Friday, July 4, 2014

Portland [Rain Out]

On Yin and Yang

Yeppers
Friday, July 4, 2014
Portland, ME


Outside the Game:
I started this day with as close to eight hours of sleep under my belt in the first time in I don't even remember how long. Going downstairs, I saw they had stopped serving breakfast, so I headed out into Lowell on the morning of July 4th. The problem with a lot of mom & pop places is that they are closed on holidays; I would have liked to eat there, but I could not. I eventually found an open Dunkin' Donuts, procured a breakfast bagel sandwich, and went back to the hotel.

With nothing to do and fearing holiday traffic, I set out at a little after 10 AM further north into New England. The drive was only about an hour and a half, and despite one or two slowdowns, I arrived about when I expected.

Hadlock Field
Hadlock Field

 had received a rather urgent email from the Sea Dogs the night before saying that they were expecting larger than average crowds and I should pick up your tickets as soon as possible. So my first stop in town was the stadium. I got my ticket from the booth, and, since I was here, went around to do my photography. As I approached the right field side of the park in the lot, I saw someone from the team getting something out of a storage unit in the back of the parking lot, and he saw me taking pictures. And it led to the oddest conversations I've ever had.

[For sake of clarity, I'm going to translate from Maine to English here. The first line below from the worker was phonetically, "Daah's ohpan."]

"Door's open."
"Excuse me?"
"Door to the gate is open if you want to go in an take pictures."
"To the field?" My voice cracked audibly, like a thirteen year-old asking someone out for the first time.
"Yeah."
"Well, thank you, if you say it's okay..." I said this edging my way to the gate in case he changed his mind.

And I still thought it was an elaborate setup. I took tentative steps inside. There were no cops waiting around the corner to billy club me into submission. I walked up the ramp out to the field. Still no cops. I tentatively took out my camera and started taking pictures from an inconspicuous place on the walkway.

Still not arrested, I decided to be more bold and walk around and take my usual pictures from all vantage points. I saw someone up in the broadcast booth. He did not make a move to call the authorities. I went down the same ramp I entered and started walking around the interior walkway under the seats for about half way. Around the corner, I heard someone, and still not exactly sure it was okay for me to be there and suddenly affeared of being tossed from the stadium and banned, I beat a quick but sufficiently un-guilty looking retreat back outside the park.

I then went into the opened team store and immediately realized they saw me the entire time I was inside through a big window facing the interior of the park. I made my purchases and went out to my car. On the way, I ran into an older couple. The man asked me if I was a baseball fan, which is always a complicated question for me to answer. He told me that (presumably) the same grounds crew member let them into the stadium to take a look, and I said the same had happened to me. We got to talking, and it turns out that he was from San Diego, and he and the wife were out on vacation and wanted to see a few minor league parks. To make a long story short, I now have an open invitation to visit San Diego again. We joked about the threatening weather and went on our ways.

Having nothing particular to do, I decided that since I was in Maine, I might as well see a lighthouse. The Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse was open that afternoon, so I drove down some particularly weird streets and eventually found the parking lot. The light house was right off a WWII-era shore fortification for the Atlantic fleet that has dissolved away into crumbling concrete casements.

Getting out to the lighthouse was a bit of an adventure. You pay your admission at a small shed on the shore, and then you go over a sea wall onto a relatively flat dumping of rocks that leads out to the lighthouse. I was to later find out that this was not a walkway for the lighthouse, but a shore berm put up by the Army Corps of Engineers. When they were further asked to put a nicer walkway on the top of it for access to the lighthouse, they said that it worked as a sea berm, which was their job, and they promptly left.

Lighthouse walkway
Stone walkway

Which left about a quarter mile of ramshackle large stones to traverse to get to the lighthouse. While the tops of the stones were largely flat, it is the irregular and sometimes large gaps between the stones that are the more troubling part of the experience. As I struggled along, I was put to shame by more elderly people making the trip, not to mention the guy on crutches.

After a more arduous than expected journey, I made it to the lighthouse proper. It was still in use, but in a more modern sense. It had a laser-triggered, electrically powered fog horn that was powered by a pair of solar panels on the base of the lighthouse instead of some guy hitting a bell, for example.

Lighthouse
The light in the house

Once you climbed up into the structure, you were greeted to the more traditional lighthouse process. On each level, there was a volunteer who was there to explain what went on in that level, until you reached the very top with the light and the fog bell. What was a revelation to me was how tiny the actual light in the lighthouse was. The fog-penetrating power came from the special lenses used over the light, which magnified its power exponentially. After having my fill of the house, I had to climb back down. It was then that it started lightly raining, making the return trip over the sea stones the same as before, but slightly more slippery.

After getting back on terra firma, I took a little walk around the old sea fort, and then drove into downtown to see the sites there. It took a bit of driving around to find an open parking lot in the area. Once parked, I went and grabbed a sub from a local shop in the area, and then headed over to the Wordsworth House Museum.

It turns out I should have reversed the order there, as I got the museum just at 2 PM, when it was closing that day because of the holiday. Okay, sure.

Undeterred, I decided to go to "Old Port," which is where the old port was, I suppose, and was now a fashionable shopping and culture area. I was decidedly unimpressed with most of the experience, which was a little too reminiscent of Hoboken for my tastes, but there was a store called "The House of Jerky," and if there ever was a place for a person, here we are. After buying the store out, I wandered about a little more before heading back to my car.

I went out to my hotel outside of town down by the airport to check in and get settled before the game. I got into my rather posh hotel room, prepared everything for the next day, and then lay down for a nap before heading out to the game.

Upon waking up, it was raining again. But it wasn't too bad at first sight. I went out to my car in my rain poncho and drove the short distance to the stadium just when the gates were set to open slightly early to accommodate the large expected crowd.

And as I rolled in, I saw the "Game Cancelled" sign on the stadium held aloft by the smiling Sea Dog mascot. I sighed and parked to see what was up. I went to the ticket booth, and apparently, the forecast called for rain for the rest of the evening far into the morning. I asked when the game was going to be made up, and it was going to be a double-header the next day. Problem #1: It was starting at 5 PM, making attendance at that game and the one in New Hampshire an impossibility. Problem #2: Because the ticket holders for the original Saturday game got preferences, I could only trade my box seat for a General Admission seat.

Not knowing what to do yet, I changed the ticket and then went back to my hotel to hunker down for the night. Thankfully, this was the nicest hotel room I had on my trip. I went downstairs to order some dinner from the hotel restaurant to take back to my room, grabbed some more snacks from the snack bar, and then removed pants for the evening.

After eating, I first decided to take a soak in the tub while watching TV on my iPad. Then I splayed out on my love seat for the rest of the evening, watching TV, writing, and checking every half hour or so on the rain.

I did the research, and I determined it was better for me to go to New Hampshire as scheduled the next day, and then to come back at the start of August to re-do Portland along with the Vermont, the only other New England team not home this weekend.

Eventually, I moved from the love seat to my bed, and I went to sleep at some point, with the rhythmic pounding of the rain outside my window as an unwanted background soundtrack.


The Accommodations:
Courtyard Marriott Portland Airport
Courtyard Marriott Portland Airport

When I was booking this night, I knew I was going to get screwed pretty badly in the state capital on a Friday July 4th, but frankly the costs of hotels downtown was truly staggering. There was nothing to be had for under $200, so I went farther afield. There were a number of hotels near the smallish Portland Airport that was just outside of downtown, and while still pricey, they kept it under $200.

I decided on Courtyard by Marriott Portland Airport. It was a fancy hotel that clearly wanted to be seen as a fancy hotel, but wasn't quite as fancy as it wanted to believe. It was very nice, to be fair, but it was trying a little too hard.

Nevertheless, my room was good enough. A small enclave held a refrigerator and coffee machine, my wooden-headboarded bed faced the windows and a love seat, with a desk, TV, and dresser on the facing wall. The bathroom was stylish, with a half-wall divider between the sink and toiler and a designer shower and tub that was made good use of.



2014 July 4th

No comments:

Post a Comment