Maine's autumn, Day 8 | Clear sky, just in time for my flight home

Day 8 of my Maine vacation consisted of a trip to the airport, sadly. Along the way in Topsfield, about 15 minutes north of Princeton on U.S. 1, I stopped to shoot this old yellow Chevy, with the yellow trees and the golden morning sun in the background.

Of course, the day I left for Florida, the sky had cleared, offering better leaf-peeping conditions than any of the previous days I had spent in Maine. On the way to the airport, this time in Lincoln, I just wanted to show people that blue sky really does exist in the state.

Now in the air and headed back to the Sunshine State, I spotted a stream of ships steaming toward the New England coast.

From the Boston area, passengers on my Allegiant flight to Sanford, Fla., saw a bank of clouds covering only the curving land mass of Cape Cod. The morning seabreeze brings cool air off the ocean, and when that collides with the warming land, the air rises, and the moisture condenses into clouds.

The pilot warned us that as we flew south of New England, the weather would get a little more active. Here, the plane approaches thick cloud cover. Again, Cape Cod is in the distance. We experienced only slight turbulence.

Because of the clouds, I didn't pull out my camera again until the plane began its descent over Florida. That's when I spotted Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach.

Seconds from landing, the plane cast a shadow onto the pine and palm trees below. Not much for fall foliage here in Florida, is there?

In a less than sunny post, 2 drawbacks of the night shift

Grass moves in the stiff breeze as the sun sets over Lake Washington in Melbourne.

There are a lot of drawbacks to starting work at 4 or 5 p.m. One of them is missing out on one of Florida's best features: sunsets.

Here on the east coast of the state, they don't compare to those Key West or Gulf Coast solar events - or so I'm told. But still, I like to take one in whenever I can.

Having woken up at an ungodly hour for a noontime medical appointment, I was later left with six hours of daylight that I didn't know what to do with. (My typical day allows no more sunshine for anything but a quick run around the block. That's what happens when you get out of bed late in the afternoon.)

With nothing better to do, I decided to stare for an hour at the thing I rarely see. I drove just 10 minutes away to Lake Washington in Melbourne, where a city park faces west, across the water.

Even in my limited experience with Sunshine State sunsets, it wasn't the most spectacular one I've seen. But I took some photos and decided to share them anyway.

And you should expect more budget posts like this. That medical appointment wasn't cheap. I blame my problems on the night shift.

Florida's oranges can't beat Maine's seafood, poutine

The spread at Susan's Fish & Chips in Portland. From left, the pint of scallops, pint of clams, pint of calamari, fries and lobster roll. I almost puked - but not because it was bad.

I've decided that the only way to describe my attitude toward Florida is a love-hate relationship.

I love its natural beauty - the sunsets and sunrises, when I'm not sleeping or working through them. And for the most part, I love the weather - the warmth, sunshine and lightning.

I hate how everything but Walmart shuts down at 8 p.m. I hate the climate's lack of seasons. I hate the sprawling style of urban growth. I'm actually watching the Travel Channel's Samantha Brown as I write this post: She's talking about the "Southern charm" of Winter Park, just outside Orlando. So, I hate its phoniness.

But the most unforgivable of Florida's misgivings is its subpar seafood. I'm sorry to say that warm-water fish just doesn't cut it with me. Fish spoils in the warmth, so I guess that explains why Maine's cold-water varieties are so much tastier and meatier.


Calamari, clams, scallops

The first thing I had to do during my Maine vacation was grab some fried seafood in some hole-in-the-wall joint.

So a friend and I went to Susan's Fish & Chips in Portland, where they had most everything on the menu - calamari, scallops, clams. I had to have it all, so I did - a pint of each, with some fries on the side. My friend, Molly, got the lobster roll, too, but my lobster meal was coming later, so I decided to steal just a few chucks of meat from her roll.

The calamari was great, but I wouldn't say Maine is known too widely for its squid. Where the state shines is in its clams and scallops. Having once hated scallops, I tasted the best ever at Susan's and had a bottomless lemonade to wash it all down.

But the highlight were the clams. I have never tasted better clams anywhere outside of Maine, and these were some of the best I've ever had. The most unique aspect of the clam experience is the bit of dirt that comes with each deep-fried bite. It's hardiness at its best.

I left Susan's full and happy, especially considering I had even more seafood to eat.

Red means he's dead, and he's got a potato behind him, which indicates an even greater state of deadness.

Lobstah

Having gone through the start of lobster season in Florida before leaving for vacation, I was getting increasingly hungry for a taste of real, Maine lobster.

Florida's species, the spiny lobster, lacks one of the largest sources of meat in the Maine variety: the claws.

I never had the inclination to pay the $13 a pound for one of the Maine lobsters I see crawling around in a tank at the local Walmart Supercenter in Melbourne. So when I left for Maine and heard that lobster prices were down in New England, it was music to my ears. Juicy lobster meat dripping with butter was surely in my future.

But in the Maine supermarkets, it was still $10 a pound. Cheap? I think not.

Of course, you can easily pay 10 bucks for a 16-ounce steak, but with lobster, most of the weight you're paying for is the crustacean's inedible shell. It was going to take a better deal to get me to bite.

And that came with a trip to the Down East coast. I ran into a seafood market that was basically set up in someone's garage. The freezer was full of haddock, cod and salmon. And there was a large tank swimming with lobsters - with claws, of course. And at $6.50 a pound, I couldn't go wrong. "They're right off the boat this morning," the salesman, who wore rubber overalls, said. I got a 1 1/2-pounder for myself and another for the pops, who always had eaten one for his birthday, but skipped it this year because of the inflated price earlier in the season.

Unfortunately, the lobsters were a bit out of season. They were technically soft-shell lobsters, though they were quite hard. The most noticeable difference, however, is in the amount of meat: The claws weren't as filled as they could have been.

Either way, I got more succulent claw meat than any spiny lobster would ever have.

My cell phone camera doesn't do this mound of poutine any justice.

Poutine: a tradition of the Quebecois

This is probably the thing I miss the most as a Florida resident: poutine, a plate piled with hot french fries, gravy and cheese curd that is popular among French Canadians.

The dish is a favorite in Quebec, the Maritime Provinces of Canada and, of course, Maine, which is largely influenced by its neighboring provinces, Quebec and New Brunswick.

It's odd, though, that this isn't incredibly popular elsewhere because, well, it just makes sense. What goes better with potatoes than gravy? What goes better with fries than cheese? Putting them together is a no-brainer.

My parents and I took my grandparents out to eat to celebrate their 60th anniversary. Everyone else ordered the fish and chips, but I had a plate of poutine as my main course. The fries and beef gravy were smothered with mozzarella instead of cheese curd, but it was good nonetheless.

Now that I'm back into my no-poutine routine here in Florida, it's flakes for breakfast and a TV dinner for supper. I miss vacation.

Video | The sun rises first in Maine - by a longshot

One of the greatest aspects of living in or visiting Maine is that we get sunshine before anyone else in the United States.

Curious about how much earlier Princeton, Maine, sees the sun before Melbourne, Fla., I checked out the U.S. Naval Observatory's sunrise-sunset tabulations.

Yesterday, Aug. 25, the sun peeked over the ocean's surface at 6:58 a.m. in Brevard, according to the Navy's Web site.

But in Washington County, Maine, the Sunrise County, the sun rose at 5:44 a.m. If you're bad at math, that's one whole hour and 14 minutes earlier than in Florida.

I knew that Maine had longer days during the summer because it's farther north. Alaska, after all, has the longest sunlight period of all the states.

Sunset in Florida was at 7:51 p.m. yesterday, and it was 7:20 p.m. in Maine. That means I had 43 more minutes to soak in the sun, though the temperature was in the high 60s here, as opposed to high 80s in Florida.

I woke up about 20 minutes before the sun rose over the peninsula that parallels Slipps Point, the north-south peninsula on which my parents live. This video is taken in my parents' backyard; the sunset video was in the front. It's 61 minutes of footage condensed to about 40 seconds. I used music because there was absolutely no sound; it was completely still yesterday morning.

This is what I had to grow up with: Quite a wicked view we have here, isn't it?

Another new thing that got old quickly: Red Sox edition

Tropicana Field with fans in it - a sight reserved mostly for when the Rays play the Yankees or Red Sox.

Pelicans were everywhere in St. Pete. This one was on The Pier.

The past week has been one of uneventful firsts.

I wrote yesterday about my first authentic alligator sighting. It would have been more memorable if I saw it eating a bird or something ... or someone.

Today's first actually was last Tuesday's. And it was something I had been waiting years for. It all started with a coast-to-coast trip July 1 to St. Petersburg.

I went there to see the Red Sox play a regular-season game. I had watched them during spring training, but that's like seeing a gator at a zoo: It doesn't really count. So this should have been such a momentous occasion that it should have left me itching to blog about it.

But as it was with the gator, the game was nothing special. And the surprisingly cocky Tampa Bay Rays fans, who have a steeped tradition of being losers, made it more forgettable.

But I wanted to tell you about it before it completely fades from memory.

Tropicana Field is a uninspiring venue, full of seats that rarely are filled during a baseball game. The Sox seem to garner the most fans when they're in town, so the Rays franchise exploits that by charging more to see those "premium" games.

My $28 seat was in left field, among several drunken, loud and ill-mannered fans of the home team. Friends told me that the Sox fans would outnumber those of the Rays, but judging by the woos versus the boos each time Manny Ramirez was introduced to the plate, that wasn't the case.

Tim Wakefield delivers a knuckleball as the Rays batter waits ... and waits for it to arrive.

I had a full view of the action, but the indoor stadium is dark compared with open-air ones, so taking good photos with a telephoto lens was unlikely.

Boston played like the team I fell in love with during my childhood. The Sox set their fans up for a stellar finish, loading the bases in the eighth inning with one out and a 2-1 deficit, only to follow through with several strikeouts and the accompanying disappointment for their fans, already disheartened by intoxicated hecklers telling them to "go back to New England" or "Clearwater."

"At least we've been losing only for 10 years," a Rays fan told a Sox fan. "You guys had been losing for 80 years."

So, that was that. It was a game. That's all.

St. Pete, on the other hand, performed admirably and did not let me down.

I arrived in the city hours before the 7:10 p.m. first pitch so I could walk around and explore the downtown and its waterfront.

Around 2 p.m., I entered a garage that offered $6 daily parking. But I left at 1 a.m. without paying a cent. The gates were wide open when I exited, and there was no attendant around. The city of St. Pete must have been feeling generous that day.

As it seems with many Florida downtowns, St. Pete's was quiet. But unlike others, it had much to offer.

Nic Weathersbee, owner of the St. Petersburg Candle Gallery

I made my way to The Pier, on the end of which is a five-story building in the shape of an inverted pyramid, making it journalism friendly. The structure featured a candlemaker making a Boston Red Sox candle, above, a coconut-themed restaurant on the top floor and, of course, great views of Tampa Bay and of the cities of Tampa and St. Pete from the observation deck.

Several dolphins wiggled their way around the pier, dangerously close to a speeding motorboat, whose driver seemed clueless as to the finned creatures around it.

And of course, there again were many winged creatures, above, including the ubiquitous pelicans, below, that soared through the sunshine and plunged into the water for fish.

And a dove landed on the head of an old lady, below. But she didn't seem to mind. Actually, she didn't even move.

I ate lunch atop The Pier's building, with the bay as the view to my left and St. Pete's skyline to my right. The outdoor dining area at Cha Cha Coconuts is usually graced with comforting sea breezes. But during my visit, a large electric fan offered more relief from the heat than Mother Nature.

I ordered Cha Cha Coconuts' fish soft tacos, which were made with corvina and accompanied by fried plantains, beans and rice. I'm not wild about fishy tastes: I don't like to get a bucket of ocean water thrown into my face. But when I eat fish, I like to be subtly reminded that I'm eating fish. Because of the strong flavors of the onions, salsa and cheese in the tacos, however, I hardly tasted the meat. The corvina's taste, apparently, is too delicate for tacos. Yes, they were good, but they were not memorable.

The view of St. Pete from Vinoy Park.

I left St. Pete early Wednesday morning, when the city looked just as beautiful, above, as it did during the day.

The two-and-a-half-hour trip back to the Atlantic coast offered another first. And this one was memorable: I turned the heat on in my car during the summer. I've acclimated myself to Florida's heat, and 72 degrees at night was nearly unbearable.

A paperboy brandishes his wares outside the St. Petersburg Museum of History. Like the lady with the dove, he didn't move much. Lazy paperboys: the reason we can't sell newspapers. Actually, the one in the photo is "Free! Free! Free!" Heck, we can't even give them away.

The headquarters of the St. Petersburg Times.

Offlede can't fight urge to edit while taking photos

The sign at the Harvey's Groves location in Cocoa Beach.

Did Harvey's Groves spell "majic" this way because "juice" begins with a J?

I report; you decide.

Central Florida wildfires: Video: Fires near Corey Road in Malabar

I still don't have that nice video camera, but this is better than nothing.

Central Florida wildfires: Stupid moment: Fire starts near Offlede's house

This fire on Babcock Street was near two gas stations, but firefighters had it mostly contained.

I was wondering why I smelled smoke when I returned Monday evening.

A small brush fire ignited near my house sometime in the afternoon while I was gallivanting in South Brevard. Because my roommate isn't home right now, I feel responsible for the house. But it's a good thing our dear Melbourne firefighters were able to quickly knock down the flames.

I went back out Monday evening, and there was a fire burning next to Babcock Street that hadn't been there earlier in the day. I used a timed exposure to get the streaks from the passing vehicles in the shot.

I hope whoever is starting these things thinks twice about the next one.

Central Florida wildfires: People of Corey Road typify the hardy souls of Brevard

Firefighters couldn't be everywhere. So this Corey Road resident watered down his burning fence with a bucket.

Firefighters stand by in case of flare-ups. When there was one, they put it out within minutes.

Tragedies bring communities together. Today, Brevard County came together.

Wildfires have damaged or destroyed 51 homes in the southern part of the county. But the residents are resilient, hardy and stubborn.

I went to Corey Road in Malabar, where a fire destroyed two homes last night. I didn't get as close to the fires as I did last time, but I snapped a few photos anyway.

When I arrived, a helicopter, above, was racing from a pond to the main blaze as it threatened a home with a pile of tires in the backyard. Many residents said they have been afraid for a long time that the highly combustible material would put their homes in danger.

But the firefighters didn't let that happen.

One large home on the 2000 block of Corey Road was surrounded by fire this afternoon. A man drove by on a bicycle as I photographed it.

"There was brush all around that huge house this afternoon. Now, it's all burned, but the home is still there," he said. "That guy was lucky."

The land around the home was scorched, but the house stood firm, above.

Others were not as fortunate.

On the 3000 block, a fireman's home and his vehicles were untouched. Next door, only the charred concrete walls of a house were left. A gutted van, above, and car sat in the driveway.

My camera malfunctioned, and I was walking back toward my car when a woman in a sport utility vehicle stopped and asked where I was parked. Her name was Barbara, and her SUV was full of her and her husband's belongings. She wanted get the SUV away from her house and the fire, then she wanted me to give her a ride back to her home.

"It wouldn't make sense to pack up to evacuate and then leave the car in the driveway," Barbara said. "My husband's back there spraying everything with the hose. He's a dumbass."

Barbara was especially worried because her house is "severely underinsured."

"You can blame that on the hurricanes," she said.

I dropped her off at the intersection near her home. The rest of the road was closed.

I saw others like Barbara. They filled open-air trailers with luggage. They were ready to leave if the wind shifted. I saw residents wearing masks as they drove by me. Tears were rolling down their faces.

Megan O'Brien of Corey Road in Malabar is flanked by two neighbors. There's an old garage off to the left of this picture that was damaged. I asked O'Brien about it, and she said it was hit during the 2004 hurricanes, not during the 2008 wildfires.

After I fixed my camera, I walked back toward Barbara's house. I met one of her neighbors, Megan O'Brien. She was climbing down off her house after watering the roof. "I've been up there since noon," she said.

O'Brien sprays her roof.

A palm tree burst into flames after I finished talking with O'Brien. A volunteer firefighting truck raced 100 yards to extinguish it within a minute.

As the sun began to set, the fire and smoke didn't let up. I had been wandering Corey Road for hours. My clothes smelled of smoke. My face was dotted with ash. My sunglasses were coated with a gray film.

The smoke was bothering my eyes and nose so much that I had to leave. But since I had arrived, the routes I took to Corey Road had been cut off. U.S. 1 was closed. Interstate 95 was eerily empty, above. All the major north-south routes were blocked.

I drove to an I-95 overpass in Malabar, where I had a 360-degree view of the situation. Plumes of smoke rose from at least five regions. Fire was everywhere.

Considering the size of the blazes - more than 3,000 acres have burned - it's amazing that hundreds of homes haven't been destroyed.

Today would be a good day to appreciate our county and its public servants.

The rays of sun shining through the smoke are strangely beautiful.



This is in front of Megan O'Brien's home. In the background, a chopper dumps water on a tire fire.



O'Brien's driveway.

Video: You can almost feel the burn at Viera wildfire

I edited this quickly in Final Cut Express, so it's not awesome. I can't for the life of me figure out how to export a Quicktime file without overly compressing it or not compressing it enough. This file is only about 6 megabytes, so the quality isn't awesome.

But at least it shows a little of the scene of the fire this morning.

Update: I boosted the quality and uploaded the video to Viddler, instead of YouTube.

Taking a photo is the only excitement on my 'weekend'

I'm a boring guy on my days off. That's probably because there isn't much to do in Brevard County, Fla., on a Monday and Tuesday, especially during the hours I'm up and at 'em (5 p.m.-2 a.m., when all the elderly inhabitants are calling it a day).

Oh, the agony of being a night copy editor.

My "weekend" usually consists of a trip to Starbucks or Panera Bread for some coffee and a little reading or blogging.

To shake it up a bit today, I stepped out of my car near the Panera in Viera to snap a photo of the rays of sun shining onto one of the expensive housing developments that typify this neighborhood. It's odd because the homes are built on grassy expanses dotted by short palm trees.

Panera is a great place. I get free and unlimited coffee refills, and that's good because I need the heat to keep me warm in the overly air-conditioned cafe. My first cup is caffeinated, then I usually switch to decaf.

Starbucks is quite awful, but it's getting better. The franchise's locations are supposed to introduce free wireless Internet access sometime this spring. But until then, I'll stick to Panera, where the Web always has been free.

I should do a live blog at Panera sometime. Maybe that would be exciting.

Sunshine State beats up Empire State for supremacy; New Yorkers in Florida must feel smart

Brooklyn, part of the (former?) Empire, offers culture, crime and Jay-Z.

Florida offers sunshine, palmettos and wannabe gangsters.

The Politico seems to think Florida is overtaking New York as the most dominant state in our blessed Union. Go here for the article.

That milestone is most easily quantified by the leveling political forces of the Empire State and the Sunshine State. After the 2010 census, both will have 27 representatives in the House. The Politico fails to mention behemoths Texas (32) and California (53).

The story points to growth along the Interstate 4 corridor and to the sprawl of large, aesthetically sterile houses near Orlando. The Politico again fails to mention our inflated housing market because of those homes and the sketchy future of the space industry, which once made Brevard the nation's fastest-growing county.

But we shouldn't complain. New Yorkers have it real bad. Apparently, Upstate New York is a scourge of economic declination. Sadly, Kodak in Rochester is among its pot marks.

I've had the pleasure of living in both states. I'm not sure which I like the best. They have their similarities as far as development is concerned.

Three of the five sources quoted in this story are journalists. I'm skeptical of other media figures in stories such as this because they simply don't know as much as academics and other analysts in the particular states.

The story is shoddy but interesting. It's good news for the Grand Old Party. But as Florida continues to grow, it's difficult to envision the Republicans maintaining their grasp on state politics. Further development will make this place liberal.

I'm from Florida; what's all this white stuff?

The Weather Channel was right. It snowed in Denver this morning. Co-worker Beth, who has been stuck in Florida her whole life, has never experienced snow to such a large scale: 1 inch. Of course, Maine got 200 inches this year, so the novelty of it wasn't there for me. Above, she shoots the flakes.

This is the view from my 12th-story window at the Marriott in downtown Denver. My only complaint about the hotel is that the shower has spurts of scalding water that burned my backed twice this morning.

Beth obviously has no experience in making snowmen. This poor guy had the proper three sections, but he wasn't quite proportional. I equate the snowman with a reporter (it had a big head). Beth was upset when someone knocked him down, too. My guess is that the little snowperson just melted like M&M's in your hand.

Smokin' ACES home

Offlede visits real city, can't escape cheesy tropical 'plants'

Living in Florida makes me miss real cities with real culture. Orlando? Tourist town. Miami? Don't get me started. Melbourne? Some people call it Melboring. Denver, on the other hand, is loaded with cool restaurants, parks and the old prairie-style buildings that line many of the downtown streets. This city has real history. Before the American Copy Editors Society national conference began, I got a chance to walk around town Wednesday afternoon.

I would have given my stylebook to be at college hockey's Frozen Four during my junior year at the University of Maine, when my beloved Black Bears played Minnesota in the national championship game. Well, maybe I wouldn't have: They lost. Denver is the host this year. I noticed mostly just University of North Dakota fans clad in green shirts. But then I saw a University of New Hampshire fan, and I gave that guy a bad look. UNH is evil. Above, a banner features Paul Kariya, who played on Maine's first national championship team in 1993. The Black Bears' second title in 1999 was represented on a banner by Ben Guite.

I went to a funky little cafe near my hotel for lunch and had a "No Fad Thai" wrap, which contained chicken, lettuce, red cabbage, green onion, carrots, rice and peanut sauce. Quite moist and delicious. And at only $5.50, I saved my company some money.

Ah, die-hards. I used to be one during my childhood in Maine. I would play golf on the frozen lake in the winter. I would ride floating sheets of ice as they broke away in the spring. I didn't go running with my dogs wearing only shorts, though: I didn't have a dog.

The lower part of the downtown is expanding with condos. But unlike the growth in Florida, Denver's is being done with some taste. There's something about red brick that looks prettier than stucco. But why did the developer of the above complex feel the need to put a fake coconut tree on the top? It's 40 degrees, man. It's not going to grow. Maybe it's just the coconut part of a frozen pina colada.

The 13th step of the Colorado state Capitol is exactly one mile above sea level, according to the engraving below my feet. A cold rain was falling on me when this was taken, hence the constipated look.

Smokin' ACES home