From International Nerd Day to Spontaneous Day...

Music: Alec Empire & El-p - Shards of Pol Pottery (Hard Mix) | Skinny Puppy - TFWO (Live)

For some reason this didn't publish 2 weeks ago. (Dated: May 18, 2008)

What a great weekend. What a truely great weekend!

Did you ever have trouble trying to express that amount of fun that you've had doing something in particular, yet want to tell the entire story from start to finish without missing a single thing? Thats the point where I am right now, I'll see if I can do it justice.

The day started out with the notion that it was Nerd Pride Day (I keep calling it International Nerd Day). (You can see it here. Yes, I am one of the "cool" people who has a facebook account, so? Its nerdy.)

As the day progressed past noon, my wife and I turned it into Spontaneous Day.

I later tried to rename the day Random Day but that was vetoed and squashed by my wife numerous times.

Here is how it happened:

Sunday was just like any other day, I had woken up early and begun to make plans for the day. Since it was a special Nerdy type day (well, not much is different from any other day) I decided that I was going to format my computer and put the latest version of Fedora on it.

Shortly after deciding this my wife had gotten out of bed and asked me to watch a movie with her, The Thomas Crown Affair, we begin to watch it and half-way through we begin to discuss thoughts of going for a drive, she was initially thinking Sussex but I was thinking somewhere new. Some place we hadn't been before.

I grab the road atlas from the shelf and begin to leaf through the pages looking for someplace cool to go. I settle on a senic drive around a lake on the other side of the County and begin to show it to my wife.

She interrupts me with: "Want to go to Maine?"

Thus began Spontaneous Day!
OK!

It was 12:15 when we decided this, we showered, dressed and at the gas station 35 minutes later.

We had initial plans to persuade friends of ours to come with us on this journey as they seem to as random as we were, after a 15 minute cell phone discussion on the way to their place and then a further 15 minute discussion with them in their living room, they still wouldn't budge. Pansies.

We hit the road and drove to the US/Canada border 45 minutes away.

We take the turn off for I-95 and head towards Houlton, Maine and the beginning of our adventure. We drive for what seems like an eternity, but in reality was about 15 minutes until we reach the signs for customs.

Up until this point I had never driven across the border, I had always flown, so this was a new experience. We get to the Customs agent, and he asks us what we are doing and we say going over for the after noon, by this time it was about 2pm so we knew we didn't have much time to do anything before having to go back. He checks our passports and we head into the US.

We see a sign for a Visitor Information center, so we decide to go in and find a map of Maine so that we couldn't get too lost. The little elderly ladies working the center were terrific.

On the way in we say a young gentleman pick up a girl and put her on the trunk of the car, I was beginning to wonder why he did this until we could hear the thumping music coming from the car. I look at my wife and say, "She likes the vibrations." We giggle at them for a good 20 minutes.

Her: "Where are you from?"
Me: "Canada."
Her: "Where are you going today?"
Me: "We don't know."
Her, puzzled: "What do you plan on doing?"
Me: "We haven't figured that out yet."
Her, thinking we're idiots and laughing: "Well, how can I give you information then?"
Me: "I dunno, you have a map of Maine?"
Her: "That I can help you with."

She then proceeds to hand me brochures, pamphlets and her kidney for places that are in the area, and by area I mean New England. She starts telling us about the wonderful stuff in Portland, Bangor, Bar Harbour and Boston.

I turn and say thanks before going back outside to giggle at her, and the horny couple in the parking lot.

We drive around Houlton, taking note of the million and two flags displayed in various locations, stop for a shopping trip at Marden's, and then found a cute little walking bridge over a river.

We drive through town and look for something new to do, its 3 and there much be something else in Houlton. We see a sign for "Million Dollar View" and think that it might be a groovy thing to do. We turn around and head up the road. We're driving for what seems to be quite a long time (10 minutes) when my wife reads that there is a 500,000 square foot mall in Presque Isle, I pull a u-turn on the road and make like a bandit for the mall.

We get to Presque Isle at about 4:30, giving us exactly 30 minutes to browse through the mall, its stores before settling someplace to eat. We notice when we pull in that there is a K-MART, there hasn't been a K-Mart in Canada for something like 10 years, and its open until TEN that night.

We're going through the mall, I stop at a CD shop any my wife at a clothing store briefly before going to Sears and Staples as our final stops before the mall closes. We come back out and are startled to see that the mall is still open we take a run back down and stop at the dollar store.

As we're leaving the store it hits me. No, thats not right.

As we're leaving the store it *HITS* me.

We crossed the border at 2pm this afternoon. Thats a time-zone. Its only FOUR pm. Holy shit we have another hour before stuff closes!

We take our time in going back down the mall, I buy some music (The Kooks and Arcade Fire) and Amanda goes clothes shopping.

Its time for supper, we're starving, its 6pm in our bodies (and minds) and we go to this place called Ruby Tuesday for supper. Its a cute little spot and we order some food (Salmon and Chicken) and talk about when we go home, what we have to do, etc.

We gather up the stuff that we bought and hit the road again, we figure we'll drive back down to Houlton and drive across the border there and then the 45 minutes to home. The bugs were crazy down there and we had to stop halfway down to Houlton to clean them. We stopped at a gas station to clean them and noticed a sign as we turned in that said Canada left. (essentially)

After getting bitten 15 times in 2 minutes by the hoards of mosquitos outside we turn down the road and head back to Canada. We looked at the map and figured we had 10 minutes to get customs. 30 seconds later we were at the border.

Rolling down the window to talk to the customs agent near got me killed by the mosquitos, we found ourselves back on our way to Canada. Bringing Spontaneous day to a thrilling conclusion.