Today ended up being more of a planning day than we had originally planned. We woke up late (unsurprising, and I think a trend that may last this whole trip), and had our run, so lunch time was the next item on the list.

We wandered through downtown Rockland-not-Rockport, eating at MacClarens, a small Scottish Deli (right, that made no sense to me, either). I had some incredibly tasty, I-can't-finish ginger beer, which may just become my new favorite drink.

Afterward, we wandered through downtown, checking out the bicycles we could rent (and catch the ferry out to the islands for a day of casual riding), and the ferry schedule.

Since Kris is all excited about a boat trip tomorrow, he commented that I needed a hat. I had forgotten to pack one. I've been was using Kris', and, well, he'd had enough. So, he offered to buy me one. On our tour of downtown, we wandered into a gift shop, and found hats.

I wanted one with a wider brim, but Kris liked this one. I figure, he's the one that's going to see it, so, he chooses.

So, I now have a new hat!

Having walked out to the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, Kris has been inspired to run out to the light house and back. When he first looked at it, he thought a minute to run to the end of it. Distances are deceiving when you're looking at a sidewalk of giant granite blocks. After we walked it and realized it's 7/8 of a mile, the time was jokingly estimated back up to 5 minutes.

Right.

7/8 of a mile on uneven ground in five minutes?

Not going to happen.

The run, though, could. Starting the day late (AGAIN, we cannot seem to get up earlier than 11 am), Kris laced up his shoes, with my following quickly behind, and off we went.

Unfortunately, my knee locked up about 200 meters out. Kris kept going around the drive and down the street, as I took the short cut we found the other day, and started doing walking lunges to unlock my knee.

Kris caught up to me, and kept going.

Since my knee has been locking up a lot lately, I've decided to start on the lots of squats, lots of lunges, lots of balancing program I've done a couples times. While Kris was out on the breakwall, I started my lunges. As I finished up my second set of 20 lunges per leg, my left hamstring completely cramped and I nearly went down in a wave of pain.

Annoyed, I skipped the third set of lunges and tried to find Kris on the wall, checking if he was still running out.

After ten minutes of amusing myself taking pictures of the rocks, chains, seaweed and wood around the breakwall, and being unable to spot Kris in the distance, my worrying took over, and I started out along the breakwall myself. I made it half way out before Kris caught up to me running back.

"You came out a long way," he commented as I turned to head back to shore.

Yeah, yeah, I guess I did. Whoops.

We split on the run back, with my going the shorter way, and his going the longer way. When he arrived back at the room a short while after me, he flopped down on a chair and asked, "What did you think of running on the wall?"

I answered, "I thought it was meditative, and good symbolism for life. You couldn't look up into the distance, you had to be looking where you were right now, or you'd lose your footing. The stones coming up and passing you were hypnotic. When you did look up, wow, you had accomplished a lot. I liked it."

He thought they were very much like agility ladders, with the shorter steps and the side to side movements required to find good footing.

A good experience for both of us, each in its own way.

Apparently, the trick to crossing the street in Maine, and not be run over, is to wave.

Now that I know the trick, I notice all of these locals waving back.

So, Tim Hortons. Everyone knows about Tim Hortons. In Canada.

Apparently, they're in Maine, too. Close enough to Canada, apparently.

Here's my first journey into a Timmy's. While I think I look like a dork, the expression on the woman behind me is too good to keep to myself. I mean, how does this not remind you of the other look I received? I swear, I'm a magnet for this look.

When I went to Peru in 1994, at Ollantaytambo a picture was taken of me standing next to a tall stone wall, as I looked up at the camera. A person from my travel group took the picture, I don't know who it was. It's one of my favorite pictures.

Since then, I've continued having pictures taken of my looking up at the camera. I have the same pose for trips to London with Mom, Italy with Mom and Josh, the Cotswold Way with Mom and Eric, Scotland with Kris, and a host of other places. Many of the pictures are with old film, so I need to digitize some of those to have a full collection.

At Norumbega, I convinced Kris to take a picture. One of the ones of "the pose" turned out nominally well.