Lobster Teriyaki and Other Feats of Culture - Day 1

Maine has a culture unto itself. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Maine is a culture unto itself. My parents, having been born and raised there, move about it freely and easily, at home and without thinking. Born in Maine, I love and enjoy it, and feel somewhat possessive of it, but having never really lived there, all my visits (and there have been many) are really the visits of an outsider. It is my home state, but not my home ground. This is a peculiar sensation, but there is an upside: it is always easier and more fun to observe and appreciate the nuances of a culture and people if you have a little distance and separation to lend perspective. We California Perkinses have been afforded a little of that perspective.

But that is nothing compared to the perspective the Tanakas must have.

Tanaka's Going Away Party

We have known the Tanaka family since they enrolled their daughter K in L's kindergarten after moving here from Japan. Stacy adopted Mom Hiroko and L and K quickly became great friends. We spent a lot of time with the Tanaka family, including Dad Nobutaka, until they moved once again to the Detroit area two years ago. And last summer we even got to spend a week together in at Balch Castle in Petaluma with Hiroko and K. (Thanks again for hosting, Christine Balch!) Given the good chemistry we all have, it was without a second thought that we invited the Tanakas to come with us on our bi-annual trek back to the homeland and spend a week with us in Maine. It was without a third thought that they accepted!

At the Hollywood Bowl with the Tanakas.

We arranged to meet Hiroko and K at the Portland International Jetport late the evening of August 5th. (It turned out Nobutaka had conflicts with work and could not join us.) Our flights were scheduled to arrive within an hour of each other, so it was perfect. We would land, find each other, collect our luggage, collect our rental car and hit the road for the 4 hour drive to the great wild North Country. An all-nighter on the road after a day of flying - wisdom-challenged perhaps, but we'd done it often enough. What could go wrong? At least that was the plan...

Hauling luggage

At the gate.

Apprehensive, N?

Not L!

Walking the plank!

The joys of pre-boarding.  If only the flight stayed that empty...

We flew over Detroit about the time the Tanakas boarded their flight!

A soda with my gal in Newark

Just before we boarded our flight to Maine we got this text.
The Tanakas had made it!

The arriving within an hour, meeting and collecting our luggage all went to plan - we were the last flights in, so the airport pretty much closed up shop after us. The house of cards collapsed, however, at the car rental counter. Several weeks before the trip Stacy had called the reservations department to modify our rental agreement. We had originally scheduled our pickup for the following day (Aug 6th), but since we decided we didn't want to waste time in Portland and could just plow on through, she called to reschedule the pickup a few hours earlier - for midnight on the day we flew. Would that be midnight on August 5th, or midnight August 6th, you ask? (You probably can see where this is going.)

I got to the counter promptly at midnight and gave them all my ID and paperwork. The car was ready, they said and rang me up. Just before I signed the rental agreement (fortunately) I looked a little more closely and noticed a slight deviation in the price. OK, perhaps that's a bit of an understatement. It was approximately $2000 higher than our quoted price. "Ummm, what's this?" I asked the counter clerk.

"Oh," he said, "you are picking up the car 24 hours early, so the rate quoted no longer applies. This is the new rate for the early pickup." Let me leave out the hour or two of pointless wrangling, passionate pleading and out-and-out begging that ensued afterwards. It was pointless and humiliating and reliving it is hazardous to my blood pressure. The best we were able to do was to reverse the "contract modification" Stacy had arranged and have the original price restored, but with a 9:00am pickup the following day. "But the car is on your lot!" I pleaded. "Can I slip you $200 for the extra nine hours!" But I said I wasn't going to relive it...

The hour that followed on my increasingly static-ridden cell phone was spent trying to find a hotel room - any hotel room! - in the Greater Portland area where we might lay our heads. But there was no room at the Inn. That would be the Holiday Inn, the Ramada Inn and a host of other less promising or desirable dormitories. Of all the weeks we were to travel to Maine we picked sell-out week in Portland. At last in a final Hail Mary attempt, we secured a room - a SINGLE room, the last room in the whole place - for six people at a Howard Johnsons all the way across town. The airport shuttle was all that mattered. Stacy and Hiroko were releaved. L and K, however, were quite disappointed. They had already spread their sleeping bags out on the powered down luggage conveyor belt in the baggage claim.

When the hotel "shuttle" arrived (OK, mini-minivan), we piled in. Some unexplained miracle of physics occurred and our luggage all fit. I ended up riding shotgun and decided it was in all of our best interests to hold off on informing Stacy of the wafting breezes of whiskey that rolled over me everytime the driver turned to me. As the drive to the hotel continued mile after mile, through more and more obscure and decidedly uncommercial-like neighborhoods I figured I would likely not need to tell her at all, as we were certainly being driven not to a hotel, but to a deserted hide-out where we would be summarily robbed and killed. (Whew! That was a load off my mind!)

But eventually we rounded a corner and there was the HoJo in all its faded glory. Along with about 20 teenagers all congregated on the front steps... And 20 more in the lobby... It was 2am and all was, ummm, well...

We checked in, sprang another $10 for the luxury of a fold-out cot and made our way to our room. As we exited the seismic elevator and threaded our way through the dozen or so teenagers hanging out in our hall, we found our room strategically poised in the epicenter of all of theirs. But it didn't matter. Nothing really mattered any more. A bed is a bed. Or rather a spot on the floor is a spot on the floor. Actually that isn't quite true. After 15 minutes on the threadbear carpet N and I spent the remainder of the evening bonding on a fold-out cot rated for approximately half my body weight.

Welcome to Maine, Tanakas!