Canadians, Canadians Everywhere!

Been hitting up the hot spots in Maine recently and you know what that means.... Canadian tourists galore! Went to OOB last weekend and was surprised at the low quality of the actual beach. Seriously, the waves just pound you. It's actually kind of dangerous, we saw an older lady get cleaned out and suck up a lung full of water... she was NOT having it. Really the main attraction to OOB is for people watching, it ranks quite high for the state.

Then this weekend I trekked it up to Baxter State park with some of my ECE buddies and Chris in hopes of climbing glorious Mt. Katahdin. However despite our 4:30AM departure from Orono, we were too late to claim a spot to climb the mountain. Basically, you can reserve a spot to climb or you can forgo that, put your nuts on the table and just show up. Well that didn't work out very well. Gates open at 6AM, we showed up at 6:20AM and found ourselves in a long line of cars. Apparently people show up way before 6 to wait in line to claim their spots. Honestly, we shouldn't have been surprised as this was probably one of the best days of the year at Baxter state park. After being somewhat disappointed, we actually had a pretty awesome time! I am very sore. We essentially did the Marston Loop (one-minute hike my ass!), which involved a couple of cool peaks and some pretty sketchy awesome rocks to climb.

We landed at this parking lot about 4 miles from where we were parked but luckily a nice dude we met on the trail gave one of us a lift back to our car. I got stung by a bee and got a little banged up otherwise but managed to not roll an ankle or sustain any other injury which was pretty good because there were certainly plenty of chances! We got off the mountain around 3:30-4PM ish and started around 7:30-8AM so it was a pretty full day of hiking. We were all quite beat when we got off the mountain, everyone who wasn't driving promptly fell asleep due to pure exhaustion during the car ride home.

View of the backside of Katahdin

Those dark patches are shadows from the clouds, not lakes. It's so beautiful Lance has to avert his eyes. 

It was cool to see the shadows of the clouds move across the forests, it was a beautiful day and very clear. I should've taken more pictures. Oh, and don't pay any attention to Lance who was caught in a moment of struggle bus riding. 

After eating a Wendy's pretzel burger and making it back to Litchfield later that evening, I promptly slept for 12.5 hrs. Solid. Today, I painted some of my VW engine tins and helped my dad splitting some gigantic wood. Also, I made contact with one of the legendary VW enthusiasts in Maine by the name of Charlie Jordan. Like all BAMF Maine VW guys he is an old gearhead who has been working on aircooled motors for half a bazillion years and during that time has amassed a pretty awesome collection himself. I was looking for certain style heat exchangers for the bus and he responded to me with a better deal than I could've gotten basically anywhere else. That is one thing I really enjoy about VW stuff is the people I've met. I'm kind of digging into this really niche community of people and putting together the pieces of who has what and knows stuff. Between Charlie and Steve (guy who is doing my engine) they're responsible for rebuilding a good deal of the air cooled vehicles in the state but I don't think anyone quite realizes that. 

Anyways, Charlie has been restoring (slowly I might add) a Notchback. Which is a pretty sweet looking ride and very rare in Maine. Despite being an enthusiast and attending several VW shows in Maine I have yet to see one in person or even on craigslist (Maine)... and trust me I have my radar on. As luck would have it, Charlie's Notchback is in the body shop getting a minor detail on the paint job finished... so I didn't get to drool over it. I did, however buy his heat exchangers and chat with him a bit. He has been all over the place in old school VWs. He did Rt. 66 in his split window bus and he spent a bunch of time in Europe hiking and doing some car related things. That is the one thing about VW enthusiasts, they tend to have similar interests and personality traits. They're very detail oriented and by the book folks when it comes to anything technical. At the same time though they wear tie dye and draw naked women on their vehicles. It makes for interesting conversations. That's another thing.. they love to talk. Which is good because so do I and I am trying to trick them into giving me their years of VW knowledge.

This bus has been basically everywhere

3.5 bugs, 1 squareback, two vanagons and a split window bus

A few minutes after I arrived Charlie rolled up in a 72 bus (from California I might add) which he basically stole off some dude and has been running for the past several years with a rebuilt engine. Inside his garage are another few bugs, a Porsche or two and some other air-cooled car that I didn't recognize the name of. Charlie has all indicators of being a complete boss. 

Things at work have been cool, we're building some sweet test equipment that I probably won't talk about on the internet but if you're down my way I can show you what we've been up to. 

Anyways, hoping to possibly work on the engine next weekend but we'll see how that goes. For now I will keep myself occupied by trying to figure out why my motorcycle wants to run sometimes but not other times....