Campobello Island Weekend

As a child, I would occasionally visit my grandparents with my family in New Chester, in Guysborough County in Nova Scotia. New Chester is a very small place, really just a smattering of houses along a dirt road. The phone line in the house was on a party line, and my grandparents would listen to the pattern of the ring to know if a particular phone call was meant for them. There were so few vehicles in New Chester, that when people passed each other on the roads, they would routinely wave to each other, assuming they knew each other. I have memories of my grandfather sitting on a sofa in the front part of the house, with a car honking it's horn as it drove by. My grandfather didn't even look around, he just raised his arm in the air as a greeting, assuming the passerby would see this from the vehicle. Maybe this last thing is something I've invented in my mind over the years?? Maybe ... but it seems like a vivid memory to me.

Going to Campobello always reminds me a visiting my grandparents. It's a long drive to a small spot - small enough that as drivers pass each other in cars, they consistently wave to each other. I would guess about 8 in 10 vehicles do the thing where they slightly raise two fingers off the steering wheel as they approach an oncoming vehicle as a means of saying "hello". Kind of the vehicular equivalent of giving a slight nod of the head and rhetorically asking "How's it going?". As soon as I leave the island and head over to Maine (on the way back to mainland New Brunswick and Canada) I have the urge to continue waving to oncoming traffic. However, this phenomenon is restricted to Campobello. The good folks in Lubec (seen below from the Campobello side of the bridge), Maine don't seem to practise this ritual.

Unlike New Chester, there is something else to do in Campobello, as I managed to golf 9 holes a couple of times. Both times, I didn't see a single other person around me on the course. It was great, although my game was as bad as ever.

As for the running, I got in a little over seven miles with Faith Ann on Saturday. It was a slow pace (~10:20 per mile), largely due to her tweaking something in her calf. In the two days since then, she feels it is pretty close to being back to normal. On Sunday, I put in solo 10.5 miles at an 8:45 pace. Both runs started at the Herring Cove beach/campground, then heading past Roosevelt park. On the Saturday run we turned around shortly past the park, but on Sunday I didn't turn around until reaching Canadian customs by the bridge.

The 10.5 miles on Sunday seemed like an ok "long run" distance after the half marathon last weekend, and before the leg I'll be doing in the Cabot Trail Relay this coming weekend! More on that later ...

Our next trip to Campobello? Perhaps it will be the weekend of June 6th. I've been considering running in the Cobscook Bay 10k, and when I mentioned it to Faith Ann tonight, she seemed ok with it. Not sure about this yet, but the course is between Fredericton and the island. If we do go, I expect Andrew, whose blog I really enjoy reading, to finish about 13 to 15 minutes ahead of me. I would like to finish my next 10k in under 50 minutes ... but we'll see.