WHY I LOVE ME, 31

This week's Why I Love me is big. Really big. The 62nd annual Maine Lobster Festival takes place July 29 through August 2 in Rockland, Maine. Every year it takes eleven months of planning to make every Lobster Festival the biggest event in midcoast Maine every summer.

I've never been to the lobster festival (yup, I'm From Away), due to my aversion to lobster and all things shellfish. Oh, I don't hate them personally, but I'd rather pick up NutJob's yard presents than hang out at a festival with mass quantities of people and the stench of steamed dead things.

Last year tens of thousands of people flocked to the festival and over 20,000 pounds of lobster was prepared. Hotel reservations are made a year in advance. There are even free shuttle buses that bring you right to the festival so you don't have to hunt for a parking space. See? This IS big. In addition to lobster, you can also clog your arteries with fried clams, steamed clams, fried Maine shrimp, shrimp cocktail, steamed muscles, and other carnival food like fried dough, sausage and onions chased with shots of Mylanta and a double dose of Lipitor. The festival also has the dubious distinction of having the world's largest lobster cooker.

People come all this way just for lobster? Nah! There's a lot more than stinky lobster such as:

The Sea Goddess pageant where a new Maine Sea Goddess is chosen every year.
The Maine Lobster Festival Seafood Cooking Contest
The Maine Arts and Crafts tent
The Marine Tent
The Big Parade, where 25,000 people line Main Street
Road races
Entertainment/Music: Jazz, comedy, oldies, Celtic, reggae, folk and blues.
Coast Guard Station tours
US Navy ship tours

Competitions for kids include:
Lobster Eating
Cod Fish Carry (little kids dressed as fishermen carrying huge cod fish)
Diaper Derby Costume Parade

While those are great events, by far the best event ever is the Lobster Crate Race. No, these are not crates that you leave your lobster in while you go to work so they don't poop on the floor. Lobster crates are used for storing lobsters. The crate race consists of 50 lobster crates strung in a line and partially submerged in the harbor. The winner is the one who can run across the most crates, back and forth, before taking a dunk in the ocean. Some run barefoot, some wear socks, all fall in.

From the Maine Lobster Festival website:

In recent years a young man from Austria won the race with over 2000 crates crossed before he fell into the cold waters of the harbor. The NEW all-time record, set in 2008 is 4,501 crates, run by Andrew Bachiochi, a 12-year-old participant from Stafford Springs, Conn. The previous record was held by a midcoast girl, Susan Lundquist, who managed 3,007! That record took 25 years to break!

The "Great International William Atwood Lobster Crate Race" is open to anyone brave enough to risk falling into the chilly ocean with thousands of people watching your every move.

Check out the video so you can perfect your lobster crate race technique:

The Maine Lobster Festival helps bring in nearly $1 million of "outside" money into the regional economy. The proceeds from the festival go back into planning for the next year as well as to charities, scholarships, etc. So how do they pay the planners and staffers? They don't. Every one is a volunteer. Cool, huh?

Now do you love ME?

Sources:

Maine Lobster Festival

Atwood Lobster Company

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WHY I LOVE ME, 8

Tenants Harbor, ME Photo: Deb

It's that time once again! Can you believe it? I didn't think so. Anyway, welcome to another addition of Why I Love ME!

No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne...who ever he is.

I didn't know the "no man is an island" quote was from the same "for whom the bell tolls" quote. Didn't Dolly Parton write about islands in a stream, which is weird 'cause streams are small, like the kind you sail leaf-boats with acorn caps for men down on, running along side of them to see how far they could go before flipping over. How could there be an island in the middle of that puny stream? Plus, I thought Quasimodo was responsible for that whole 'whom the bell tolls" thing. I know he had something to do with bells and a bad back.


Back (pun intended) to islands. Maine has more islands than you thought, not that you think about Maine islands very often. There are greater than 2,000 islands here, none of them are in puny streams and only one has a resident named Quasimodo - a three-legged dog. Yup. I checked.

Photo: Matinicus Island Penobscot Island Air

Matinicus, or as The Terrorist calls it, "Meniscus" Island is the furthest inhabited island, 22 miles off the coast of Rockland, Maine. The residents of Meniscus have been known to shoot at "outsiders" that get too close. Think I'm kidding? Google it. The name "Matinicus" is an Abnaki Indian name meaning "Place of wild turkeys". Turkeys are the least of their problems.

Meniscus Island, population 51 (year 2000), 2 miles x 1 mile, is smack dab in the middle of one of, if not the richest lobster grounds in the world. Did you know 90% of US lobsters are caught off the coast of Maine? You do now. As a result, Meniscus lobstermen carry loaded guns aboard their boats. Lobstering is their livelihood, fishing territories are passed down from generation to generation, and you just don't mess with that.

Currently there is a lawsuit going on involving a lobsterman from another island pulling traps belonging to a Meniscus resident who was too ill to do it himself. Seems the other native Meniscus lobstermen didn't go for that because technically an "outsider" was pulling those traps and that is a very big no-no. Tempers flared, shots were allegedly fired while out at sea and lobster traps severed from buoys so as to send a message: Get out of Dodge!

Years ago, the Maine State Police were told to go to Meniscus only if absolutely necessary and only in daylight. The state gave up enforcing vehicle laws on Matinicus in the 1950s, so license plates and brakes are optional on the cars that traverse the dirt roads.

Don't let all this dissuade you from a summer vacation to Meniscus Island. They are a caring bunch, the first to head out to sea to help a mariner in trouble. So if you're drowning, they'll like you.

From a Meniscus vacation rental ad: The island is a working lobstering community, not a tourist island, although visitors are always welcome as long as they don't expect to be waited on. Translation: Bring Kevlar vest and a banjo.

From Matinicus Island dot com:

....visit an island that is remote, a bit rustic, and that requires a sense of adventure, tolerance, independence, and humor from its visitors. Translation: Bring Kevlar vest and a banjo.


...It is a working island with few tourists. Translation:..they didn't bring a Kevlar vest and a banjo.

On the up side, the other 2,000+ islands are a bit more tolerant of tourists, but you might want to throw a Kevlar vest in the carry-on.

References:
Matinicus Island.com
Matinicus-Island.com
History.com
Wikipedia

Humor-Blogs is way-ah ya can click me one of those Smileys, ayuh.

Check out the new and improved Humor Bloggers dot com!

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WHY I LOVE ME!

Welcome to the First Ever Edition of WHY I LOVE ME! No, not me, but ME! For those of you west of New Hampshire, the abbreviation for Maine is 'ME'. See? This is going to be educational for you, but fun, too! Whoopee! I will present to you things you never knew about Maine because no one knows squat about this place other than it's cold.

Photo: Deb Port Clyde, ME

In this edition of Why I Love ME, I bring you....LOBSTERS!


<---LIVE

DEAD --->

If it's red, it's dead.

Shucks Maine Lobster is a processing plant in Richmond, ME. They have devised a way to extract lobster meat without cooking the lobster by using a machine called the....(drum roll, man with deep voice that echoes): The "Big Mother Shucker." (I sent them an application to Humor Bloggers). Apparently this method ensures the meat is tender and not over cooked or double cooked as it would be in lobster stew if you used cooked lobster meat. How do you make lobster stew? Insult its mother. Wonder which is worse? Being plunged into boiling water or having the meat ripped out of you while still alive? You can think about that, I have other things to do.

Photo: Deb Rockport, ME

The Maine Lobster Promotion Council is trying to put a stop to the sale of "imposter lobsters." (their spelling, not mine). Maine lobstermen are being urged to tag their lobsters with a "Certified Maine Lobster" ID tag. Why you ask? This is so you will know you are getting a real live honest to God Maine lobster, not a scrawny Kansas lobster.

Speaking of Kansas, Mr. Man and I were at a nice restaurant in Bar Harbor a couple of years ago. A mom, dad and their two boys came in and sat at the next table. Accents made them from somewhere in the Midwest. They all ordered lobster, obviously for the first time. I had a taco salad, Mr. Man had a hamburger. We're not stupid.

The four plates with a bright red lobster on each were placed in front of them and they were all given plastic bibs. Why, oh, why would you eat something that requires you cover yourself with plastic first? After the waiter left, there was silence and a lot of whispering.

The waiter knew they were novices, so he came back and gave them a quick course on how to mangle a lobster. The crunching and cracking of the lobster shells began and then very loud, "EWWWWW"s from the two boys, more subdued "ewwww"s from the mom and "WAITER!" from the dad. Mr. Man and I knew exactly what had happened without even looking and we stifled the laughs. The poor waiter came running. The dad said, "These lobsters are bad! There's green stuff coming out of them!" The waiter explained it was "tomalley", but he didn't tell them it was the liver, or digestive system. He told them that lots of folks eat it. The hamburgers were brought out shortly after.

Get your clicky claws over to Humor-Blogs and Smiley me if you liked the lobster story and didn't puke.

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