a few minutes we came to another bridge, this one marked 10’6”. I stuck to the centre lane and passed under the highest point of the arch, and we were fine. A few more minutes elapsed, and we were feeling confident. Then we spotted the next sign, a 9’6” – this was too low and I pulled the van over onto the shoulder so we could figure out what to do. We sat and watched the traffic, observing several similar vans pass under with plenty of clearance, though none with humpback air conditioner.
Pulled over to observe the traffic.
📷 Tristan Deck
Eventually after some back-of-napkin trigonometry we decided that 9’6” at the edges gave us just enough clearance in the centre and since there was no way to reverse out of the parkway we decided to proceed in a confident manner. We felt invincible as we again safely passed through the stone archway. How close it was we will never know. I took the next exit from the parkway opting for a slower and less stressful route. If we had continued along our planned route on the Merritt Parkway, we would have encountered an 8ft height limit and gotten ourselves into a real pickle. After some further reading on the subject I discovered that New York and Connecticut parkways are notorious for their low clearances and there are countless photos of trucks and RVs that have had a good haircut.
We stopped in the town of Brewster for breakfast at Ronaldo’s Bagels and Deli where I ordered an everything bagel with bacon, egg, and cheese. The rest of the journey was uneventful and took us across Connecticut and Massachusetts, and then a tiny bit of New Hampshire before entering Maine.
As we crossed the state line there was a great view of the Piscataqua River and stretching across the water between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine, was a very elegant bridge, with four tall, white pillars giving away that it was a lift bridge of some kind. The Sarah Milfred-Long Bridge might be the first structure I have come across that is named after a woman. It is named after an employee of the Maine-New Hampshire Interstate Bridge Authority who had dedicated fifty years of her life to this crossing. She began as a secretary and eventually rose to become its executive director. The current structure was completed in 2018 and is a concrete lift bridge with a lifting span of 91m and a total length of 850m. The bridge carries road traffic on its upper level and rail traffic on the lower level, and the lift portion is dual-purpose with integrated rails, descending to the lower level when rail traffic needs to cross.
The Sarah Milfred-Long Bridge.
We were feeling utterly exhausted by the time we arrived at PHOME, a small square venue housed in a nondescript building in Portland’s old town. Coffees and teas were prepared and we summoned just enough energy to get through soundcheck. Before dinner we walked down to the waterfront hoping to see a lighthouse. The Portland Breakwater Light, known colloquially as the Bug Light was just visible from the pier we were walking along and if you squinted you could almost see why it is known as Portland’s most elegant lighthouse. Its Corinthian columns and roof edge adornments are modelled on a Greek monument built in the 4th century and its sixth order Fresnel lens transmits a flashing white light every four seconds.
The Bug Light, built in 1875, decommissioned 1943. Reactivated 2002 as a private navigational aid.
📷 Elizabeth Stokes
We splashed out on lobster rolls for dinner, the speciality of this state which catches over 50,000 tonnes of lobster per year.
Then it was show time so we headed back to enjoy Rosie Tucker as they played the fourth to last set of our tour. Our own performance was fun although perhaps on the messier side of things.
The pack train with a bend.
I’ll leave you with this small clip which demonstrates how I just figured out how to hitch my pedal board to my suitcase as a trailer and therefore make it up to the room in one trip while also packing a tray of fruit.
