"The season" hasn't quite started, yet traffic is already jamming the streets of this little coastal town. It's not tourists, though. The parking spots are full of trucks and vans, signs of the madcap rush to clean, repair, stock, and ready the stores and restaurants that have been scientifically designed to separate money from the flatlanders. It's one of the things that Maine folks do best: catch lobsters, grow blueberries, take cash from out-of-staters. We're the Kenyan long-distance runners of the Tourist Profit Olympics.

I spent today's lunch hour finishing another stage of 120 Miles. Today's weather was the best so far this year, 50 degrees and sky so blue it almost hurt to look at. I had a song stuck in my head the whole time, "Ain't They Pretty" from the marvelous Fought Down album from Ken Layne and his merry band of Corvids. It's a slow shuffler that evokes an image of fifty people in a dimly-lit bar, swaying and singing along with the chorus, louder than they really should, wrapped in the carefree shine of "just one more" cocktail:

you're in for a good time
drop on by now
don't be crying
the people are friendly
wait and see
all your drinks are free
you're in for a good time

And God, does the song makes me want to drop by, and have a good time, and drink for free. I want to know where that place is and get there pronto. Who wouldn't? We've all been in a place like that at least once. The day has drifted into a long warm night, empties are scattered all around, illuminated points from candles or strings of lights poke holes in the dark, it's later than anybody thought, someone's been slowly but steadily turning up the music for hours, but no one's in a hurry to get going. I miss that place, folks. And some of you know where that place is.

And you'd better start telling.