Welcome to Tarmac Soul - a daily (b)log of life and times for me and Paulo on the road this summer. The trip kicked off with our flight from Dublin to Boston today. We arrived into Logan at about 16:00 (local time) to good weather and lots of traffic.
The flight over was not too bad considering that we were surrounded by bin lids who were either crying, screaming, shouting or pooping the entire way over. Fortunately, Paulo had scored us emergency exit seats so we had plenty of room to stretch out.
After the bitterness with Sky Cars on Tuesday, we had to sort a rental car as soon as we arrived to the airport. Logan does not have desks for each of the car rental companies with actual people. Instead you have to use a phone and dial the company you want a car from for a quote. This should have been straight forward except that only 2 of the 6 phones were working and it was impossible to hear anything because some dude had set up his electric piano in the arrivals hall and was playing the bleedin' thing at maximum volume (sort of like 11 on a scale of 1 to 10).
In the end we rented a Dodge Caliber for two days so that we could make the drive to Laconia, NH and begin our journey (Paulo wanted to visit Weirs Beach because he had spent a summer there in 1995 during college). We turned right out of the parking lot, then a quick left to Ted Williams Tunnel and immediately hit Boston rush hour traffic. But the weather was good, we had The Pixies playing on the iPod and we weren't Dublin.
We drove the 100 miles or so, crossing the state line into The Granite State and continuing to Weirs Beach, arriving about two hours later. Weirs Beach is a lakeside town located on Lake Winnipesaukee - the largest lake in New Hampshire that stretches about 28 miles in length.
After checking out a few motels that were really over priced we settled for the Naswa Resort. We dumped the bags and drove down to the "strip" at Weirs Beach. Things were really quiet even though summer kicked off officially last weekend with Memorial Day celebrations. We went to a Mexican bar called The Crazy Gringo (previously known as Nuthin' Fancy or Nuthin' Gimpy depending on which crowd you hung with). We settled in and watched the Sox lose 8-4 to the Indians. I had forgotten how cheap it can be to have a bite to eat and a beer in The States but a large steak & cheese sambo and 3 Dos Equis drafts only set me back $16 - happy days! It was ladies' night or more appropriately (as Paulo pointed out) laddies' night since the few women there looked more like men. It was a good atmosphere in the place though - everyone seemed to know each other and there was a dude called Justin James playing guitar and singing everything from David Allen Coe to Bob Seger covers. He was so good that one of the 'laddies' was waving a lighter around most of the night and even did a pole dance for one song.
After the game, it was back to the hotel to crash as we were both exhausted from a long day of traveling.
Quote of the day:
Paulo - "Lad, I am so tired. I'm gonna sleep like the 'proverbial' log".
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