Stroke! Stroke!

Yesterday morning I rolled out of bed before 6am, groggy and a bit grouchy, but positive at the sight of the sun peeking over the horizon. After a quick shower and some breakfast I was sufficiently awake and functional, and ready for the trek out to Appleton.

Joe and his friend were competing in an annual canoe race in a few hours. I know what you're thinking...we still have snow on the ground, why in the world would there be a canoe race? Well...I'm not sure. But it's a tradition here and after arriving to the launch site and seeing a number of father-son teams, I realized it was mostly a family tradition. If your parents raced, you raced. Of course not everyone was a descendant of a canoe racer, I saw a couple of younger guys in their cut off t-shirts, ball caps and sunglasses (even though there was no sun whatsoever). But for the most part there were locals. Lots and lots of locals--somewhere around 100 participants.

Needless to say, I didn't participate. I watched. There's a bridge in the middle of the roughly 3 mile stretch where families and friends gather to watch the canoes go over a small rapid. We saw one poor guy fall out of his canoe after hitting a rock in the first set of rapids. Thankfully he had a light vessel and was able to stand up in the shallow waters and move his canoe to a better spot before getting back in.

Joe and Pete had a rather close call of their own. They came dangerously close to tipping over into the cold water on the same rapids.



Luckily these guys in red were standing watch, ready to jump in after anyone that needed assistance. I though their suits made them look like they were about to clean up hazardous waste as opposed to jump in a freezing cold river, but I suppose the amount of protection needed for both tasks is rather similar.



The boys made it safely to the end. Their legs and feet were mostly numb from the cold waters, but after a changing into some warmer clothes, they thawed out just fine. We're waiting to hear their race time until it's published in the paper, but they're not all that worried. While some participants were in it to win it, they were merely there for a good time. And lucky for them, there's another race next weekend!

Hello Delicious!

Tried our hand at recreating one of my favorite dishes from a restaurant back home. Calamari a la Florence. And guess what...it was a deliciously, fantastic success!!!

Old Illustrations

I was poking through some old spot illustration books today. Some of these are fantastic! I'm kind of upset I didn't discover these before! It makes me think about how newspapers were put together in the past...cutting, pasting, taping..it all seems like so much work, and yet it has a certain charm to it that just doesn't exist today.

It's Always Waiting

We took a hike out to Compass Harbor the other day. It was a pleasantly sunny day and the harbor was a nice reminder of what we've been looking forward to all winter. The smell of the ocean, the crash of the waves, the rocky shore...it's all there, waiting for us. It's nice to know that the shore doesn't go away in the winter. It might get a bit colder, but it's still there, waiting for us to crawl out of hibernation and come visit.








It's also great to be able to climb a tree again!

Happy St. Patty's

A few days late...

Lightning Balls? Really?

As many of you know, I work at a newspaper her in my lovely little town. Well this past week we ran a story about some strange weather from back in 1853. It was originally described in the Ellsworth Herald on March 4. I always take the time to read the paper every week, but I must admit that there isn't a whole lot going on here in the winter, so the news isn't always all that exciting. But this story definitely caught my eye. Here's an excerpt from the original article:

“Mrs. E. Holden was near a window, winding up a clock; a ball of fire came in through the window and struck her hand, which benumbed her hand and arm. She then, with all in the house, retreated into the entry. Another flash succeeded, and, in the room from which they had retired, resembled [sic] a volume of fire, whirling around and producing a cracking noise. A similar appearance of fire was seen, and cracking noises were heard in a large number of houses. Some who heard the noise say it sounded like breaking glass.

Capt. Maurice Rich had his light extinguished, and his wife was injured. He got his wife onto a bed and found a match; at that instant another flash came and ignited the match and threw him several feet backwards. John L. Martin received such a shock that he could not speak for a long time.

A great many people were slightly injured. Some were struck in the feet, some in the eye while others were electrized [sic], some powerfully and some slightly. But what was very singular, not a person was killed or seriously injured, not a building damaged; but a cluster of trees within a few rods of two dwelling houses was not thus fortunate. The electric fluid came down among them, taking them out by the roots, with stones and earth, and throwing all in every direction. Some were left hanging by their roots from the tops of adjacent standing trees — roots up, tops down.

The New York Times later quoted a witness: "I don't believe there ever was a worse frightened lot of people in the world than the inhabitants of Bar Harbor were that night. That purple ball [of] lightning flashed about and obtruded itself everywhere. There was scarsely [sic] a house that was not visited by it.”

Apparently this phenomenon has also been a topic in National Geographic..so this stuff isn't a joke. I can't help but find it fascinating! I guess I shouldn't complain so much about our current crummy weather conditions!

If you want to read Nan Lincoln's entire article in The Bar Harbor Times, here's the link:

Great balls of fire: When weather was really frightful