3. august: New Hampshire and Maine

Theme song of the day: "Cheers (where everybody knows your name)".

Monday turned out to be the longest day in life, what with the plane ride, the time change, taking the airtrain to the train station, the train to Penn State and the bus from there to Boston; Jo picking us up, and us finally
arriving in Concord, New Hampshire. The time from I got out of bed in Oslo till I got to bed in Concord was approximately 26 hours, with bouts of fitful sleeping on the various collective conveyances.
Good times, though! We had one beer at Jo's and went to bed, bliss :)

I got up at 8 am Tuesday morning and did a half primary series of ashtanga before Jo and Vib got up at 9ish. We went out for breakfast and coffee in Concord and then got a call-back from the car rental saying that we could pick the car up earlier than intended, yeah for that! On the way to Hertz, Jo awesomely spotted a music instrument store - Strings and Things Music. We came, we saw and we bought a guitar =D Vib knows more than a few chords and I know less than a few, but with the guitar followed a music book and so I think I'll be home safe. Vib also got a holder thingy for her harmonica, so it won't be long till we start jamming on our own. And if we run out of money we can just take a stand at a street corner and play for cash ;)

Guitar in hand we drove to Hertz, got the rental - a Kia Optima (from now on referred to as the K-iaaah! A black beauty with a huge trunk - just what two shopping crazy girls need :)

From Concord I took the steering wheel, and Jo guided us up to Maine, the eastern most State in AMERICA, wicked! Once in Maine we did what all people who go to Maine do: LOBSTERS! Vib and I got ourselves each a pound of freshly boiled pink lobster. As we'd never had lobster before it took us a few brain cells to figure out how we were supposed to eat the stuff, and I ended up using the claw (nut) cracker on practically the whole lobster. It was absolutely delicious when cracked open though! :) Stuffed beoynd belief, we drove back to New Hampshire, to Portsmouth: a beautiful colonial city right on the coast. We spent the day there, ditsing around, looking for stickers for our gituar, and generally enjoying american life. Vib got us safely back to Concord later that evening and then we went out on the town. And where else do you wanna go than the place where everybody knows your name (at least everybody (literally!) knew Jo's name ;))? We went to Cheers and drank the beers! On some point, though (quite early unfortunately), I went into zombie state of mind and wanted most of all to lie right down on the bar floor. So we headed for another one of Jo's favorite bars, played some Trivial Pursuit, then headed home. We met some awesome all american guys who'd just won the local dodge ball tournament by following, of course, all the rules the Average Joe's themselves followed. We went home after this, and going to bed was never sweeter than this night :) Tomorrow we'll head to Niagara Falls, driving for 8-9 hours, which means that the road trip itself officially is ON!

UC

Btw: we are having some problem with the charger for the Mac, so we won't be able to post any pictures until we can recharge the computer. Sorry about that!

Vib