mustang to maine
By anders pearson 01 Oct 2001
got back from my weeklong trip to maine yesterday. it was good to get out of the city for a while. nothing exciting happened but here are some random notes and observations from it:
<p>cj and i made each leg of the trip from alexandria, virginia to dexter, maine (roughly 670 miles) and back in roughly 10.5 hours each way. no speeding tickets. i’m impressed.</p>
<p>my sister just bought a house in dexter. it’s old and needs a lot of fixing up but it’s a fairly nice two-story house with lots of big rooms, a garage, and some land. her mortgage payments are less than a quarter of what i pay for rent for my little one bedroom apartment in manhattan. and she gets to keep hers when all is said and done.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dextershoe.com/">dexter shoe</a>, the company that originated in dexter and employs about 500 people from there and surrounding towns (ie, a <em>huge</em> percentage of the local population) announced last week that they’re closing the dexter factory and moving operations overseas to save on labor costs (i believe they’re planning china this time). the company <a href="http://www.dextershoe.com/custserv/company_behind_shoes.asp">prides itself</a> on the fine new england craftsmanship. a while back, dexter shoe was bought by <a href="http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/">berkshire hathaway, inc</a>, a big investment company run by <a href="http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/08/31/buffett/">warren buffet</a>, who has never even set foot in dexter. they’ve started factories in puerto rico and mexico before and discovered that the workers they’re paying 12 cents an hour don’t produce high enough quality shoes and they’ve had to send huge shipments back to dexter to get repaired at an overall loss for the company. so it looks like the end result will be that dexter shoe will probably have a better bottom line and happier shareholders at the cost of producing lower quality shoes and decimating the small town that supported and nurtured it for over 40 years. way to go warren.</p>
<p>after not studying any chinese for two years, i can only still recognize about 200 characters (it was about 1500 or so at my peak). </p>
<p>i think i’ve become allergic to cats and/or dogs. we always had pets when i was growing up and it never bothered me but going home this time, i found myself sneezing up a storm whenever i was in a house with pets.</p>
<p>interesting graffiti seen in the men’s room at the vince lombardi rest area on the garden state parkway: “rednecks are gay and suck dick”</p>
<p>my dad tells me that <a href="http://www.hgd.com/alison/">alison arngrim</a>, the actress who played the mean character nellie olsen on the little house on the prairie tv series made an appearance in the rosebowl parade during the time the series was running (and she was about 13). she was booed, spit on and had things thrown at her for the entire route because people are too stupid to realize that there is a difference between a fictional character that isn’t likeable and the little girl who plays her on tv. my dad had heard that she later went on to a career in porn but this doesn’t appear to be true (on her website it mentions that she’s now a comedian and does aids awareness education but i can’t find anything about porn). </p>
<p>lani met me at the train station in virginia with a bag lunch that included a note and stickers. thus reinforcing her sainthood in my book.</p>
<p>a week is too short.</p>