On Interesting Things Found In Portland, Maine.

In which a trip is taken, the automotive future is viewed, and an apocalypse is prepared for.

This last week I had the opportunity to go to Maine with my family. I have never been there before and I have to say that it was pretty spectacular. The first half of the week we were in Portland which is a cool little harbor town. But just like all towns it has things that make for great stories, or in this case, a blog post.

On our first full day in Portland we were walking around down town, seeing what there was to see and we decided to do something a little unconventional. So we walked away from downtown towards our destination. On the way there we pasted closed shops and construction sites that smell horribly. When we reached the point in our journey when we called to find out where exactly we needed to go we saw signs of our destination. To get there we had to cut through a shipyard. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it felt like a was going to some drug deal in a Scorsese movie. So what were the Milligans doing walking down this back alley shipyard? Why we were going on a train tour of course.

We had found ads for a tour of the Portland harbor by narrow gauge train. Now you are probably thinking "hey, that sounds pretty cool, you will get to see a lot of cool things and ride in an old timey train." Well that's what we thought also, but as it would turn out this was not the case. Here is what happened instead, we got on the train which backed up 100 yards for some reason, then went for perhaps a mile on the track. It was pretty lame. They didn't even let us enter the old passenger cars, we just had to sit in a car with one bench running down the middle facing outwards.

What other oddities can one find in Portland? How about a true environmentalist? These days, especially here in Bloomington, you see a lot of people driving around in Priuses. Those people are posers. If you truly care about saving the environment you will get yourself a Tesla Motors Roadster. I saw one of these parked at a grocery just outside of Portland, it was the first time I have seen one in real life. When the owner started it up and drove away it made absolutely no noise.

So how much does saving the environment set you back? Only $101,500. But don't worry, a sedan model will be available starting in 2012 and will only set you back $49,900. Also, as of right now the only dealerships are in California, which means that this guy shipped his one hundred thousand dollar car across the country. Now that's environmentalism!!

Last but not least I need to introduce you to a friend of mine, if you don't already know him. His name is B-Carl. B-Carl is a great guy, fun to hang out with but not with out his own idiosyncrasies. One of them is that he has a plan for surviving a zombie apocalypse. No joke, ask him about it.

What does this have to do with Portland? Well from talking to B-Carl one thing I know is that a place to survive the zombie attacks is one of, if not the most important parts of survival. In the middle of the Casco Bay there is an island that contains Fort Gorges, a fort that was constructed during the Civil War. As it happened military advancements made the fort obsolete the moment that it was completed. However, it still stands, and can be visited by anyone with their own boat. The fort is big enough to house 30-40 cars inside of it and has sod on the roof (which was a last ditch effort to make it able to withstand explosive rounds). The most important fact however is that it exists on an island with no bridges.

So if you wake up one day and find the world overran with the undead grab your emergency shotgun, your canned goods and start heading for Maine.

Fort Gorges, waiting for a zombie apocalypse since 1865.