My bike and I rested, stopped, on the Bridge Street overpass, waiting at the yield sign for the flow of traffic that merged onto First Street (not Essex!) on my way out of Salem to continue the journey northward.
Clearly I had somehow upset her, perhaps encroached too far into the oncoming lane(?) although the bike's front wheel stoically waited behind the white line. No matter, I thought, and pulled in behind her, her broom, in this instance a white Ford Focus. I looked at her driver's side mirror and she still looked at me, started saying something, an incantation. Here it was then, my first run-in with a real Salem witch. She talked to me, gestured with her right hand, rolled down her window, rolled it up, murmured more, gestured more, the driver's side window intermittently moved up then down.
As we rolled along, my eyes started to tear, burning tears, and I coughed, roughly. I looked down at my motorcycles' gas tank, covered green with Dutch Elm pollen. Through telekinesis and incantations the vile witch had manifested the pollen to magically appear on my bike, to attack me through my allergies. How she knew I had forgotten to take Claritin, I did not know, but she was obviously a witch of some mastery as she was clairvoyant, a mind reader.
What to do? I thought. I should probably pull her from her car at the next stoplight, haul her to the nearest large body of water of which there are many in Salem and throw her in; if she floated or tried to swim, she was a witch - if she sank, an innocent. If she were a witch, she'd need to be hung or banished. Would the authorities back me?
I decided to pass her; better to flee and take Claritin than stay and fight the sorceress.
Vampires! The tiny, pernicious blood suckers were trying desperately to get me through the three clothes layers, my gloves, and the full-faced motorcycle helmet. I had stopped at a gas station to shutdown my cell phone, Google Maps and Life360 having drained the GPS life out of it, and the mosquitos bumped and buzzed off my visor, angry, thirsty, desperate.
I was near the third corner, within the Passamaquoddy Indian Township, a beautiful area surrounded by rivers, lakes and, of course, the ocean. I had chosen the more direct, albeit the slower, route from Salem to Eastport, Maine, diverting through U.S. Route 1, the coastal highway that abuts the Atlantic Ocean in Maine. The drive proved to be mostly dark, a bit stormy, and incredibly scenic once I passed Rockland, the port of which being where I took the picture of my bike below.
The early travel on Route 1 had proven to be somewhat arduous with many stoplights and signs encouraging me to ditch the coastal highway and take I-95 North, instead. Coastal highways always payoff if you put enough time into them, some wonderful scenery that would've been lost if you'd taken the faster route, and there were plenty of amazing views, some of which I captured on the GoPro, although transferring the media has proven challenging on the new Samsung Chromebook.
I digress.
The conifers have overtaken the deciduous here and I'm not sure why but the deciduous trees seem smaller, shorter, somewhat anemic compared to the ones south.
Eastport, Maine and Lubec, Maine have an on-going feud as to which is actually furthest east in the U.S., with the peacemakers saying that Eastport, once a quite busy sardine producer, is the furthest east city, while Lubec is the furthest east village. In the morning, I'll take more pictures of Eastport before traveling half-an-hour south to Lubec to confirm I did indeed make the third corner.
I'm staying with another AirBnB house owned by a wonderful couple Pierre and Kendall and their four dogs that allowed me a huge puppy fix that I've been craving. I finished coffee with them before going to the room to write the blog and, as always, the best part of AirBnB has been talking with my hosts.
It's all good now that inertia is back on my side, no more mud.
I've realized that I am now at the furthest point in this journey away from my friends, my family and my lovely wife, all of whom I miss dearly. Tomorrow I turn the third corner and begin heading homeward. Here's hoping I have a strong wind to my back.
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