DAY 4: MAINE!

Shaking off beers and 45 minutes of sleep, we charged on to Kennebunk Beach, Maine with our MA-ratings soaring by the hour.

MA-18!!

MA-64!!!!

Blake started going Big Baby, absolutely refusing to run the 5K we signed up for before the trip. But I gave him a real-life Would You Rather scenario, and he chose to put on the ridiculous t-shirt and run the race.


The race was right along the Atlantic Ocean. I finished 15th out of 194 (20:37), and Blake came in 50th (24:08), vowing to beat me in a 5K sometime on the 2009 calendar. Godspeed, Mr. Nolan.


After the race, neither of us were capable of driving, so we crashed for a couple hours at a shaded Rest Area along the Atlantic. Then it was off to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, which was absolutely awesome. It was chilly enough that a strange fog covered some areas of the land and the ocean, where other areas were completely clear.

From Acadia, it was into the town of Bar Harbor to grab some fresh seafood, beers and sweats for the night's sleep before heading back to the park to camp for the evening.

DAY 3: GREAT UNCLE STANLEY'S

As you might imagine for veteran roadtrippers like us, going from anywhere in Vermont to anywhere in New Hampshire is a relatively easy trip. So day three was all about the casual drive and the random stopping points to see what we could see.

Great views of the mountains and gas stations smelling of freshly baked goods and maple syrup will be my lasting memory of Vermont.

I believe it was Puff Daddy that said "Vote or Die." Obviously, voting is part of living free. What a ripoff.


Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are full of completely random beaches that pop up along their many beautiful lakes.


From there, it was easy to find the route to Great Uncle Stanley's (G.U.S.)


The view from GUS's back porch...



...and beyond.

The only problem was, we met some of GUS's neighbors at the other end of the lake, and ended up having a little too much fun with them, considering we needed to wake up early to drive to Maine and run a 5K. Beers, 45 minutes of sleep and canoeing home at 4:15 am does not equal world record race times. In fact, it hardly equals any fun at all.

DAY 2: THE UNEXPECTED

Driving across upstate New York was sort of brutal. Blake was going worst moment because he lost $100 in about three minutes at the roulette table, and we were both pretty tired.


So to pass the time, Blake made this sign he held against the window to show motorists as we flew past them. The reactions varied widely from amusement to indifference. Most people gave thumbs up, which is really odd if you think about it. The best reaction came from a guy on a motorcycle, who used one hand to close his nose and the other to whiff away dirty air. Classic.

As we drove along the New York Turnpike, Blake noticed a sign to exit near Cooperstown, so we veered off course to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame. Fantastic choice.


The whole town of Cooperstown is so best moment.


The broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame: a lofty goal for this roadtripping knucklehead.


As we drove east and entered Vermont, it got dark in a hurry, and the campsite we planned on staying at had no vacancy...

...so we found this completely remote spot way back in the woods. This was hardly a campsite. No one patrolled it. It was honor-system camping. There was a drop box where we were told we had to put $10 in order to stay for the night. We decided to do our share on the way out the next morning.

DAY 1: NIAGARA FALLS

Alright, I admit... Poor job on our part with updates from URT2. We definitely need to get our sh*t together and take a laptop next time.

So here's a quick recap...

In literally two minutes at the roulette table, I made $550. That's what happens when you call double-zero and 22 on back-to-back spins.

The hotel we crashed at was such a piece of crap that it didn't even have its own soap. It just stole soaps from other hotels!! Notice the shampoo bottle (far right). No label at all!!


Chilled by the falls for about an hour that next morning...

...until we tried to get back into the states. Tried was the operative word. Blake's lack of a passport or birth certificate failed to prove citizenship, earning him a federal warning from the United State border control. To prove we were simply on a roadtrip, we actually directed the officer to this website.

He asked how we "heard about this."

"Niagara Falls!?" I exclaimed, puzzled by his question.

"No, this 'ultimate road trip.'"

"Oh," Blake jumped in. "We just made it up."

"How many stripes are on the United States flag?" the officer tersely asked Blake.

"Ummmmm... 13?"

The border patrol officer conceded, and we were off on day two.

UPDATE: Back in civilization

I'm fully aware how long into the trip we've gone without a single update. That happens when you're stuck in Maine.

The stories are intense and intriguing. To do any one of them justice would take much more time than I have right now. So here are the highlights.

* One of my favorite sayings (and Blake's favorite saying for that matter) is "so-and-so needs to get their shit together." Well, the theme of the first day of URT2 was "our shit is all over the place." Basically, everything we could screw up, we did screw up.

* In literally three minutes at the roulette table at a Niagara Falls casino, I completely reversed the bad fortunes from last year's trip to Vegas. Blake, however, did not.

* Blake was issued a federal warning by the U.S. Government border control for lack of proof that he was a U.S. citizen. Classic.

* DETOUR #1: to Cooperstown, New York on July 4th, site of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I recommend baseball fans of any interest level get there sometime. It's a beautiful, quaint town on a huge lake with lots of boating, restaurants and immortality.

* Camping in Vermont is wild.

* Blake snores horrendously. New policy instituted after Vermont night: I am allotted five opportunities a night to beat Blake with an orange stick to stop him from snoring.

* Great Uncle Stanley is my newest favorite person. His place was amazing and led to unbelievably good times.

* I ran a 5K along the Atlantic Ocean Sunday morning on 45 minutes sleep. Did it in 20 minutes, 36 seconds, beating Blake by a good 3-and-a-half minutes. So best. Considering this is pretty much the only thing I can beat Blake in, I'm rubbing it in for a good year.

* Acadia National Park is gorgeous. Bar Harbor, Maine is awesome. Great seafood, easy camping.

* Bigelow Mtn, Maine is EXTREME in every sense of the word. Our camp site was literally (no exaggeration at all) down a 10-mile dirt road that took 28 minutes to drive. No driveways, no houses, NOTHING. The Appalachian Trail is INTENSE.

* Driving in Boston sucks. Period.

* Detour #2 could be coming tomorrow... maybe hitting up Cape Cod. Hell, we're only up here once, right?

Much more stories to come. For now, I'm being booted off the computer.

Cheers,
-Tony

Hittin' the road...

This is what I live for.

The road, freedom, new places and awesome experiences. Cathing up with great friends and Great Uncle Stanley along the journey. Climbing the highest mountain in Maine and hiking the Appalachian Trail. AA minor league baseball games and fresh Maine lobster. Running a 5K race along the Atlantic Ocean and taking a dip after crossing the finish line. New England backroads and Vermont microbrews. Setting up camp, burning a fire, and playing guitar and bongos into the night. Running in Central Park. The boardwalk along The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island. Getting drunk at the Cheers Bar in Boston then taking in a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Playing rock paper scissors and flipping a coin to determine what we do or where we go next, perhaps landing us in....

... Deleware.

Remember that scene in Wayne's World when Wayne and Garth have this low-budget, makeshift TV show set and they're taking a USA tour? They go to Hawaii then California and New York then... Deleware. Upon enterting "Deleware", their collective energy goes from sheer excitement to borderline worst moment as Wayne monotonely says, "Hey... we're in Deleware." With that scene as our motviation, Tony and I decided that our facial expressions and overall posture at the Deleware border should demonstrate complete worst moment; a mix of anger and confusion as to why the hell we are spending a single second of our vacation in Deleware. We think it's funny, you might think it's stupid. And our apologies to any native Delewarians if this in someway offends you. Hey, we've heard great things about that big bridge you've got.

Who knows, maybe that classic flick planted a seed. The idea of going from place to place and travelling this great country. When I was 18, my friend John Dundon and I drove his convertable Mustang to Colorado and back. I was hooked on the road and the freedom it gave back. When I got home, I had this crazy idea of visiting all 50 states before I turn 30. As my young life continued, that crazy idea evolved into a personal challenge and life goal.

Here comes states 39, 40 and 41. It's URT2. Stay tuned.

- Blake

Mandatory Reading: Blog Glossary

For those of you who know Blake and me extremely well, you'll probably get what we're saying in our posts on this thing. For the rest of you, we use a slightly different vernacular than the ordinary English-speaking person.

Big Baby (verb) – to whine; to react to a particular set of circumstances in a manner only acceptable for toddlers.
Sample usage: If we don’t go to the Yankees game tonight, I’m gonna sit down, cross my arms, throw a full-blown temper-tantrum and go full Big Baby.

Big Pig (verb) – to annoy or attempt to make a subject go fake worst or full worst. Big Pig can occur in various forms (i.e. asking the same question over and over again, poking someone in the arm repeatedly, etc.)
Sample usage: I’ll give you 100 dollars to Big Pig that moose.

fake (adj or adv) – when a person's actions or reactions indicate an extreme emotion, but are not genuine.
Sample usage: I can’t find my box of Cheezits. I’m going fake worst.

form (noun) – the style with which an act is completed.
Sample usage: (Overweight man at a restaurant aggressively rubs his eyes while reading his menu, sighing and stuttering uncontrollably due to a lack of decisiveness.) “Dude! Worst ordering form!”

frugal-roogle OR roogle (anything) -- the description of an item or an action that is blatantly, ridiculously cheap.
Sample usage: Blake, you only tipped her 23 cents!? That’s roogle as hell.

full (adv) – extreme, over-abundance, to the highest degree.
Sample usage: Blake, you’re going full hair gel.

going best OR best moment (verb) -- reacting to a developing situation as if it were the best moment of a person's life.
Sample usage: This view is incredible. I’m going so best right now.

going worst OR worst moment (verb) -- reacting to a developing situation as if it were the worst moment of a person's life.
Sample usage: Coney went worst when he woke up covered in ketchup.

in the grade (ITG) (idiom) – meaning “out of a subset.”
Sample usage: Maine has the best seafood in the grade. (stumbling across a beat-up road sign missing letters could invoke: “Worst road sign in the grade!”)

late scratch (verb) – any act or motion which completely lacks any sense of control; often referring to an animal or animal-like behavior. Think a bull during a rodeo. The term’s origin comes from a horse race at a Las Vegas casino, where moments before a 300-yard horse dash (most ridiculous race ever), the 7-horse I had money on burst out of the gate and uncontrollably started kicking and running around the track. After the five minutes it took to settle the horse down, the PA announcer declared the obvious: the horse would be a “late scratch.”
Sample usage: At the start of the 5K race, while everyone else started running down the path, Blake went full late scratch, sprinting out of the gate, running straight to the beach and jumping in the ocean.

MA-(followed by a digit) (noun) -- a ratings system in which the subject's expression, fatigue, or general cleanliness is compared to that of a person who has been locked in the Mom's Attic of a U-Haul truck for the chosen rating's number of hours.
Sample usage: We’ve only been driving 10 hours, but you look MA-24.

Editor's note: MA-100 is the max. We’ve determined that it’s impossible to survive in Mom’s Attic for over 100 hours without food, water and fresh air… especially in extreme summer conditions or, conversely, bitter winter conditions.

psuedo (adj or adv) -- similar to "fake," but mixes up the lingo a bit.

Roogle McDoogle (Proper noun) – the identity one adopts when acting ridiculously cheap.
Sample usage: I lost all my money at the casino. I'll be Roogle McDoogle the rest of the trip.

safe (adj) -- any general event that will generally not cause the participants to go full worst. Commonly used as part of a rhetorical question, in which the answer is typically "no."
Sample usage: You should run up behind that bear and punch him. Safe?

slash (conj) -- similar to the word "and;" used to further describe a varying yet similar form of accomplishment. Typically, this word will be preceded by a word from Blake's glossary, and followed by an expression to describe the scenario to common English-speaking people.
Sample usage: The guy pumping our gas in New Mexico was rocking a fake mustache slash looked like Adam Morrison.

standard (adj) -- that which is expected; commonly used sarcasticly to describe that which is out of the ordinary or unexpected. Regularly preceeded by the words "pretty f’in'."
Sample usage: What did I do today? I closed on a million-dollar deal, made out with a supermodel and won free tickets to the World Series. Pretty f'in standard.

ultimate (various uses) -- the highest form of imitation; to complete an act, either fake or genuine, with impeccable accuracy. (This may be hard to catch onto, but just follow us here, and maybe you'll get the hang of it.)
Sample uses:
• going ultimate -- As Blake consumed the 40-oz. steak, he was going ultimate A1 slash 'I'll eat anything.' Stew took twice his share of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner, and was thus charged with going ultimate mashed potatoes.
• ultimate ultimate -- (When someone is clearly trying to go ultimate) Blake wore his sunglasses throughout the entire nighttime drive thru Missouri just to go ultimate ultimate. Also known as “full ultimate.”
• fake ultimate -- (heart's not really into it, somewhere between half-assed effort and not quite full potential)

ultimate helicopter (verb) -- Having one's car picked up by a gigantic military helicopter with a magnet hanging down from it, and being dropped off at a completely random location in the contiguous 48 states.
Sample usage: Blake and Coney went full worst when they were 20 miles from Crested Butte, but got ultimate helicoptered to Augusta, Maine.

For now, that is all. We leave tomorrow.
-TC