Weeks like this past one make me long for fall and deeply appreciate living in New England.
They also make me want to dry out my liver.

The week began last Friday when friends came up from CT with the intention of scalping tickets to the Red Sox game. We sat outside the Cask & Flagon for a spell before wandering over to the gate areas, armed with a steely resolve not to pay an exorbitant amount for assuredly crappy seats.

We ended up getting standing room only tickets for $20 which rocked... I never mind standing room only since I hate sitting in the middle of a long row of people and having to get up, making 30 people simultaneously stand just as Papi hits a three run homer. Nightmare of mine.

The game was awesome, Sox won, breeze blew in to the grandstands and we made friends with everyone around us including S and D, two dudes from Virginia Beach one of whom has run the Boston Marathon 5 times and was dismayed by his worst time this past year of 3:27. Yipes. S, the other guy, has done the Lake Placid Iron Man 4 times. This as we are slinging back a few beers on a gorgeous day...I got over the guilt quickly.

The next morning a gaggle of us loaded up and drove to North Conway, NH for a couple of days, staying at our usual motel with a clear view of Mount Washington. The weather blissfully dropped about 15 degrees, but on the top of Washington the weather had dipped to freezing and the Mt. Washington Bike Hill Climb (which we had wished to see) was canceled for the first time in many years. Apparently volunteers at the top were getting blown off their feet from the high winds. The hill climb is a brutal race, but awesome to watch. Several friends have competed in it and I vividly recall a few years back I was at the top waiting for them to finish and I could literally lean forward and the wind would hold me up.

The next day K, J and I hiked Moat Mountain, a brutal chug up a very steep trail that seemingly never ends. At times I was on my hands and knees, pulling myself up the step incline. After the death march, the view was insanely beautiful...


After a couple of days of hiking and pub crawling we made our way across Maine and to Acadia National Park which is a wild and wonderful place of rocks, ass old water, scrubby pine and quiet beauty.
Bar Harbor I can do without, an "eclectic" maze of stores and restaurants catering to the wealthy tourist but the rest of Acadia is simply amazing. We hiked Cadillac Mountain and the view from the top was enhanced by a cold beer downed while hawks circled overhead rather ominously.
The view, you ask?

We stayed in what the Internet called "a collection of quaint cottages"but in reality was a set of dilapidated, sagging tiny bungalows, porches overgrown with bushes that hadn't been pruned since Carter was President and the matron came complete with a beehive haircut and bejeweled cats eye glasses, not bought at Target Optical. Her drawl was thick and peppered with "hereyahs" and "thereyahs" as she pointed us to our little Bates motel. Three of us crammed in and made food on the tiny range/sink/fridge in one. Then we all snuggled in our 15 degree sleeping bags and sat out on the front 'lawn', an overgrown wilderness framed by rusting lobster traps and teeming with chipmunks. The lack of light pollution revealed more shooting stars then I have seen in years.

Heading home the next day, we drove down Route 1... a slow but awesome alternative to 95 and stopped in Portsmouth for lunch and beer at the Portsmouth Brewery, home of some of the best hummus I have ever had.
All in all, awesomeawesomeawesome. A fabulous send-off to Israel... my fill of some of the best of New England.