Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

I drove!  On the highway, even!  Fast is fun!  I took out my first Zipcar for a spin today, a Nissan Versa named Verdad (yes, they name all their cars).  It was a nice car, and I found that driving really is like riding a bike, you don't forget how to do it.  I feel totally confident in my ability to drive all over the place now.  Yay!

Gloucester is nice.  We spent the afternoon there yesterday.  On the advice of the info center person, we did not go to Dogtown (unspoken subtext on her part:  "we are so sick of having to go rescue lost tourists, please just don't").  However, we did get the contact information for a couple of people who do historical hiking tours of Dogtown, and that sounds pretty awesome.  We'll find out how much it costs and see about getting a small group together later in the summer.  Instead of Dogtown, we went to a couple of local museums to get a feel for what Gloucester is all about.  At the Cape Ann Museum we happened upon an excellent photography exhibit by Charles A. Lowe, who had been a photographer for the Gloucester Daily Times from 1957-1981, when he passed away relatively young.  The exhibit pieces were selected from the year 1975 and were arranged in chronological order, so you could really get a sense of a year in the life of the town.  He was an excellent photographer, clearly somebody who loved the camera for the vertité art it could produce as much as for its recording of history.  Really there was no better way to get a feel for Gloucester.  After that we strolled down to Cape Ann Brewing Company, where we expected to get some pub food and a beer for me.  The beer was successful, a nice doppelbock, food less so as what they had was bags of chips and pizza from a local place.  It was a nice atmosphere though and we conversed with the bartender and one other customer.  All in all, a happy lazy day by the sea.
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