Category: Uncategorized

The 41 Foot Long Sail Boat’s Name Was “Heart String”.

The owners of the long, sleek boat called Heart String both worked in education.

Safe In Harbor, Maine Boats Anchored, The Crew Take The Dingy Ashore To Stretch Their Sea Legs.
And not flush with money but long, deep with desire, work ethic. To have a vessel to ply the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. To know the peaceful feeling that floods the insides of a person when all alone out on the open sea.

But instead of mortgaging their soul, over extending their financial resources, the boat was not bought with a brand new smell.

No sticker shock or rapid depreciation on this floating toy. Liquid asset. No no. Bought as a basket case with graceful lines but many loose ends.

The husband handy, a self taught magician with tools. And like his wife not one to sit on the edge of a couch or sunk in a recliner. Killing time unplugged, absorbed on the boop tube.

Instead the boat parked side saddle to the garage with the pair usually inside nursing it back to health.

With refinishing, replacement, improvements better than the original elements one by one added to the old boat. To return her to glory days. (Cue up, hit the Bruce Springsteen song.)
Maine Highways, Not The Only Access Route, Option. Float Your Boat. To A Safe Harbor Visit.
Better than original with new advancements in electronics, appointments.

And when school vacation for summer fun arrived, the boat was one of the first in line. To be backed into, floated off, released at the public landing in Newburyport MA. To launch, heading to Nova Scotia Canada.

The cost to repair canvas sails prohibitive on the education pay both socked away.

So sewing, making their own alterations happened. Like other areas bleeding out. In the boat displaying black and blue ten foot pole marks, it was do it yourself time. No other option. Not a case of just stepping out to hire it all done.

Rolling up the sleeves. Doing the research on line, in books and asking around. Chewing the fat. Posing questions for other boat owners. Folks addicted to salt air too. Harbor sounds and blue green water that are fixtures. Always hanging around the marina.

To learn how to cross another item off the long to do list.

Of the needed attention to replace the lack of TLC the last boat owner showed the pleasure boat. The one powered mostly by the wind. No motor to holler over or drown out the sounds of the sea.

The owner said the tranquil inner feeling that is like no other when its just you, your wife and the wide open sea surrounding you is hard to describe. But more rewarding due to the fact that leading into the sea cruises, it was working all the spare time. Investing it into making the boat seaworthy, fully functional.
Floating Parking Spaces, Used To Come Ashore, Sample Unique Maine Harbor Town Lifestyles.

For the much anticipated nautical trips when the classroom bell rang for the last time. Until school resumed in the fall. When leaf color deviated from standard issue green. The air got crisp, days cooler on each end. The sun eased back on its spotlighting the good Earth.

You’ve seen the sporting group that must have just stepped out of LL Bean’s Freeport outlet.

Loaded down with the latest and greatest in neat high tech all weather gear. With price tags still waving in the wind that were missed getting dressed. Heavily armed with the newest sporting doo dads.

But help signal here is someone that jumped into the endeavor hook, line and sinker. With plastic swipes and caught up in the moment. Suddenly deciding to go whole hog in one and only direction. For now. Looking for instant gratification that only retail therapy and a large credit limit can cause. For awhile.

But the guy who’s rain gear was his Dad’s. Passed down. Like the tools his grandfather picked up over the years. Or a neighbor who had no kids. And treated you like you were adopted for the spot. Without saying so publicly, for the record.

But ending up gratefully leaving what he had to fill the hole in his life of an empty nest.

Putting your name on the here comes more tools, collectibles to add to what’s already in your workshop. You the appointed one who shared, lighten up his life. Was remembered when he woke up dead one day.

The sweetest things in life are waited for, built over time with sacrifice. Making the passion grow hotter, glow brighter. Enriching the experience because you did it. Slowly. With blood, sweat and tears invested.

Not everything done perfectly but by doggedly sticking on task. Driven to complete the self inflicted challenge just the same. And if lucky enough to have a first mate, co-captain, partner in the crime of passion. Then it’s a shared adventure.

The best kind where together you make the experience from nothing but a dream.

Refreshing Maine Water, Does Your Involve Boats?
Something pulling on your heart strings. Creatively constructed to enhance your life. To make living it more than just skimming the surface.

And never having to find yourself on a nursing or elderly boarding home open porch rocking. Looking back with regrets on missed opportunities. That are too late to take now and play catch up. You had your chance. Realizing it too late.

The boat was one of two floating hobbies projects. For seven years the back and forth to Nova Scotia, back to New England criss cross happened. Before ending while now still owning an Indian Class boat. But moving on to other hobbies to add to the depth of their life experiences. Life is to be enjoyed, lived, experienced.

What happened to Heart String?

After all that work, almost hitting head on a dead whale. In the middle of the night while clipping right along with a strong head wind. Almost swallowing up, sending the boat to a watery grave. The vessel that turned heads, dropped jaws. Interrupted many a conversation when it slid into harbors?

Heart String was sold to a fellow who changed the name to Maverick. And he and his wife shortly afterwards were divorced. Untied the sailor’s matrimony half hitch knot. Both sadly realized there was lots in life each was missing, searching for but just not together. Not on the bridge, at the wheel of same boat. Not on the same nautical chart page compass position, or living in the same set of dream landscapes.

Maine is a good place to find those extra curricular activities. Offers the settings, provides the neat people in small Maine towns to go with the outdoor fun. That somehow almost always involves Maine water.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

June 8, 2014
How Do You Like Your Water In Maine?

The Maine magic happens usually on water, beside it, looking out over it. How do you like your water in Maine?

The fast, rushing, verbal kind where you have to holler to be heard heading down a Maine river in a kayak or raft? With commands from your boat captain shouted. To paddle hard left, right, to hold. Grab that short robe and wedge a foot up under the thwart in front of you. And hope, pray, you stay in the boat. And preparing for if you don’t. Getting spilled into the drink. When the raft takes a hard angle and starts to turn over quickly.
Hold! Grab The Short Rope, One Paddle Hand Extended! Hang On!

Or maybe you want your water bottle polished calm, smooth as glass Maine glass.

With loons, and birds the only sounds. Maybe the fire wood spitting, cracking and hissing as you add to the collection. The one you started that will take a life time. One by one capturing, experiencing Maine sunsets. Of all kinds, colors, intensities.

Smell of a cook out somewhere down the lake as you kayak around it. Thinking about what is going to sizzle on your own grill when you paddle home. What you left on marinading all day long. For a tasty end to the day. Served up to go with that one of a kind Maine lake sunset.
Smooth, Sleeping, Polished Maine Water With A Dash Of Sunset Please.

Maybe your water is for the sounds of lapping against rocks. Mixed with a little breeze to reduce the heat off a summer evening in Maine.

Lull you to sleep with the sound of rain pelting or gently tapping the roof of the cabin. Where you are snug as bug. Warm and toasty, snuggled up in your bed in dry surroundings.

Maybe your water is best observed alone, perched high up and causing thousand yard stares, detachment.
Pick A Color, Which Maine Kayak Goes Best With Your Personality Today?
That is the aviation grade, high octane Maine waterfront that blows you away. Makes you feel very small, humble, grateful.

Or it’s chilled, frozen water that catches your fancy. Skating, skiing, carving on it. The white blindness of it all with cobalt blue Maine skies overhead. Cutting holes for fish to escape from their wintery water world. To be your supper. Or to get a second change, a pardon, reprieve. A one way ticket. Back into the drink. Escorted through the five inch hole made by the Jiffy auger.

Find your type of water in Maine. It’s all unfiltered, all natural and pure. Maine, where you want to be, need to be. Don’t stay away so long. She’s waiting.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

June 5, 2014
Adjustments, Dialing In New Mindset, Attitude, Approach To Situations.

Nothing stays the same and we journey through seasons in life.

Experiences collected, most involving other people. Mixed in with plenty of four season outdoor settings. Drop dead gorgeous scenery, vistas when lucky enough to live in Maine. Tap into her natural, unfiltered beauty.
Sit, Watch, Listen, Learn. Gotta Relax, Log Out To Do That. To Get Off The Time Clock. Below Radar.

But lots going on right inside a person who watches, listens, grows. Changing slowly from within. Not because those around you want you to be just the way they wish.

But something about being true to yourself, knowing who you are. What you want and are able to contribute as your covered dish to sample.

At the same Maine lake picnic table where we all sit down around. To exchange, catch up, learn, share. Losing pride, being humble, grateful helps speed up that process to come around, settle down and know peace.

Living your own life with values, beliefs protected, applied to the decision making thought process right?

It is all about making wise life decisions. Taking ownership of your mistakes. Building, hanging onto your successes. Striving to be clear headed, bright eyed and bushy tailed to live your life fully. Not waste it in indecision, frustration, being scared.

Plenty of the wisdom of living is gleaned from just logging the hours. Until you are thirty, forty, whatever age, you can not quite look at things with the proper perspective though. Like the puzzle of your life early on is missing several key strange, interesting shaped pieces. To one by one snap into place. Once you figure out where it goes by trial and error. A little patience, sometimes lots of luck. And input from others you can trust. To help in the steering.

There is never an age where playing games is worthwhile.

But as life rolls on, relationships, the most fragile, delicate part of our life on Earth quickly become the all important goal to seek. Vital to preserve at all costs if you can. We do need each other. But not to the point of suffocation. Not being able to breath. That kills relationships. Kinks the hose that waters, refreshes. Things wither, dry up, blow away. Pull up a chair beside a Maine lake for the cure.

Loyalty, consistency, stability, love not just logic needed in large supply for all of us not Vulcan. Given, received, tossed, served back and forth.
Peaceful, Calm, Maine. Grab A Chair. Drink Her In.
So the connection goes both ways. Building something unique, special, lasting.

But ah the kicker. Is everyone on the same page? Did we lose some of the group? All “all aboard”, still seeing the same horizon pathway?

Under the same place in the stars. Out on the water.

Or just going through the motions to be in agreement. Not be the odd man out. To not be alone for legs of the journey.

Knowing what they want? Or just tagging along, until a fork in the road says, we are both know we’re not together.
Relaxing, Enjoying Your Company, Setting On A Maine Lake. Priceless.
Each having to gain their balance, figure out where they actually are in life.

Where they want to go and how to get there. Maine, great place to have a seat with the wildlife surrounding you. Where no people interfere or object to your letting go, generating all those thousand yard stares.

You can be who you are, want to be in Maine. With less input from jammed too close, in your face hecklers. All around you who wish you would stop doing that, saying that, being who you are or want to be. Get to Maine, see the difference.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

June 1, 2014
The Mother Ship’s Eerie Bright Blue Belly Light Snapped On.

Hovering, then slowly descending, the ship lands in a small hidden rear Maine farm field.

Underneath, the craft’s intense wash of blue light stops. The alien crew inside away from planet Earth for thirty years. It’s mission to return. Study, observe and document the day to day changes, advances, attitudes of the inhabitants.
Do You Return Your Shopping Cart? Or That’s A Person’s Job You Want To Protect? Just Leave It.

Like a sponge, the on board computers like none known on planet Earth begin to whirl, hum. The inner cores glow. Collecting, analyzing current broadcast on air signals. Using something a tad more sophisticated than Western Auto rabbit ears.

Tapping into search engine data banks to access historical information.

Filtering the bracket, the data slice to showcase the last three decades only. Quickly making observations from speed of thought scans of newspapers, magazines, industry trade journals.

Accessing cell phone conversations of all the carriers. Monitoring right down to local diner lunch counter stool chit chat. As locals talk it up. Ordering, butter and jamming their home made toast. Having their breakfast eggs fixed, served up just the way they like them.

Advances in medicine, check.

Duly noted. New technology making life easier in someways but at a price paid in others. The population like polar cap ends of distinction. Either high school skinny as a rail and obsessed with fitness, weight, appearance. Or let it all hang out, with you gonna eat that last piece of thick crust pizza Bub attitudes.

And aerial scans of big box shopping centers shows another development.

Parking lots heavily dotted with empty, abandoned wire shopping carts.

Maine Pleasures Are Many, Small, Real & Natural. The Best Kind Are Free.
Left kitty corner, here and there sporadically around the empty angled painted lined slots. Instead of returned to cart corrals.

For eventual round up retrieval by a store clerk. To be escorted, taken in tandem mass with a rear engine pusher wearing a revolving red warning light. To avoid flattening pedestrian shoppers, colliding with motoring shoppers with the wire cart crazy train. (Cue Ozzy song, up and under blog post.) The shoppers in one major hoof hurry. Fast paced, coming and going looking stressed, rushed, not smiling.

Thirty years ago the shoppers returned the carts themselves.

After the unload of merchandise into the vehicle they drove. Left with the keys in the ignition. A clerk more than just offering, actually pushing the cart through the automatic doors with the electric eye. To help elderly, the frail in the escort outside. To saddle up, hit the trail with their purchases.

In the report, the shift from 99% of the shoppers returning their carts to the entrance of the store thirty years ago so noted. To present day where few ever marched, pushed the cart back to the handy dandy, conveniently located galvanized pipe holding pens. Pending the exodus in mass back to beginning store shopping lane’s staging area for consumers.

More handicap plates, lots of cars parking in those designated slots that did not have the little wheelchair designation on them.

Or hanging from inside rear view center dash mirrors. The report on the blue green third rock from the Sun notes the shift from hard working, industrious and happy. Have more than enough, content. To overweight, unhappy and just too much free time on their hands. Lots of retail therapy self medication going on. Never having enough to satisfy the craving artificially.

Lots of ailments, plenty of whining. But thinking leaving those carts helter skelter is creating a job for someone to round them up. That they are helping stimulate the economy by abandoning the carts the further from the store the better. And the rolling around in the wind causing more parking lot dings and dents is good for auto body collision repair shops too. You have to wrap your mind around this from a different angle people.

The purchase of a product more practical, done slowly, methodically.

Because it was needed three decades ago. To now buying for the show, luxury. The effect on others even more important in what you want, gotta have and right now in specific colors, styles from the vast array of what’s in aisle five. And flying off the shelves as what’s hot today.

Maine is home made, not so much store bought. The alien ship observed hope for the folks in the upper right hand corner of the country. That sticks up like a thumb, almost into Canada. Insulated from the ills of the city, the urban jungle of concrete, traffic, crime and smells. The powerful grip of marketing has less of a spell in Maine. Not so important.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 30, 2014
Toxins, Venom, Fresh Poisons …. The Kind Scared People Create.

Change can be a scary thing when someone clings, has a death grip on past habits.

Because what is known is predictable, routine, safe and easy. Requires little thought to maintain. And to lose the norm feels out of control, unstable. It shows what a person is made of, if they have a healthy dose of grit, moxie and determination. When things as we know it go sideways.
Taught How To Fish, Survive Early On In Life.

Not knowing where you are going to land. End up.

As if a black, orange, white… well you pick the color cat held high upside down. Let go, ending up on all fours. If enough distance exists between the release point and the ground. To twist, turn, right yourself. Meow.

Don’t you find the most interesting people you bang into, that come in and out of your life have had some hairy experiences? And made adversity, up against it come out in their favor. Using it like they climbed into a rock polisher and all the more well versed and life savvy because of it. Some people make it look easy when anything but that was the case.

What happens to you in life is not like fairy tales in most cases.

But the happily ever after part until the end is up to each of us. There are folks seething with anger, weary from frustration that take personal what others do, think, say around them. When the going gets tough. It’s partly the bumper sticker “Just because I’m paranoid does not mean people are not out to get me.”

Folks who’s life is lead externally, outside themselves. Not built with inner joy and peace. Happy happens for a short stint only if this, this and that takes place around them.
Preparing For Storms In Life In Maine. We’re Ready. Hang On.
If many players in the production takes on a particular role. In the script written for them. That they did not know they held, had to audition to play the part. And when resistance shows up, the show stops, heads roll.

You ruined, ignored the party that was designed for their own good. Can be like herding cats.

To get everyone on board when change, new direction is needed. But easy does it. Spoonful at a time of the bitter medicine. With a little sugar introduced as the antidote to release the feverish pitch the discussions that escalate to around a small Maine town. When change is the topic of the day. Before it is dire straits and options to do it dry up leaving the smell of desperation, fear, chaos.

The bigger picture, seeing it and making the need for change, adjusting the life dials more carefully. Along the way, methodically. Not waiting until the eleventh hour and panic setting in. Brainstorming in a small Maine town about what if this, how could we that. Without the subject matter causing folks to bristle, feel threatened.

Just approached like a puzzle, to inventory the pieces, consider where to put them into place. For the fit fashioned by the group, not a few individuals. Because that’ll never fly in a small Maine town without a consensus, a let’s give it a go attitude. We’re all wearing the same color jerseys. It can be a sport of passion because you love the small town you are lucky to live in.

There is no time for wasted emotion, finger pointing, back biting.

Solutions. A public burial, funeral for the bringing up skewed bits and pieces of history rehash.
Maine Sunsets, Everyone Is Incredible. Share Them. Don’t Do Them Alone.
To be as negative, blaming the “they” for what shoulda, coulda, woulda happened if as possible. Just if, if, if brought up over and over from the past. Like re-opening fresh decade old wounds that won’t scab over, heal.

Defeated, giving up. When the boat is sinking, the limited number of life boats make it a climb in, sink or swim scenario.

Time’s a wasting and rolling up sleeves, putting heads together needed.

To be enterprising, encouraging but realistic. And together hammering out a course that will take all of us in a small Maine town. To land on all four feet. On higher, solid stable ground.

To survive, prosper, grow and flourish. Be better for the exercise every small Maine town is forced to take on. Like it or not. In adjusting to less trickle down revenue sharing from the county, state capital, Uncle Sam. To get behind economic development efforts, to eliminate small town duplication and waste in government.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 28, 2014
Trains In Maine, Take A Ride, Remember How Important They Are.

Taking a train ride in Maine. All aboard. Oakfield Maine the destination with WCSH’s Channel 6 reporter Bill Green showing up this past Saturday. To climb inside the morning run to Howe Brook in Aroostook County. I was on the south run to below Sherman Maine passenger train ride.

In Maine, back in 1960 50,000 train cars a year of potatoes were shipped out of Aroostook County.

The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad was a big shaper of building Maine into what it is today. Before overnight, just in time inventory that trailer trucks could provide took over that operation. 10-4 good buddy, let those 18 wheels roll. But the economy of Maine rail service if right now freight or passenger delivery is not needed. And Amtrak train service in southern Maine expanding, getting more and more prominent.

Have been blogging on trains at speeds of 175, 186 miles per hour that cuff right along.

Covering great distances very fast where you can tap tap the electrons online as you do.
All Aboard. Pulling Out Of Oakfield Maine Railroad Station Location.
The blur of countryside and plush appointments startling you as another high speed train passes very close and you feel like you are swapped in on a horizontal rocket ship on the steel rails.

Transportation in Maine is critical because of the distance away from markets. Being tucked away, protected, insulated not isolated. In the upper right hand corner of the country.

Up here in Maine.

That looks like a thumbs up. Pretty much surrounded by Canadian geography, people well spaced both sides of the line.

The countries just a whisker away when you live in a border town in Maine. Where I am lucky to be and able to hop that US / Canada border to see what’s happening on the other side of the International Boundary.

Maine, lots to do and it’s usually outside. Often involves water or in this case, a train ride in Oakfield Maine to blog about today. Riding in an iron horse on the steel rails networking Southern Aroostook County.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 25, 2014