5/26/08 - 6/19/08 25 days in the other blog

I'm going on vacation! And once you've paid to get to an airport outside of Maine, you might as well keep going, so that's what I'm going to do. First I'm off to Virginia for a week (a short hike on the Appalachian Trail, my 30 year college reunion at Hollins, a wedding in DC of a Hollins buddy), then Albuquerque for 8 days with family and friends, then Dallas for 7 days with friends, then 2 days in Old Orchard Beach working and playing. So check out the Texas Theresa travel blog for details and come back to check out this blog starting June 20. Happy Summer!!

Who knew I was geographically challenged?

When you live in Dallas all your life, compass directions are pretty easy. Mexico is south, almost all of the US is north, and "East Coast" and "West Coast" make sense because that's what direction you go to get there. When you move to the East Coast, your perspective has to change. I just told a friend, who wanted to know where Farmington was within the state of Maine, that I was 2 hours north and east of Portland. Later, I realized, "You can't be east of Portland . . . that would put you in the Atlantic Ocean!" But how can anything in Maine be "west" when all of Maine was "east" for your whole life?

Lindsay, this is why I make so many u-turns when we travel together on the East Coast. It's especially weird when I'm on Long Island and
I want to go to New York City. There's no way on the map in my head that New York City can be "west" of anything! But it is, in fact, west of Long Island.