Recovering from this morning’s root canal operation that brought an end to two weeks of often excruciating pain, and having just celebrated at the local German restaurant with a tasty hefeweizen, I can finally concentrate enough to write this post. and recap my Vermont trip from a week or so back.

Tickets through Southwest were dirt cheap, my friend Keith was a gracious host, even with my toothache, and we had a great time. We started with some snapshots of downtown Brattleboro which is where I spent most of my time. A cool town with some really nice breweries and bars. Since I’d been to Brat (as the locals call it) before with my dad, I decided to take some pics of things I remembered, notably a bridge across the Connecticut river to New Hampshire. This is where Keith and I encountered a lonely man in a bathing suit, towel and sandals sauntering towards us.

As our swimmer got closer to us I realized — there was no bathing suit, no loin cloth nor fig leaf to cover his wares. He looked at me and I looked at him (all of him) and then he whipped back the towel (advertising a nudist camp in upstate NY) that had heretofore been draped around him, and stunned me with a laser beam of pure hippie nakedness, rendering my camera impotent for several minutes. So I had to settle for a rear-end view.

You all have been spared the full frontal. I was not.

More highlights:

July 4 (ehm, illegal) fireworks in the neighbor’s backyard, which backed into an old quarry property. Fun stuff.

Japanese tourists at the Ben and Jerry’s factory in Waterbury. Probably more entertaining than the tour itself. For some reason, as they all shuffled from the movie room to the factory view room to the samples room, giddy and smiling and infectious, I kept picturing Roberto Benigni in that scene from Down By Law, singing “I scream! you scream! we all scream! for ice cream!” with me playing the jaded Tom Waits convict who eventually joins in the fun.Yay for ice cream!

Eating and buying souvenirs at the Miss Bellows Falls Diner in the town that shares its name, where my dad and I ate years back, as well as snapping photos of several other old school diner cars in the area. I also got to shoot a couple of notable covered bridges in the area. I plan to start a diner set on Flickr as well as a set for covered bridges.

Besides flying into Manchester, Keith and I were able to make visits to other towns in the area, namely Keene (NH), and Northhampton and Amherst (MA). All very enjoyable, and food and drinks were had in each stop.

Keith driving us to a BBQ joint in an old church he’d raved about, called “Holy Smokes” — we got there to find the place completely burned to the ground. There was free parking however.

Trivia bloodsport at Keith’s and at the bar outside Amherst. I expected to clean up. I did OK, but the man likes his trivia.

Four bags of Green Mountain coffee for my dad and some maple candies that were slated for assorted coworkers and friends but that somehow melted on the flight home :-(. And a jar of some good maple syrup which survived, but which I haven’t touched yet but may have to crack open this weekend.

A very nice, short hike in Miller State Park prior to departing flight, shooting some nice misty forest pics before getting trapped at the summit of Pack Monadnock during a lightning storm. Very surreal but pleasant ending to the trip.