Portland & Providence
Interstate 89 cuts its way through the low Green Mountains of Vermont. It’s is one of the more attractive high-speed routes as it has been built around huge fallen rocks, such that they sit in the central reservation like they’ve been casually tossed there. It’s more like riding through a park than a motorway. Better still, the sun is shining…
Years ago, I’d found a cache of recommended routes online in the format compatible with my SatNav and they have proved reliably good to ride. I’m in search of one of them: Route 112. This starts as the Lost River Road before becoming the Kancamagus Highway as it makes its way through the White Mountains.
It’s uncannily like the B500 Schwarzewaldhochstraße before it was ruined by the needless imposition of a 50 Km/h speed limit on huge swathes of it. An act of cultural vandalism, inspired by the local Spielverderbers und Vorhangzucken.
Instead, Route 112 is subject to an unenforced but much more sensible 55 MPH. This region is only seven hours from the UK and is traversable in a week or ten days. so takes its place on the list of must-return-to places.
I’d suggest it’s also particularly well suited to pillion touring as the gradients and deviations aren’t severe. This is a major consideration on a fully-laden sports touring motorcycle with two aboard. Flinging a bike into and out of corners is too much like hard work with such a payload and would probably lead to passenger complaints.
Autumn is the time to return. While I’m no dendrophile, I do like the odd epic, colour-saturated, natural spectacle. The mainly deciduous forests of New England are where that riot of ochres you’ve probably seen in the travel supplements occurs every October through November.
And Maine really is like England with quaint villages and older buildings. All share a timber construction in one of the four, local dominant styles of ‘Cape’, ‘Ranch’, ‘Colonial’ and ‘Victorian’.
My overnight stop is Maine on the coast. It’s famous for lobsters, so I’d imagined a picturesque harbour with fishing boats, disgorging their catches, while tourists like me sip something white and crisp, nibbling on fishy snacks, on the terrace outside inventive seafood restaurants.
Wrong. It’s like Grimsby: a proper working port. Not a Capt’n Birdseye character in sight, no sea shanties being sung, and no friends of fishermen being sucked on.
Jordan’s final recommendation is Becky’s Diner, a relatively recent institution dating from 1991 when the eponymous Becky set up shop to serve breakfast and lunch to the port workers.
And Maine really is like England with quaint villages and older buildings. All share a timber construction in one of the four, local dominant styles of ‘Cape’, ‘Ranch’, ‘Colonial’ and ‘Victorian’.
My overnight stop is Maine on the coast. It’s famous for lobsters, so I’d imagined a picturesque harbour with fishing boats, disgorging their catches, while tourists like me sip something white and crisp, nibbling on fishy snacks, on the terrace outside inventive seafood restaurants.
Wrong. It’s like Grimsby: a proper working port. Not a Capt’n Birdseye character in sight, no sea shanties being sung, and no friends of fishermen being sucked on.
Jordan’s final recommendation is Becky’s Diner, a relatively recent institution dating from 1991 when the eponymous Becky set up shop to serve breakfast and lunch to the port workers.
My guilty secret as a gourmand is I don’t really like lobster… Too much messy faffing to get at the meat, which is then too rich to eat much of. No, I like lobster only when all the hard yards have been done for me, such as in a bisque or a minimal amount as part of a fancy starter. A carpaccio with shavings of black truffle, perhaps?
Becky’s is not that kind of place at all. It’s much more of a diner. But they specialise in these ugly, bottom-feeders so I go for one anyway: a baked one-and-a-half pounder with crinkle-cut chips (remember those?) and coleslaw.
Notwithstanding my previous comments, It's a good choice. Lobster is part of the Maine experience and this one is very fresh, so less cloying than those I’ve had before. It may also explain why the meat is relatively easy to extract.
Sat next to me at the counter is a gentleman, I would guess, in his late sixties. He notices my accent and asks me what the political mood of the UK is like at the moment. He was based in London in a previous career as an archaeologist, working on various digs across the Middle East.
We sympathise with one another on the point that both the US and UK have severe structural faults that no recent politicians have had the guts to address. This only serves to encourage him. He goes on to explain that he has recently inherited some money. He has invested it all in ‘physical’ gold and silver, not options. This is smart as, if push comes to shove, every gram of gold and silver has been promised thousands of times over. There will simply not be enough to go around if everyone tries to exercise their option to buy simultaneously as is usually the way with such ‘stores of value’ when things get desperate.
His overall thesis is that the majority of first-world ‘fiat’ currencies such as the Dollar, Pound & Euro are worthless as a result of reckless government tax & spend policies. It’s a point-of-view I partially concur with. I also think it’s a cardinal error not to engage with people you disagree with, wholly or partially.
For example: look no further than Brexit. I genuinely believe that had the ‘Remain’ camp listened carefully to genuine concerns of the Leavers - rather than sneering at them - enough would have responded to rational analysis and the UK wouldn’t be in quite the mire it is now, and will be for at least a generation.
But he totally ignores my counter that credit creation and a well-regulated fractional-reserve banking system underpins the entirety of human progress. This ‘leverage’ allows most people to enjoy, responsibly, a lifestyle otherwise unavailable to them. As an adjunct, a derivatives market - buying and selling things the obligated party does not actually own - provides the necessary short-term liquidity to keep the wheels of the machine greased.
Instead, he just keeps referring to the role of ‘Big Mike’ in his litany of grievances with the world. Belatedly, he realises I don’t understand this reference so offers to show me something on his laptop.
I pay my bill and go out to the car park. He's sat in a small, battered people carrier. I open the passenger door but I’m not getting in. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t, as all seats other than the drivers have been removed. The floor is a sea of fast-food packaging, soft drink cans, and newspapers along with a stained-looking mattress.
“What’s going on here?” I ask with thinly disguised disgust.
“Oh, I’m just on the road for a few days…” he explains breezily before handing me a battered, twenty-year-old, white plastic MacBook.
“Have a look at this?”
He plays a video featuring the saintly Barack Obama, attending a black-tie do. He’s accompanied by Michelle, dressed in a slinky, close-fitting, and very flattering evening gown, attempting to conceal a tumescence of truly impressive proportions. Michelle, he explains, is now a man (hence the ‘Big Mike’ moniker) and here is the evidence…
I ask the obvious question: Why has the footage never been used by mainstream media? Aha, he explains, it’s a global, liberal, media-industry conspiracy, patronisingly suggesting I’ve been brainwashed by the BBC, The Economist et al, who are all in on the racket. He clearly has more faith in the managerial and organisational abilities of media organisations than I do, having worked with a few of them over the last twenty-years.
There’s more. Next up is a video of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation, swanning around in a teeny pair of tight, silky, disco shorts with matching crop-top, tapping his foot to some HiNRG anthem while sipping daintily on a cocktail. I don’t know what this proves other than Tedros could do worse than getting an intro to Big Mike’s gender reassignment surgeon.
Lastly, he tries to explain how Hilary Clinton has “personally ordered” the assassination of 68 of her staff because “they knew the truth”. With that, I make my excuses and hurry off. I suppose the precision of the ’68’ figure was meant to give credence to the tale.
Oh Jesus, the Texan aphorism is correct after all: “If you always keep an open mind, somebody will just come along and fill it full of shit.”
I look at his website, over a pint, in the nearby Kings Head. He is also - apparently - a descendant of the executioner of Charles I. This is not one Richard Brandon, as is popularly believed, but this lunatic’s grandfather, eight generations back. A fact that seems to have eluded all other historians from 30 January 1649 until now.
I’m not going to mention the relevant surname as a few people of the thousand or so who read my site will probably then try to find this fruitcake. I’ve just done it and a couple of keywords, judiciously selected, will take you straight to him. But his hair-brained thinking doesn’t warrant any more encouragement nor do I want any association with him, online or otherwise.
My friend Richard had warned me about engaging with strangers on the 3G’s: Guns, God or Government, and this lesson is now well-learned. I’m quite pleased to have met one of these nutters though, as part of the overall experience.
You see them from time to time, slyly humiliated on TV by the likes of Louis Theroux as objects of ridicule. I’m always suspicious that they are one-off, attention-seekers and manna from heaven for artsy BBC2 producers, hence the exposure. But they do actually exist. I now know this…
12 May 2024
Today should have been an easy day. 155 miles down Interstate 91 to Providence, Rhode Island is predicted to take under three hours.
So I decide to go and look at the Fort Williams lighthouse on Cape Elizabeth, five miles south of Maine. As a well-known and extremely photogenic landmark, it’s possibly why I thought Maine itself would be similar.
The SatNav calculates the best route from there is hugging the coast, before joining the freeway near Portsmouth. The ritzy little tourist towns - some with English names like Scarborough and Biddeford are mixed native American ones of Kennebunkport and Oguncuit. They’re all clearly prosperous and picturesque, despite the levels of traffic which, for a Tuesday morning in mid-May, are ridiculous. But it’s nothing compared to the epic levels of congestion when I get back on the freeway and approach Boston.
It’s so bad, the SatNav calculates a route going through the city is quicker rather than skirting it. I have no idea if this was true or not but all I do know is it’s nearly 18:00 when I get to Providence.
Albeit with a look round the lighthouse, 155 miles has taken nearly seven hours: about 25 MPH average. This is like a bad morning on the M25, but all day. Horrendous.
Another lesson learned over the last couple of months is that it’s not feasible to include American cities or anywhere close to them on a motorcycle tour. And by ‘anywhere’, I mean anywhere within 25-miles.
When I think back to Miami, Houston, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and now Boston, each has been a nightmare. Many of these cities, I’ve driven in before, but not for ten years or more. The intervening time appears to have made them no-go areas for motorised transport. Only Austin and Seattle have been passable. In the future, I will avoid major conurbations. But on this trip, I still have Philadelphia, Washington, Nashville and Memphis to contend with.
Providence comes highly recommended by Richard as does Al Forno, setback from the Seekonk River in the Fox Point area of the city. As befits a recommendation from a Wall Street banker, Al Forno is sleek, stylish and clearly a hot-ticket as I again, get the last seat at the bar. This, at 20:30 on a Tuesday evening.
The pizzas are what he raved about and take Gold Medal so far in the thinnest, crispiest, tastiest stakes. My only grizzle is they’d run out of pepperoni so a comparison with the bellwether reference standard that is the Pizza Express American Hot is not possible.
Regardless, the asparagus pesto, fresh herbs and two cheeses version with extra virgin olive oil is perfectly balanced with every ingredient, separate and identifiable. A salad to start of pear, endive, bacon-mustard vinaigrette and warm gorgonzola stuffed dates was the same, and every bit as good as it sounds.
Surprisingly for the location and the crowd it attracts, it’s not bonkers expensive. A Negroni, two glasses of wine and the menu choices as described came to about $70 all in. For this quality in an expensive city, that’s almost a bargain.
I would have liked more time in Providence, that was one reason for planning a relatively short riding day so could get here early and explore. Ah well, it’s another place for another trip.
