the eric update - day 361: odin meets vera - the extraordinary embroiderer!

for his upcoming birthday, we thought it might be nice to have a commemorative patch made that can be taken off old shirts or whatever as he grows out of them and put on newer bigger ones! maybe someday he'll even want to put it on his school backpack.

in any case, after debating endlessly and procrastinating about whether or not to get him a birthday patch we finally decided to call around and see if anyone could get it done before the long holiday weekend.

eventually we found vera, the proprietor of "tailor made monograms" at 330 water street in ellsworth, maine which is a mere 60 miles away. after describing what we wanted over the phone in our usual rambling style complete with far too many details about how it was a very special present for a very special boy, she thought she could probably get it done that day despite having all manner of last minute orders to fulfill before she left for the holiday to meet family in eastport and ended the conversation with "now let me get off the phone so i can get some work done!"

ha!

so we made the trek to meet vera who is the kind of person who offers to drop a patch off to people she's never met in a town 60 miles away on her way out of town to meet family on a holiday vacation. but we had other errands to run and eventually decided that it'd be easier for everyone involved if she just left her handiwork in a bag hidden away in an agreed upon secret spot so we could pick it up after she left for the day.

vera is the quintessential down easter with a characteristic quick wit and the dry humor that is common with "old timers" ( and i mean that in the best possible sense ) in the area.

we had so much fun bantering about the specifics of the patch, getting guff from her about how we had thought about every detail that we couldn't not get a picture of odin with very extraordinary embroiderer!

the eric update - day 360: a developing sweet tooth?

odin certainly isn't a picky eater and he's been happily most everything we give him. except maybe the occasional french fry.

but even though he'll eat almost everything, he definitely lets us know that he prefers certain foods over others. and more often than not, he prefers sweet foods like bananas, apricots, pears and peaches over yucky veggies like green beans or peas. and even though he'll usually still eat a whole jar of green beans or peas, he's seems to be catching on that if he makes it difficult he'll get the sweet stuff sooner!

he's even begun to recognize the colors of the jars of baby and after eating almost an entire jar of green beans, he spies the unopened jar of apricots.

you can almost hear the gears inside his head grinding away, putting together all the pieces to the puzzle.

after seeing the sweet apricots, even though he'll continue to slowly eat the green beans, he enjoys refusing to open his mouth while staring at you with big, lamentful eyes not-so-subtly putting the pressure on you to open the apricots.

when the wide-eyed approach doesn't work, he might try to set his jaw in such a way to imply a bit more insistence.

and the eyes have lost their lament and gained a sense of purposefulness. as if to say, "i like humoring you with your silly game where you make the spoon sounds like a train or a plane or a car, but i know you know that i know that the apricots are over there and you had better get to cracking them open.

and the inevitable conclusion; you can't shovel in the sweets fast enough. before you can get the spoon refilled, he's banging on the highchair demanding faster service!

the eric update - day 359: tending to the bath with mamma like a big boy.

do we really need another bath photo? maybe not. but as we approachodin's first birthday this pictures seemed to capture just big he's getting, along with his very sweet personality that we hopefully won't lose before his second birthday. so i couldn't help myself :-)

i'll try and keep the sappy, retrospective commentary to a minimum as we get closer to his birthday, but i can't promise anything.

the eric update - day 358: odin's crawling, climbing skills take him to new heights!

while it's not exactly cadillac mountain, odin looks quite impressive as he scales a rock near where the machias river empties into the bay.

the harbor happens to be the spot where one of odin's ancestors fought in the first naval battle of the american revolution.

it's astounding how quickly odin is developing his recently acquired crawling and climbing skills; at this rate, maybe next week we'll practice doing dynos!

the eric update - day 357: meeting more of the clan! an early ( and his first ) birthday present! and odin's first piano lesson!

today we went to gigi's house to give odin a chance to meet some members of his extended family.

although he occasionally shows a shy side of his personality, today he was quite happy to have new friends to play with and quickly did his best to impress upon his cousin richelle just how strong he's been getting!

odin and his cousin amanda play with the same fisher price toy phone that everyone remembers playing with as a child. there was a copyright notice on the bottom of the phone that was dated "1961" so it might even be that odin is playing with a toy that grandpa eric kicked around as a young lad ( although he probably was already a little too old for such a child's toy :-) ).

odin's birthday is rapidly approaching but we were still surprised to find that his aunt valerie had brought him his very first birthday present.of course, we couldn't wait a week to open it!

if you look close you'll see it's a shirt from her hometown, old orchard beach, which is a popular summer spot with vacationers throughout new england.

thanks!

while odin has been practicing pounding the keys for quite some time, today he had his first official piano lesson from his great aunt ginny and aunt valerie on the piano at gigi's house that generations of young musicians used to learn the fundamental of music theory.

great aunt ginny's hands are on the left and aunt valerie's hand is on the right.

as he is known to do, odin first sits back and watches intently as they play a familiar tune and after awhile decides that he wants to join in the fun!

the eric update - day 356: the anomalous day when it was not cooler at the ocean.

at 96 degrees F ( 36 C ) today was much, much hotter than normal in maine, so we hatched a clever plan to make a relatively short trip to the historic town of eastport which, as the name implies, is the easternmost seaport in the united states. typically, even though machias is within 10 miles of the ocean you can be guaranteed of ambient temperatures 10 degrees or so cooler thanks cool ocean air, so we had visions of enjoying a comfortable day watching the boats come and go after reaching our intended destination.

but alas, when we arrived, much to our suprise, we found it to be exactly the same temperature! if you're not from the area you might not appreciate just how freakishly odd it is to find the temperature in excess on 90 degrees F in this part of maine. it's almost unusual enough to warrant suspicion that it might be one of the overlooked signs of the apocalypse.

but we had already driven about an hour and tried to make the best of the situation by finding a shady spot in town near the water next to the tugboats that didn't seem in a hurry to tug anything anywhere.

as always, odin was a superchamp, ignoring the heat and happy to proudly show his pops how well he can hold himself up on his stroller while standing on a bench.

mauja however, was much less patient with the situation and we eventually decided that probably nobody would steal an idling car with the air conditioning turned on when they noticed the 120 pound irritated canine in the backseat whose owners had abandoned it in the car while, presumably, heading off for far more interesting adventures.

the eric update - day 355: when pops foolishly takes photographic evidence of attempting to sneak odin a french fry without mamma.

odin and i went on a trek to visit a local "drive up" snack bar in town that's rumoured to sell suprisingly delicious seafood.

i should note that for reasons that are not entirely clear, the seasonal snack bar concept is quite a hit in maine. and most of them are not as "upscale" as jordan's in ellsworth which gets enough business to warrant fancy signage and fresh coats of paint. many are barely more than run down shacks or trailors where you drive up next to the shack, place your order at a window and eat in your car as you watch other people drive up and place their orders and eat in their cars. of course, sometimes the food can be aweful, but more often then not, it'll be better than anything you'd get from a national chain and not anything you'd expect to find given the appearences.

in anycase, we went searching for seafood, but once again i just couldn't bring myself buy any seafood with the summer tourist prices in effect, so odin and i just sat back and people-watched as i enjoyed a few too many french fries.

he was so seriously studying me as i dipped the fries into the ketchup and put them in my mouth that i figured it was only fair to give him his first taste of the stuff. but he didn't want to have anything to do with it. maybe he was just taking notes for another day.

the eric update - day 354: odin's adventure to the eastern most point in the united states!

i guess maybe odin has been on so many adventures in the past year that visiting the easternmost point in the united states, known as west quoddy head, is no more interesting than his measuring tape!

perhaps we might have to find more exciting extreme points of interest to keep the adventures adventurous!

and yes, the easternmost point in the united states really is known as west quoddy head. east quoddy head is across the water - roughly to the east - on nearby campobello, island, new brunswick.

if you look close you can see the sheer cliffs that form the western edge of grand manan island, new brunswick which is found on the southern boundary of the bay of fundy. it's slightly unusual to be able to see clearly across the 10 mile ( 16 kilometer ) stretch of water as it's often shrouded in fog.

several species of whales pass through the waters off quoddy head during their summer migration and i'm sure we'll try and come up with a way for odin to get as close a look at them as we can withough disturbing them.

the eric update - day 353: another iteration of the Big Boy Bed.

one of the reasons we packed a trailor for our trip out east is that odin has become quite fond of his big boy bed and it's not that easy to move a mattress 1,400 miles ( 2253 kilometers ). but our hard work had paid off because odin is quite happy with his new sleeping accomodations, since he's grown quite accustomed to being unencumbered by the confines of a crib and crawling on and off his bed to explore his surroundings before eventually ( hopefully ) falling fast asleep.

in his new room one end of his bed is pushed up a dresser that just happens to be the perfect height for a super crawling, climbing infant.

if he gets bored before falling asleep or after waking from a nap, we can often hear him via his baby monitor steadying himself on the dresser and carefully examining whatever he may find.

lately, his beside clock has become an object of great interest since it's the perfect size for his hands and makes a fun noise as it counts of the passing seconds!

he likes to rest his elbow on the top to help steady himself as he explores the various things he might find on top of the furniture.

it's amazing how much coordination and control it must takes to stand up and grasp and reach while standing on the smooshy bed and pillows!

i'd like to think that it'll help him shock his developmental specialist during his next assessment, since it seems likely that he's probably unintentionally improving his "mild decreased central tone".

sometimes it's nice after expending so much effort to explore your surroundings to lay down and rest, happy that you've successfully achieved your goal, even if it proves yet again to your parents that expensive toys can't ever compete with the simple pleasures of playing with an inexpensive alarm clock.

the eric update - day 352: mauja and odin's first day at camp!

yesterday we went on an ocean adventure, so today we thought it would be nice to visit our family camp in whiting, maine on what's known as "indian lake". ( for the two people that might be interested, the first white settler of whiting, general john crane, was involved in the boston tea party, the french and indian war and the american revolutionary war. and it still has a two room schoolhouse! but i digress. )

not more than a minute or two after we arrived we walked down onto the wharf with grandma rier to look across the lake and were all suprised to hear a splash not more than 10 feet away near the rock wall at the water's edge.

at first we all thought it was a fish jumping in extremely shallow water, but then about ten or so feet from the sound of the splash we were shocked to see a loon come up from a dive under water. ( parenthetically, when it came up from the dive, we saw that it seemed to have an impossibly large 5 or 6 foot wingspan, which we all thought was far larger than normal. it's funny that after a lifetime of observing loons none of us had ever seen one so close to know that it's actually an average wingspan. )

of course, mauja jumped in the water and for the second time in as many days, tried his best to get himself a bird dinner.

by the time i ran back with the camera, the loon had lured mauja into relatively deep water and was being much more devious than yesterday's gull by letting him get relatively close, not flying away, and making loon calls that undoubtably could be translated into "i bet i know which of us will drown first!"

unlike yesterday, mauja didn't quickly turn around and within minutes he was so far out in the lake that we began to fear that he might not make it back to shore!

finally he decided to heed our calls and started to head back. but he's old and we had a brief conversation about whether or not it was possible to pull a fully water laden 120 pound malamute into a canoe.

the loon dared to come back relatively close to shore which made us think that perhaps we had unintentionally disturbed a nesting mother ( ironic considering this comment about yesterday's photos and the downside of letting dogs run on beaches in the spring ).

we didn't see any obvious nests in the rock wall and nobody can remember a loon nesting the cove in the entire 50 or so year history of the camp, but the loon's behavior would certainly seem to indicate otherwise.

unfortunately for mauja, until we conclusively rule out a nest, mauja will definately need to back on a leash.

the family camp has always had a relatively large and vocal loon population, which makes for hauntingly beautiful nights on the lake.

if you've ever heard a chorus of loons you'll know what i mean.

you can click on each image for a brief description.

the eric update - day 352: happy birthday, auntie gina!

today is auntie gina's birthday and odin is feeling a little sad that he can't celebrate her birthday with her in person now that we live so far away.

so he decided it might be nice to have pick some flowers and send her a picture. even though he's willfully deciding to not look at the camera and actually trying to eat the flowers, he still manages to look pretty darn cute. happy birthday, auntie gina!

the eric update - day 351: mauja and odin's first day at the ocean!

one of the best parts of being in down east maine is that we're just a stone's throw from the atlantic ocean, so today we took a short drive to roque bluffs state park in roque bluffs, maine to give odin and mauja their first opportunity to experience the sights and smells of the ocean.

the northern atlantic water is still far too cold for most humans to find enjoyable, but mauja is obviously quite happy to get a chance to swim in frigid waters!

you can click on each image for a bried description.

the eric update - day 350: a very special father's day card! and a heap of steamers!

i'll admit that it feels a little odd to be celebrating father's day which is observed on the third sunday in june in the united states. but there's certainly no doubt that i can now participate in the holiday on which states that, "Retailers encourage the giving of hardware, tools and other stereotypically male gifts..."

well, i didn't get any power tools or spare parts for the galaxie 500 but i did get a card from kris with odin's very first scribbles with a pen ( and why didn't i think of that for mother's day? )!

on the front of the card was written, "because you're my husband, i wanted to give you something really special and our the ordinary for father's day..." if you look close you can read the punchline. kris might normally not go for that type of humor, but she claimed the pickings were pretty slim at the local store.

i decided that a heaping pile of one of the best foods on earth would make the perfect father's day meal - fresh, soft-shelled steamed clams.

odin isn't entirely sure what to make of the humble clam, although he had been patiently observing me as i somewhat sloppily ate dozens of them; but he learns one thing from me, hopefully it'll be that lobster is overrated and you can almost never go wrong with a big pile of "steamers".

amusingly, some very nice locals came in and sat down in the booth next to us and struck up a conversation. somehow it didn't seem odd at all that they had heard about odin's adventures on the internet!

some might think i'm being a little brazen eating a pile of clams when a species of algae has been tainting clams with record levels of toxin, resulting in bans on clamming from maine to cape cod. but i did some sleuthing and locals didn't think that the "red tide" had come this far north and east on the coast.

so, we headed off to helen's restaurant for a bowl of steamers that cost a whopping six dollars. helen's has long been beloved by locals and even if it might be a myth that stephen king likes the pies, you should probably consider leaving room for dessert of you ever have a chance to visit.

the eric update - day 349: odin's first bean suppah! and a little history.

gigi was nice enough to treat us to an early father's day meal - a traditional new england bean supper in the basement of what might be the easternmost church in the easternmost town in the united states - lubec, maine.

baked bean suppers are a unique tradition that some say began with the pilgrims while others argue that people began gathering for beans and bread during the revolutionary ar.

whatever the origins, you're always guaranteed of having a great meal with the nicest group of people you'd ever have the luck to share a meal with.

as you can see, when food was served odin temporarily registered his unhappiness with the fact that we didn't have a warm bottle ready for him so he could eat with everyone else!

unfortunately, i was so busy eating that this was the only picture that i bothered to take! photographic evidence notwithstanding, odin really did have a great time.

it's impossible to tell from the photo, but the basement of the church was packed with people! we arrived an hour early and the parking lot was already filled with cars.

it's always fun to get together with elder family members and their friends because you're bound to hear a bit of history.

the gentleman on the left in the photo told us that odin is a direct descendent of samuel watts who, in may 1775, played crucial role in capturing the HMS Margaretta in what would come to be known as the naval battle of the american revolution and the act of war by the nascent american merchant marines, which was fought in town harbor.

i'm sure that's not the last nugget of interesting history that we'll hear over a plate of beans and brown bread!

the eric update - day 349 : the many faces of odin - wonder and determination.

as i was playing with the camera, testing the light as odin was playing with a few toys not really intending to save any of the photos, but as soon as he heard the autofocus motor, he decided to crawl over and climb up the leg of the rocking chair i was sitting in, presumably to get a closer look and i captured this photo of him looking at the flash with quintessential expression of wonder.

you might think that after 349 days the camera would be a boringly familiar object, unable to attract the interest of an infant always on the prowl for newer and more interesting experiences. but apparently you might be wrong.

moments later, odin decides that he really must get a closer look and tries his best to crawl up onto the rocking chair.

he isn't quite able to pull himself up on the chair, but it certainly isn't for a lack of trying.

such determination!

the eric update - day 348: learning new tricks at the table from grandma!

dinner started simply enough, with odin demonstrating his excellent eating skills. for the most part the days of messily smearing food from ear to ear are gone and lately he's taken to simply plopping his hands on his highchair somewhat patiently waiting for us to shovel in the food.

as you can see, we don't even need to use a bib since he's such a good helper opening his mouth nice and wide!

but today, grandma decides it might be fun to teach odin some new tricks at the table and things may never be the same.

grandma is sitting to the left of odin and after a few minutes of watching his superb eating style, for reasons only known to her, she decided to prop her spoon in her mouth while talking to odin about how much fun it can be to play with your dinnerware.

after noticing that he was taking quite an interest in her behavior, she coyly and half-heartedly said, "oops. maybe i shouldn't teach him to do that."

but it was too late, as odin quickly absorbed the experience and thoughtfully pondered how he might mimic this new and interesting tableware trick.

in short order odin is very proud to have almost mastered the technique, even if he doesn't quite have the ability to hold the spoon up in his mouth without his hands. but it's clear that he thinks it's close enough to warrant excited gesticulation .

at this point any attempt to return to "normal" eating are stymied by his insistence at continuing to copy grandma.

maybe we'll have to make a mental note of this episode and reconsider any thoughts we had of leaving odin in her care for an extended period of time.

who knows what newer and more exciting tricks she may try to teach him!

the eric update - day 347: odin visits great grandma snowdeal!

while people from other parts of the country ( and world ) often remark that they think that our surname snowdeal is one of the strangest family names that they've ever heard, it's actually more common than you might guess in down east maine and especially on one particular street near the water in the small town of jonesboro, maine where odin's great grandparents and great aunts and uncles all settled down many years ago; if memory serves me, i think they may have all built on land owned by even more ancestral snowdeals ( i'm sure grandpa eric snowdeal will correct me if i'm wrong ).

as you can see odin thinks it's a lot of fun to get acquainted with his great grandmother snowdeal who probably never dreamed that her husband's name would get carried on through a fourth generation ( some new visitors might not even know that odin is a nickname and that given birthname is eric c snowdeal iv ). sadly, odin's great grandfather passed away a few years ago and although it's unfortunate that odin will never get a chance to meet his namesake, we're pretty sure that we already can see a little bit of his great grandfather when he smiles.

gigi ( which she prefers to be called over great grandma ) has been faithfully printing out every single picture since he was born so that local family and friends can follow along with odin's adventures even if they don't have access to a computer.

amazingly, she's just started to add pictures to a twelfth binder and i'm sure she'll fill a few more in the coming months!

the eric update - day 346: the littlest explorer explores his new surrounds.

after being stuck in a carseat for four days, the super crawling, climbing edition of odin is quite happy to have the opportunity to explore his new surroundings which provide almost innumerable opportunities for him to practice pulling himself up.

he's getting very strong and i'm impressed that he can pull himself up almost entirely with his two hands grasping on to the shelf.

of course i was watching the shelf to make sure it wasn't about to topple over!

what could possibly be more exciting than an easily accessible bookshelf with lots of available paper teethers and shiny, oddly shaped things just far enough out of reach to make for a challenge worth pursuing?

the eric update - day 345: one proud grandma!

one of the nicest parts about spending some time down east is that odin gets a chance to meet family who have only been able to follow his adventures on the internet.

we've noticed recently that he can be a little shy around new people. or maybe shy isn't the right word. he just likes to hang back and watch people when he first meets them.

it didn't take him long to decide that maybe it was alright to sit with his cousin hayley and and investigate grandma's watch.

many might not know that the young looking grandma delivered me about 14 weeks early back in 1972 when the odds of surviving such an early birth were much less than they are now.

needless to say, she's pretty proud of her miracle boys.

the eric update - day 344: we finally arrive! and meet and eat with a new cousin!

whooohoooo! four days after beginning the trip we finally, at long last, arrived. considering The Troubles and the fact that we were travelling with and infant for the very first time and that we had somehow managed to log 1,400 miles which is several hundred more than i remember traveling in the past - i'm impressed that we ended our journey a mere day off our projected schedule.

soon after arriving it's time for some food which gives odin and his 6 month old cousin haley a chance to study each other's eating styles.

hayley is being fingerfed some mashed potatoes and seems quite intrigued by odin's dinner of spoonfed baby food.

just as hayley watches him eat, odin studiously studies her eating style, presumably fascinated that there is no spoon involved.

and maybe he's impressed that hayley can eat mashed potatoes at such an early age. he still has trouble with "thick" or chunky foods and will often gag on them, so we tend to stick to the smooth and creamy stuff.

or perhaps he's just wondering how she's managed to grow so much hair in such a short time! given his still relatively bald head, it's hard to believe she's a almost 7 months younger than him.

odin did get a chance to meet grandparents and great grandparents for the first time, but i didn't get around to taking any pictures, but i'll correct that situation soon :-)

The eric update - day 344: so close i can almost taste the seafood!

after visiting auntie m we stopped for the night in augusta, maine and headed out the following morning to finish the final leg of our trip ending in machias.

but about 60 miles from our final destination we couldn't pass up making a stop at a local favorite in ellsworth, maine - jordan's snack bar which is well known to have some of the best crab and clam rolls in the area.

unfortunately the coastal region is suffering from a recurring harmful algal bloom known as red tide which prevents the harvest of seafood and forces the already inflated summer tourist prices to go even higher.

and since i'm not willing to pay nearly ten dollars for a hotdog bun stuffed with seafood, we decided to opt for a much cheaper hotdog washed down with a chocolate shake.

after i ordered the food i remembered that for some reason the locals prefer their hotdogs pumped full of something that makes them a suspiciously bright red color.

oh well, we were so hungry that we ate them anyway, even as odin seemed to be looking at them with a wary eye.

at our final stop before completing the The Grand Adventure i was able to finally sit back and believe with some confidence that the galaxie was going to actually make it the rest of the trip without any more mishaps.

various people have wondered if perhaps i'd knocked loose some part of brain when i hatched the plan to drive a forty year old car over a thousand miles. "bah!" i say. you only live once. i might have made a different decision had i known we'd be driving in 90+ degrees F the entire trip. or maybe not. all i know is that despite the occasional issues, it was fun seeing all the smiles and enthusiatic "thumbs up" from strangers all along the route.

i have no idea why i take so much pleasure in striking up a conversation with an elderly gas station who smiles a broad toothless grin when he sees me pull up to the pump, or a toll booth employee who doesn't mind holding up traffic as he tries to guess the year the car was made or a curmudgeonly alternator repair guy who fixes my faulty alternator for free because he just doesn't see too many galaxies anymore. but i do and i guess that's good enough for me.

of course, as i was taking this picture, i noticed that the exhaust system was hanging a little lower than when i started the trip. if you look close you can see a the pipe running from the exhaust manifold to the muffler, looking like it's a few inches closer to the ground than it should be.

i guess i'll have to take a look at that sooner rather than later.

for the curious, the sign i parked under is indicating the distance to campobello island in new brunswick, canada which is a short drive from our final stop in machias, maine and an even shorter drive from the eastern most town in the united states, lubec, which, incidentally, is where one of odin's great grandfathers grew up as a young boy.

the island has quite a history and if my memory serves me well, is very beautiful.

The eric update - day 343: obsessively observing gauges. and surprising ( sort of ) auntie m!

We made it to albany last night with no problems! Except for odin deciding that he didn't want to be traveling anymore an hour before we got there. And then decidng that he wanted to stay up for a few hours laughing and playng long after we were ready to collapse.

So after sleeping in and getting a late start were now slowly moving on a long detour off the highway through albany and I'm watching the temperature gauge slowly rise as we crawl up an impossibly long hill.

I wonder at what temperature it'll overheat.

update: sloooowly the pictures arrive! eventually we escaped the detour and even had a chance to surprise auntie m with a short visit. click on each picture for a short description.

The eric update - day 342: waiting to get on the road again. and on the road again ( finally )!

Whoohooo! In the span of just a few hours I have four spiffy new "whitewalls" on the galaxie ( too bad there's no picture uploading while we're sans wifi ) and while that was an unexpected expense, I'm happy to report that the alternator problem was correctly identified by a local specialist and cost the staggering amount of exact,y nothing to fix.

It seems that a wire had become corroded and fell off the alternator. Simply soldering on a connector to the broken wire and attaching it to the alternator fixed the problem. I guess I'll count that as a bit of luck.

So, now it's off to albany. It's still 90+ degrees F outside, which makes the unconditioned inside of the galaxy feel sort of like a blast furnace. All the more so when the engine has to work extra hard to climb the rolling new york hills.

I'm sure someday I'll remember this fondly. It would be a lttle more fun if the heat would let up a little. at least the galaxie is back in proper running order.

At least for now :-)

update: pictures at last! click on each picture for a brief description.

The eric update - day 341ish: it goes from bad to worse.

Oops. Sorry about not following up on that last update, but we've been busy.

First we thought the alternator light was a fluke due to "clean" diagnosis from sears auto center on the west end of cleveland, but just to be safe I bought a back up battery. And then we cleverly decided to push for rochester. And noticed between gas stops that the car was having a harder and harder time starting. Near buffalo it didn't seem like it was going to have another start left so I decided to put in the backup.

Feeling relatively smug after seeing the car return to "normal", we headed off hoping to fnally get to out dog friendly hotel by 2 a.m.

And at almost exactly 2:30 a.m. the car blew out the front passenger tire while on the highway.

only 7 miles from the hotel.

We're fine. After waiting for a half hour for police who showed up after an hour to help alert traffic, eventually I got the the tire replaced with a rather sad looking full size spare and we made to the hotel almost by the crack of dawn and in time for odin to wake up for the day.

We're at a tire place getting new tires and then it's off to an alternator place to see what my options are for that situation. I suspect both problems are probably related to driving too far and too long in the 92+ heat yesterday.

And then maybe we'll drive a few miles.

I'm trying to remember that adventures are supposed to be adventurous, but I could use a little less excitement right about now. Or at least some breakfast.

The eric update - day 341: on the road! it's hot! And slow!

And the alternator light came on! And there's torrential rains in northern ohio!

update: don't miss the photos!