Maine in less than 36 hours...

So this isn’t the first time something like this has happened…

In February 2007, around 7 p.m. on a Thursday evening, Ciani called me and I said “are you coming to see me?” and she said “no, we’re meeting half way. Come up to D.C.” I paused a moment and said “ok, I need to think about this while I finish my homework. Give me 30 minutes and I’ll make a decision.” (about 40 minutes later I was in my car driving to D.C. to meet Ciani.)

Friday, May 23rd was not that much different.
I arrived to Ciani’s house in NJ around 7/7:30 p.m. and as we decided what we were doing for the evening. I might have casually mentioned that we were only 543 miles from Old Town, ME… she then looked at me very seriously and said “we could go to Maine, I’ll go pack.” So I started laughing and was like “um. We could, I don’t know if my friend would be ok with that, but I’ll ask.” Which asking really didn’t much matter at this point since she was already headed downstairs to find a bag to throw clothes in, thankfully my friend was like “Seriously, you’re coming. This is awesome!”

So we were in the car and heading to Maine by 9 p.m. I was too excited to even sleep. I rested for a moment after NYC and before the Mass Pike. Then around 2 a.m., Ciani was like “Suz, can you drive? I’m tired,” so I took the wheel and drove for the next four hours to arrive on Main Street in Old Town.

Highlights of the drive North:
- Trying multiple times to call Liz to tell her we were driving past NYC
- Called Scotty to tell him we were on our way to Maine- to find out he was already there!
- Calling my sisters to ask the lyrics to the song: 16 Counties of Our State
- Racing the GPS to try to subtract minutes from our ETA (Ciani got us down 7 minutes)
- Asking the Toll Attendant on 295 in Portland what the state bird of Maine is, I said chickadee and Ciani wasn’t convinced, he thought we asked about the seabirds, but eventually confirmed that it was the chickadee- “What about seabirds?”
- Calling Mitchell to wake him up and tell him random things (M: the text noise is too quiet to wake anyone up, A: -from his bedroom- NO IT’S NOT)
- Finding my 15 minutes of fame/ Taking advantage of the fact that Ciani won’t tell me to shut up when I sing

We arrived to Main Street, Old Town, ME around 6:30 a.m., Mitchell came out to meet us and we headed to breakfast at Governor’s. Next we began the “Susan Sherbak History Tour,” Ciani needed to see the important places of my childhood. We visited the University of Maine at Orono, to show her all the exciting places my mom used to take us when we were little. And we got to see the lab Mitchell does sensor research in! We showed Ciani the weeping willow, the dance studio, the gym, the mall, the performing arts studio. In town we got to see the location of my old elementary school… since they tore it down, the back of my 4th/5th grade school, the YMCA, the paper mill (that isn’t really a paper mill anymore), my old house, the creek where we let fish go in the 5th grade, the deer sign with the red nose it, Pat’s Pizza (yum!), Stephen King’s house, Cascade Park, the hospital on the river, downtown Bangor, Super Shoes, and the Bangor Mall.

Highlights of Old Town/Bangor:
- Mitchell’s dad coming out of Subway just after our arrival and me avoiding saying hello (I was in pjs pants, that’s no way to make a first impression!)
- People drinking beer at 7 a.m. in Governor’s
- The Map Store of Downtown Old Town—just in case you got lost in town
- The Mad Scientist at work with the e.coli
- Ordering my calzone at Pat’s Pizza and Mitchell regretting not going first because he wanted the exact same thing (he copied me)
- Tin roofs- “Cat on a hot tin roof!”
- Mitchell moving his bike from parallel parked to perpendicular parked
- Andy calling Mitchell's phone to mock my car/cellphone rule... (imagine high pitched, "valley girl" voice) "oh my gosh mitchell, i met this guy and he's so great and we had ice cream and coffee and you know what this is too much to tell you on voicemail i'm just going to need to see you..."

Around 6 p.m. Ciani realized that she needed to get back to New Jersey to work in the nursery on Sunday morning at 11 a.m., so we returned to Mitchell’s apartment to get my car and on the road.

Highlights of the drive South:
- The L.L.Bean Store in Freeport, Maine
- The pimp at the Thomas A. Edison Service Area on the NJTP
- I finally fell asleep in the carThe McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, Exxon all being closed for bathrooms, we used the Taco Bell bathroom
- Ciani dropping 14 minutes off the ETA on the GPS