Travel

Didn't work out. We're turning back.

Don't Ask Me About the Plane

Salem, Massachusetts, is known for one thing, and one thing only: witch trials that were held there in 1692. Witch trials that, according to at least one TV documentary I saw, may have been fomented somewhat by the lack of any sort of entertainment in Salem. The natural irony is that all Salem entertainment today is based on witch trial history. Somebody needed to break this cycle. That somebody was the guy who runs this place:

This is a car repair place, although you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a mini golf. The guy who runs it also works at an animal reserve and rescue place in Cost Rica. Or something very close to that; he had a sign up inside that explained it properly, but I didn't have my camera with me then. This is his way of sharing with the world.

Libraries I Have Blogged From

Here in Lebanon, New Hampshire, you get two basic choices for "library," and they are both ridiculous. The first is the Lebanon Public Library, which is built primarily out of marble and, even with a new wing, is so tiny that the books have to really be packed in there. This is the children's room:

See, that's what I imagine a children's room in a library looking like - a congenial mess. My wife and I spent a fair amount of time there because 1) usually there aren't actually that many children, and 2) the adult section had the one obligatory creepy guy who never left. Later on we found out that there was some extra space on the second floor, which you can get to with this elevator:

Which contains this phone:

The piece of paper taped to the handset says "Call 911."

and then be left alone to browse the Internet in peace.

Your second choice is the Kilton Public Library, which was finished in 2011 and feels remarkably like an airport concourse. This is what the inside of Kilton looks like:

That's... not actually that many books. "Spacious" isn't a word you normally associate with libraries, either. How many people did it take to bankroll such a majestic public structure?

This many:

Holy living fuck. That board is four feet wide and contains 526 plaques. BUT - does Kilton have this poster?

My wife says this is the "2000s-est thing ever." She's not wrong.

Nope, that's the proud property of Lebanon Public. This is too close to call. Let's go to the grid.

Criterion	Kilton PL	Lebanon PL
Books?	Some	Lots
Wi-Fi?	Y	Y
Sells coffee?	Y	N
Bathrooms?	M + F	Unisex (2)
Bathroom smelled like weed smoke at least once?	N	Y
Will sell you photocopy of NYT crossword?	Y	Y
Spells "public" as "pvblic"?	N	Y
My Little Pony-themed Obama-style poster?	N	Y
Donations board the size of a flatscreen TV?	Y	N
Confernce room with moving walls?	Y	N
Microfilm machine?	?	Y
Share a website?	Oh	yeah.

Clearly, this is still too close to call. Such are the bountiful options if you are in Lebanon, N.H., and need a place to read/blog/get high.

Water Is the Enemy

Water is the enemy.

Water permeates. Water corrodes. Water consumes.

To be fair, the fine folks at Isuzu and Concord, makers of my car and camper, respectively, did their best. Nineteen is old for a car. Forty-three is really old for a camper. And where things are starting to give out, water is starting to get in.

I don't know the full providence of Milo, the Isuzu, but I bought it in Vermont and it looks like it were used there its whole life. Vermonters use road salt, and it's hard to explain the ramifications of that to people who've never woken up to a thermometer reading -10 and whined "Not again!" to themselves. By lowering the freezing point of water, the ultimate need and ultimate enemy, road salt makes roads passable under circumstances they wouldn't otherwise be. But it comes at a terrible price.

Milo is rust-eaten to a degree that astounded the man who sold it to be and then ended up doing frame repair work. I backed into some steps with the trailer hitch and about ten pounds of rust fell off. Just handfuls of gravel-sized pieces of iron oxide.

Water is the enemy

The camper, a 1969 Woodsman Traveler, leaks. I'm not entirely sure from where - a path of delaminating wood indicates the back window - and it's making the board the mattress sits on wet. Laying down a tarp seems to help some, but only to a point.

Yesterday, I spent an hour and a half - I checked the clock - trying to get a taillight to come on because water had seeped into the casing. This was on the truck, and the taillight, after being cracked by a previous owner, was patched with some sort of rubbery epoxy. But water got in anyway and the taillight stopped working. After pulling out some (naturally) rust-eaten screws, I managed to liberate the old bulb and then had a certified hell of a time trying to get the new one to come on because one of the contact points in the socket was rusted over and in a hard-to-get place.

As this latitude, at this time of year, an hour and a half is most of your afternoon, and I spent mine trying to make a bulb come on so the cops wouldn't pull me over again. Because water is the enemy.