Welcome to Maine!

We should have arrived yesterday in Maine.

It would have been much later than we planned, as usual. We took the route through Massachusetts to get there, so I thought we’d stop off in Northampton to sample a little lesbian culture before we headed east again.

That was before we realized we’d left Frances’s stroller at an abandoned gas station in Bennington. Detour to Holyoke to buy another Snap-n-Go, which we assembled in the entryway to Babies R Us.

Back on I-90, the dominant highway of our trip, it began to snow. Hard. It wasn’t sticking, but it was enough to slow traffic to a halt. It was dark; we were tired. We called my aunt in Auburn, Massachusetts, and stopped there for the night.

I don’t know if I should describe the varieties of minor troubles and inconveniences that we regularly endure on this trip. I guess I’ll mention the two that happened yesterday, not including the lost stroller, which technically happened the day before. One was during a stop for coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts. They had a drive through, which looked like we could fit under it. But at the entryway to the drive through we saw the sign–9 feet of clearance. We weren’t sure, but it was definitely cutting it close. And we also saw that the drive through and the entrance were the only two ways out. Which meant, you guessed it, turning the car and trailer all the way around in a small parking lot. Let’s just say that as I did so I blocked the drive through long enough to get a middle finger flipped at me from a teenager who must have really needed a donut.

The other time was at a rest stop/truck stop right on the highway–the kind they have on toll roads so you don’t have to get off and back on. Usually these places are very carefully laid out. Trucks and cars with trailers go in one way, cars the other. This one had a sign directing only the trucks. So we took it, wondering if we were going the right way. We came around the back of the building to a place where several trucks were parked in a line. In the dark, it looked like your standard bank of pull-through spots, so I picked an opening between two trucks. Only to find there was a truck in front of me, too. We were in a truck dormitory. There I was for the second time in a day, backing the trailer out of a tight spot while blocking traffic and nearly jackknifing the thing. This time instead of getting the finger from a grumpy, donutless teen, I got guided out by a trucker, who at least tried not to laugh at us.

There’s a learning curve associated with this type of travel. One I’m still climbing.

So tomorrow, after we sleep in my friend Mandy’s driveway in Portland, Maine, we volunteer at No On 1. I’m looking forward to connecting with some local queers, and to doing something to help make Maine part of the Promised Land. Technically we didn’t have to come here–it is out of the way, and we’re not married here. But not to do so seemed remiss.

Yes, this trip is about how painfully, ridiculously dumb it is to be married in one state and not another. It’s about a whole-country approach to marriage equality. But there are real families in Maine whose lives are going to be greatly impacted by the outcome of November 3rd’s election. And this, too, is important. This, too, deserves our attention.

For the next couple of days, we’re yours, Maine. We will do what we can to help make Maine the first state to approve marriage equality at the polls. And I have a suspicion that Mainers will come through.

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