Maine: Don’t Worry About It
The banking holiday of Columbus Day happened fall on the Monday just after my assignment in Dallas. In lieu of heading straight home, I decided to take a quick detour to Portland, Maine. I made this detour for a number of reasons. Maine is the only state on the eastern seaboard of the United States I haven’t visited. I have also never gotten to experience New England in the fall. And most importantly, I would get to visit with some friends I haven’t seen in far too long. Combine this with American’s very reasonable fares from Dallas to Boston (just a short drive from Portland), and it was time to partay.
American Airlines 1430
Dallas/Fort Worth to Boston
Depart: 1:45 PM
Arrive: 6:30 PM
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800
Seat: 9A (Economy Class)
Because of this and that popping up at that last minute, I ended leaving work late and had to haul it to DFW to make my flight. While I could have caught a later flight, one of my friends was counting on meeting me in Boston as I had booked our rental car. It was a tight squeeze but I made it. Unsurprisingly, my upgrade didn’t clear. Dallas to Boston is a very elite heavy route. As a lowly AAdvantage Platinum I ended up 20th on a 48 deep upgrade list, which is one of the longest upgrade lists I have ever seen on American. With a decent Main Cabin Extra seat and an early arrival, missing out on the upgrade really didn’t matter anymore.
The only thing of note on this flight was what I found in my seatback pocket. I don’t make it a habit of checking out the inflight magazine or any of the other contents of the seatback pocket, but this caught my eye and I couldn’t resist checking this out. Anyone else spot what’s wrong with this picture?
The flight was pretty smooth until the initial stages of decent into Boston. We touched down at a very wet Logan International Airport about 30 minutes early and arrived at the gate shortly after that. My friend, who was flying in from Chicago on United, was supposed to arrive well before I did. But she ended being delayed and with my early arrival, we actually arrived within minutes of each other. After collecting her bag at baggage claim, we hopped on the rental car center bus.
Rental cars were stupid expensive that weekend. I’m talking about over $400 for three days in a midsize car. Fortunately, I had some free rental days with National available which saved us a bundle of money. One of the best things about renting with National is being able to choose your own vehicle, even as a general member of their loyalty program. As an Executive member, there is an even better selection available. The Executive selection at Boston was excellent. I picked out a 2015 Toyota 4Runner SR5 4x4 with just 3,000 miles on the odometer. It was perfect for running up the side of a mountain, and more than adequate for navigating the concrete jungle.
We successfully navigated through the airport and the Big Dig and then swung north on I-95 toward Portland. Rain was coming down steadily, but not enough to slow us down. I am somewhat weird in this regard, as I actually enjoy driving through the rain at night. There’s something soothing about pitter patter of raindrops against the windshield in the darkness. Inside the vehicle, a duel of eclectic music collections was raging on between my friend and I. I kid you not, everything from Beethoven to Elvis to N’Sync to Green Day and 36 Mafia was pumped through the 4Runner’s audio system. All in all, it was a fun drive up to Portland.
Our digs for the weekend was actually just south of Portland, in the town of Scarborough. We rented a duplex through VBRO for three nights. The total cost was $1,500, which sounds like a lot. But when you split between 5 people, the costs come down to about $100 per night, which is very reasonable. Especially considering we had a beautiful 2,000 plus square feet house to ourselves. The house was a bit older, probably dating back to sometime before World War II. So it had beautiful woodwork, trim, and roughhewn wood floor boards. But it was beautifully remodeled and refitted with all of the expected modern conveniences. While none of us had the presence of mind to take any pictures of the place, here are a few photos from the listing, which can be found here.
The house sat on the banks of Nonesuch River, and is just a few minutes from the beach. The backyard was the perfect to sit around and enjoy a cup of coffee early in the morning.
We arrived at the house just before 10PM. Our other friends had arrived earlier, and had found the furnace to be out. Though it was early October, temperatures were pretty chilly especially for us folks from Texas. While we waited for the repairman to come, we lit the fireplace and found some activities to keep us warm. A big shout out to the great folks at the local Starbucks for helping us with this endeavor.
Typically when I go on vacation, there’s always some sort of objective. I have to see this, do that, etc. My travel for work is also quite grueling. At this point, I had already been on the road for 128 nights and I would finish 2015 with 151 nights out. While I love being on the go all the time, it has worn on me. One of my favorite parts of this jaunt to Maine, is that there was no true objective. I could look out to the backyard or take a short drive to see the fall foliage. A Starbucks and grocery were less 20 minutes away, and one of Maine’s oldest and well known lobster pond was within walking distance. It was the perfect setup to just relax and chill. My friends are also in the same line of work, so they felt the same way about our weekend getaway. While we did plenty of relaxing around the house, we also went out and checked out some of the sites in Portland, starting with some of the beautiful classic homes on the north side of town.
Then we headed to the famous Portland Light lighthouse.
In the spirit of Halloween, which was only a couple of weeks away, we decided to check out the creepy looking fort in the distance. What could possibly go wrong?
“Boo!” indeed.
We also checked out Scarborough Beach State Park to see foliage and check out the beach. Though it was way too cold to swim, it was still a very pretty sight.
As a consequence of our nomadic lifestyle, we rarely get cook and eat at home. Since we’re on vacation, we figured we might as well take advantage of it and cook ourselves for once. It was actually a much better choice than heading out to a restaurant, even though Portland does have a fantastic restaurant scene. No need to wait for a table, and we could talk without worry of disturbing other restaurant patrons. With everyone pitching in, meals were prepared and cleaned up in no time at all.
The best part of the weekend was being able spend time with my friends. As we live in pretty much every corner of the US, we rarely see each other. To actually nail down a date where we were all free took several months. It was a fantastic opportunity for us to catch up and relax for a bit before returning to our hectic lives.
Last edited by dat4life; Jun 7, 2016 at 9:48 pm