My formula for a happy life is to do a lot of travel for a little business and experience the most life has to offer. Such as flying to New Hampshire for four days, spending two hours with a customer, and then having the rest of the time to drive the coast of Maine. I made a similar trip two years ago, but this time, I brought a friend to share the lobster dinner. 
The weekender’s money from Boston and surrounds has created quite a posh resort area on that coast. There are very expansive ocean beaches in New Hampshire and the approach to Maine. The public has full access from the coastal road if you can find a place or permit to park. Dense condo residences affront the opposite side of the road. A crowded beach was not how we wanted to spend time.
For the first leg of our journey, we stayed at a great bed and breakfast in Kennebunkport. This town was quite exclusive thanks to the distinctive residence of President Bush 41. It seemed like a good idea for a lot of other people and us too. We got an early start to get beyond Portland, where the natural sights began.
Thousands of coves, bays, and islands create awe and amazement around every turn. Wiscasset is a highlight of lobster fishing and an excellent place to watch such action. Lunch on a lobster rollup seemed as appropriate for us as those retrieving lobster traps in the cove. Beyond, we zigzagged through the peninsulas on our way to Camden.
We took a stroll on the mile-long granite breakwater to a lighthouse in Rockland Harbor. It was more amazing when out I found the 
massive granite blocks were laid from 1860 to 1880, quarried and brought by ship from a local island.
Our plans fell short for getting advance bookings on the weekend in this area. It was funny how Dashboard Debby (my GPS) points of interest gave many hotels within three miles as the seagull flies. Still, when selected, they were thirty 
miles away because we were on an isolated peninsula. Cell phones had no bars out there as well. The last room at the Camden Harborview Inn gave us a harbor view at an extravagant price. ‘Any port in a storm’ was a stretch on an old Navy phrase that night. Such an expense gets lost in pleasant memories later.
On Saturday, we slowly worked our way back to New Hampshire.
Shanghai China is a good business. This is my fifth trip in three years. I have five companies to meet within four days. Familiarity with this region of the world will never come. Despite my grin where Outer Ring Road meets Long Dong Avenue, recognizing my Eastpo Trade Showgrounds, or staying at the Riverview Hotel 
near the Pearl Tower, I am a total stranger. My use of chopsticks receives compliments, but their language remains insurmountable. I have heard that during Mao’s reign, teaching their language to foreigners was punishable by imprisonment – “rots o’ ruck”… So what if we can’t learn it?
I needed to leave the business behind me and renew my longstanding effort to find my way to Xi’an. Terra Cotta Warriors were waiting for me. What seemed to be a simple three-hour flight; turned out to be twelve hours in transit. The details are better left behind. One saving grace was a book to get me through, River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze. This story of two Peace Corps workers in the nineties made my plight very trivial.
A sound sleep, a new place, by now, life is good. There were better hotels in town, and the Xi’an Hotel had seen grander days. A four-star hotel rating today in China puts it far below the new modern international five stars that I left behind. My expenses could use a little cooling off. They list 538 guest rooms, but I understand there were but three for breakfast. English was not understood too much, but the three waitresses and I opted for the American breakfast and coffee. Their classic Nescafe took me back a decade or two. This instant coffee blend has survived in many remote regions of the earth where tea is the typical drink. The taste and consistency are as distinctive as the next beverage she brought. The orange juice was Tang. I thought our astronauts left that on the moon, but some must feel it is part of an American breakfast. The fried eggs, ham (bologna), sausage (tiny wieners), bacon, and toast (British style white square loaf slices) were pretty good when you accept their effort. The Dynasties of China were mostly rooted in Xi’an.
The Terra Cotta Warriors are a significant relic of one. Major i
ndeed. A picture cannot express the impressive spectacle of which I had to be a witness. The reality was to credit the ego of some despotic emperor. As with most ancient splendors, the price was paid by slaves and subjugation. The later perpetuate modern Red China today. To cast a blind eye would justify their wealth as worthy. As the 2008 Beijing Olympic prominence plays in every background television, a struggling individual is looking beyond their place. Without the freedom we Americans know, all of what they are giving is for the State, after all, is done.
August 8, 2008, is one of our new millennium’s lucky 
days. My last lucky day was 070707, a day that I returned from a business trip in Beijing. I thought it would be especially lucky as flying East pass the International Date Line would extend my July seventh ‘luck’ by the twelve hour time difference. Yet the eighteen hour flight time did little to expose my good fortune.
That prior ‘luck’ was just replaced as I flew back to China on this August eighth to foreshorten this day by twelve hours. The Chinese seem to have an extensive set of symbols for good luck. The dragon is one. Other symbols I recall hearing a lot are fortune and longevity which both have a factor of luck involved. Either luck has always escaped me or I have never sought to rely on more than I have. I 
never play the lottery, gamble, or open a fortune cookie unless prompted by my daughter. This could just be a shortage of optimism. I wonder if the Chinese indulgence in ‘good’ symbolism stems from centuries of poverty and subservience of the common ones. Hope may have been their saving grace.
Coincidence of those lucky days aside, I am not here as part of the Beijing Olympics. Triathlon skills notwithstanding, I am simply in Shanghai for a bit of business. Olympic excitement abounds as most can only image your being here for that purpose. A few days before my departure, I received word that a second of my systems was approved purchase. I attempted to scramble a weeks worth of preparation into two days to make ready the new shipment. The bonus being that if I could get the machinery shipped and through customs in a few days, I could extend my stay and have two systems installed for the traveling price of one. It seemed a noble goal but in the waning hours of the day before my flight, preparations were halted as I admitted the likelihood of a clear sail through customs was doubtful. Perhaps I should rely more on the luck of the Chinese to get me through such an occasion but as it is, I will need to repeat this trek in a few weeks.
I caught the long light a block before my office the other morning. The movement behind got my attention in the rearview mirror. In the big Mercury stopped behind me, a lady got out the passenger door, walked around, opened the rear door, and got in to sit behind the driver. My take was that they were an embittered old couple in their seventies. A mime act unfolded as he waved his hands in the air and his head gyrated as he spewed expletives within their domain. I laughed to myself – ‘good girl’ - at the moment where this apparent spouse was not going to be a companion to his seeming verbal abuse. He then pulled around me into the right turn lane, my thought was their plans had just changed and he would return home. To my amazement and disgust, he blasted straight ahead of me running the red light. If he would do that, what other abuses would his wife have endured over the years?
My thoughts centered on what brings people to such a point. These are the couples seen at the local family restaurant having breakfast special. Together but alone; sitting stoically and never speaking; after fifty years together, there was nothing new. In their generation, the children were the center of the universe for the mother and the provider was focused on security for the future. Their children could have moved out of state. His retirement goals were met yet the sacrifice of those childhood dreams and hobbies never pursued was no longer attainable in his besieged body. This is a living hell. Two victims of their own making who have nothing better to do that impugn one another for their failings. 
In sharp contrast is my witness to love expressed. My parents never parted without a loving kiss. This gave security to our family. Conflicts were rare but challenges were many in our low-income family. My small-in-stature mom was always lifted to her tiptoes with a goodbye kiss. To never let go of a love that brought them together allowed them sixty years of bliss. A kiss is a breathtaking way to bring us together and overcome the troubles of humanity that try to defeat us.
Ironically my XM radio station was playing Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. Oh yeah, with popcorn clouds in a blue sky on the last day of July it is a wonderful world for those of us that can make it so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc
Thousands of coves, bays, and islands create awe and amazement around every turn. Wiscasset is a highlight of lobster fishing and an excellent place to watch such action. Lunch on a lobster rollup seemed as appropriate for us as those retrieving lobster traps in the cove. Beyond, we zigzagged through the peninsulas on our way to Camden.
massive granite blocks were laid from 1860 to 1880, quarried and brought by ship from a local island.
miles away because we were on an isolated peninsula. Cell phones had no bars out there as well. The last room at the Camden Harborview Inn gave us a harbor view at an extravagant price. ‘Any port in a storm’ was a stretch on an old Navy phrase that night. Such an expense gets lost in pleasant memories later.
