Pining for Pine
So, a crucial section of Pine Street in Lewiston was closed this week and you wouldn’t believe what an impact it had on my daily routine. I circle the downtown, hawk-like, on my motorcycle about a hundred times per day and so not being able to use the stretch between Park and Bates really messed me up. What’s funny was how utterly surprised I was each time I came upon that inaccessible section. “What, STILL closed?” I would exclaim aloud, even if it had been only five minutes since the last time I came upon the road closure signs. Then I’d buzz dark Park and Spruce and Bates and Birch and Lisbon only to come back to Pine Street to be confounded all over again. In my defense, I have the attention span of a… of a, uh… Ah, I dunno. I’ve already moved on to the next thought.

More like ‘gotcha,’ am I right?
So, to log into the state court system database these days, one first has to complete a CAPTCHA puzzle to prove he or she is human. You know the drill. “Click each photo that has a ladder in it” or something goofy like that. It’s like doing a roadside sobriety test but from the comfort of your office chair and I just suck at it. (The CAPTCHA puzzles, I mean, not sobriety tests. I’m great at those.) A few photos will contain obvious ladders and those are easy. But is that the lower portion of a ladder I spy peeking out of a lower corner of photo 8? And do these well-placed tree roots winding up a hillside constitute a ladder? Better click on it. And so on. And more often than not, I completely fail the test and get declared a non-human by a quiz that was created by some AI bot whom I SWEAR I can hear giggling faintly through my computer speakers. So you can understand why my self-esteem is in the dumpster lately.

It doesn’t even have a tailgate!
I’ve been seeing a weird amount of Corvettes wheeling around downtown Lewiston lately. Sleek looking cars, those ‘vettes, but I always wonder: How the hell do you haul lumber or make dump runs in those things?

Songs sung blue
It is now officially late enough in the season that I can’t listen to The Doors’ “Summer’s Almost Gone,” Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” or The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreaming” without openly weeping and stomping my feet like a 5-year-old. I’ll thank you to avoid playing those tunes in my presence until next spring.

Also…
I’d also ask you to avoid playing anything by Steve Miller. Not because of seasonal distress. I just don’t like Steve Miller. I mean, at all!

Mark Laflamme is an award-winning Sun Journal reporter and columnist. He’s covered the nighttime police beat since 19914, which is just grand because he doesn’t like getting out of bed before noon. He is the author of eight published novels and rides a dual sport motorcycle everywhere he goes. Unless it’s winter, in which case he just sulks a lot.