Road Trip 2009 underway...

I left this morning on Road Trip 2009: Maine to Washington, DC to St. Peterburg, FL to Jupiter(ish), FL to Miami and back to Portland. About 3,400 miles of fun. Woohoo! First big stop is in DC for the Spring Antique Fair. I'll then continue down for the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. Along the way, I'm spending the night with my sister in NJ (where I am right now) and with a friend and classmate of Suzanne's outside of Baltimore...with lots of book hunting along the way. 

I was thinking I'd leave tomorrow, but the storm pushed me up a day. As it was, I got off to a little bit of a late start...hitting the road around 10:30am or so. I had to make one stop in southern Maine to pick up some things. As I left, the snow began falling...hard. Urgh. Neither Maine nor NH had done *any* salting and, while not bad in Maine (cold and dry enough that it was blowing off the road), NH became bad very quickly.

I passed several cars off the road and one rather bad 5 car accident with a pick-up on its side and lots of flashing lights (on the Northbound side). I nearly had an accident around there, as someone in front of me hit their brakes to see the accident and started skidding. Twits. Avoided them and made it to the toll booths where one lane was closed because someone had skidded into the concrete abutment.

Pulled into the liquor store just beyond the toll booths to sell a very nice book. Slightly late start and snow slowed me down and I was a bit late. Many thanks to He Who Waited for his patience. Come visit us in Portland after these fairs are past and I'll do my best to make amends....and we can play with cool books.

From there I headed to the Boston area to pick up some cases from another dealer as I was driving to the show and had room. Far more importantly, I have been entrusted with a significant cache of liquor for the DC and FL fairs. I was told, to paraphrase, "if you're held up, give up the books, but protect the bottles". [N.B. The FL fair is referred to, in some circles, as "booksellers spring break".] I had a nice chat and cup of coffee before hitting the road again...

The snow had all but stopped by the time I left. I decided to go down 95 (rather than 90/84)...giving up on Reins Deli to stay close to the coast and, I hoped, warmer/wetter travel. As it turned out, by Providence, RI, the road was effectively dry and I made great time from there all the way to NJ.

Big storm tomorrow. I plan to spend the day cataloguing Kent material and tweaking things for the fair and will probably not hit the road again until Tuesday morning.