Eastport ME Part 1. Our Departure

We initially planned this trip with Youngduk’s family, but Brian’s family decided to join us at a later stage and added much pleasure to the trip. One way mileage to Eastport Maine is about 1450 miles, and plain driving time turned out to be 24 hours. To ease our morning rush, we slept at Youngduk’s house on the day before the trip and depart for Maine at 3:45AM CST on 8/13/2005. A total of 13 persons were on board on two vans.

We started out on 8/12/2005 at 10pm, and prepared a pair of 2-mile range walkie-talkie and a GPS navigator to help our trip. I tried to load several tens Gigabytes worth of Korean dramas on a USB 1.0 compliant Thinkpad at the last minute, and ended up with only a couple of Gigabytes due to lack of time. I realize that we really needed a USB 2.0 compliant devices on today’s standard. Karen was upset because I rented out a 200 GB external hard drive that contained much of drama files that Karen prepared the night before. So much for our effort to bring Korean soap operas to the trip.

We arrived at Youngduk’s home at 11:30, and spent 0.5 hour downloading US map to the Pocket PC and another hour watching episode 22 of Resurrection. We went bed at 1:00 AM and woke up at 3:30 AM when Brian called. I had a total of 2.5 hours of sleep, and so are many others. What is the way to start a 24-hour long trip! Luckily, I wasn’t up for drive until several hours later. I found out at a later time that Youngduk haven’t had any sleep that night. We arrived at JoongBu Market at 4:30 AM where we supposed to meet Brian. Brian arrived a quarter hour late, and hence given us an opportunity to have a morning coffee at Dunkin Donuts.

Besides the logical break out of adults, boys got on the Brian’s minivan while girls stayed with us on the Young’s van. Hyungsoonim prepared videos that we can watch in the van, and that lessened our boredom quiet a bit. Boys watched movies, and played Playstation and Gamecube games. We drove some 1,000 miles that day arriving at EunSook’s home in Lebanon NH at 12:00AM EST on the 13th. We drove 75 – 83 mph range to speed up our arrival, but something unforseen happened. Brian was pulled over by a policeman in New York driving 82 mph where he supposed to drive 65 mph. Youngduk was following Brian, but fortunately escaped from the incident. We decided to stop at the next Rest Area located 4 miles from where Brian was pulled over. What are mistake! Instead of Brian, the policeman came to the Rest Stop and given Youngduk a traffic ticket soon after ticketing Brian. I’m not sure whether the policeman would have figured out if we were a companion and given a ticket to Youngduk should Brian denied policeman’s guess. A lesson learned. Don’t you ever stop at a next rest stop when traveling with your friend and your friend gets pulled over by a cop.

Eunsook’s husband was nice enough to welcome strange guests. We spent an hour chatting that night, and woke up at 8am the next day to make another 500-mile trip to Eastport, Maine. I was impressed by Eunsook husband’s hospitality given that we weren’t never formally known, and many of unexpected guests arriving at very late at night. It was good to know someone with friendly and pleasant personality. The early bird, Youngduk, got us breakfast from McDonald the following day, and depart for Maine at 9:30AM. We arrived at Dawson’s house at around 6:30PM. Hugh… What are relief!! But, it’s not quiet over yet. We had to get a house key from a person named Dortti at a Mexican restaurant, but she wasn’t available at the restaurant where we supposed to pick up a key. Making a phone call revealed that a key was left inside the house on the kitchen table, and the house back door was left open. Another lesson learned. Try openning a door even if you think it is locked in case it may be unlocked.

The Dawson’s house is located on a house away from the oceanfront, and big enough to accommodate 13 people. The navigator was helpful in finding the Dawson’s house. Brian has many gripes about the Navigator, but it was better having one than not. We had bean soup for dinner, and watched a few X-man videos before we go to bed. It was a long trip, but we managed to get there safely and enjoyably. It was our first trip to Maine, and to Atlantic Ocean.

More photos available at Seong Gallery.