…a big gorilla
CritterCon #19
Trip Day Four
In which we see a Moose House, visit a book store, have a Song & Dance Break, and arrive at our destination.
(Note: Various commentary by those other than me are in italics.)
Due to the Old Man Needs To Pee curse and a couple of dreams about dead friends, I found myself wide awake at 4:45 this morning, so I said to hell with it, got up, got showered, put on my clothes, and went to face the day.
And it turned out that the first part of the day I faced was finding out that todays route would find us in 2012 and going from Bangor, Maine to the underground con entrance near Ludlow, VT. Then I went to eat my Cap’n Crunch.
Since everyone was up by 6:30 (Spotsy was up at 5:48), I told them our route, which pleased our New Englanders. We hit the road at 7:00 sharp, with an estimated drive time of 5.5 hours, not counting stops.
The High Points
The World Famous Moose House
Oddly, despite having driven trough Maine at least once in the past 7 decades, the only one of us who had ever heard of it was Peter, and he had only a vague memory of somebody mentioning it. This is not odd for many of the “World Famous” places we have visited. Their world often doesn’t seem to go past about a few surrounding counties. Still, we followed the signs until we arrived at a big house that did indeed look very much like a reclining bull moose. It was, we all agreed, a well done piece of architechture.
The man who lived there, with his wife of 30 years, was Asher Morgan. He also built the place in 2007 and was glad to show us around. He was a chatty fellow and joked about how his wife didn’t like the place and his now grown kids were embarrassed by it. He told us the moose was actually just a big, tight fitting shell over a pretty standard 4 bedroom, 3 bath home. When you get around to the rear of the moose, you see the round back door is where the asshole would be. Unsurprisingly, this is his wife’s most hated part of the house.
Cakes: That feature alone would tell you the place was designed by a man.
Hermione: AND HE PAINTED IT TO LOOK LIKE A BUTTHOLE!
Blue: I thought it was hilarious.
Cakes: I rest my case
After we toured, Asher sold us some bumper stickers and we left. Back on The Bus, I looked up the Moose House and found out that Freda Morgan, the wife, found out that not only had Asher been cheating on her for several years, but he had been cheating on his business taxes. In the divorce that took place in 2014, she got the house, the IRS got the business, and Asher got a year of jail time. Freda had the moose disassembled, then sold the house and moved to Colorado.
Our Kryptonite Looks Like Books
As we entered the small town of Gorham, New Hampshire, we saw a sign saying “Bookstore Going Out Of Business. Big Sale!” For a busload of bibliophiles like us, this was printed crack cocaine. We drove to the place, which was a pretty big store for such a small town, and found out that that the sale was just starting and the discounts were deep. We went in like a herd of rabbits entering a lettuce patch.
90 minutes later, we left loaded down with books. I think they may have had a couple of dozen books left in the sci fi/fantasy section. There might have been twice that many in mystery and horror. Other sections were similarly ravaged. The two ladies who owned the store were practically giddy with joy. I went back in and gave them 20 pounds of assorted chocolate from our Chocolate Closet.
Grace: So many books! I completed several series I read.
Tia: I got a bunch of books of fairy tales!
Brian: Doc and I agreed to split the pulp reprint section.
Song & Dance Break For 500
For reasons mostly to do with us being a busload of weirdos with access to both magic and ultra technology, we stopped in Bradford, Vermont, for a Song & Dance Break. We decided to share it with a big section of downtown, because why not.
The randomly selected song turned out to be “Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz. It took us all (including almost 500 townsfolk) through 5 bodies and 6 realities, which in hindsight may have been a bit much for small town Vermont.
Avis: Ya think?
Gabe: That might have been a bit much for Las Vegas.
Sunny: I love that song.
We left about 2 minutes after things returned to normal. Probably should have neuralized the townsfolk, but that would have taken too long.
At Long Last, CritterCon!
We rolled into the CritterCon mega cavern, which was enlarged by 75% this year due to the wedding, at 3:15 pm. Several things caught our eye, most noticeably the two portal generators floating above the very large field where the wedding will take place. They are 900 feet apart and the skateboard flyover will come out of one at 800 feet up and leave via the other portal which is 300 feet lower.
We also noted about 100 spherical video drones floating over the area. This is partly because skateboarders love to watch their stunts later and partly because the NHT world will watch the wedding live online.
Right now, it’s 6:30 and we are about to go out to dinner at Chez Mom’s, then go to a get together for wedding party members.
More bloggage tomorrow.
Destination Sign When We Started: The Outer Limits
Destination Sign When We Stopped: Weddingville
QM Radio Station: PSLO Plorkanian Jazz
The Dociverse Blog 