Ok, so its time to crack on and tell you more about whats going on here at the Brewster. I think i need to fast forward and take a couple of posts to bring you up to date so that i can tell you about everything thats happening as and when it happens like i’d always wanted to do. What i’ll do from now is probably jump back in time with a post every now and again

Time for some pics to start with (in no particular order) from February and March 2007 when we first arrived

Us on our “thrones” as people said when we appeared in one of the 2 State daily newspapers

Our first snowfall 2 days after we arrived. You don’t get snow in England so to find 12″ of it outside was interesting

Our snow plow guy Perry, Theresa and his truck. He is a BIG help when we get major snow

The snow has enabled us to have a little bit of fun

Some people go ice fishing where they get out onto the lake, drill a hole in it and then put a line down into the water. Then they sit in a hut and wait for the little red flag to pop up

Heres our “cable guy”

Heres our car. Like the plates?

Here are our logos done by a good friend of ours called Kim who also just happens to be a wonderful and very talented designer

In May just 12 weeks after we got here, we won an award from the State of Maine and Maine Tourism Assoc for all the work we’d done since we got to Maine. It was a very nice surprise

On the way back from Bethel and the awards function we found the border with Mexico!
And if you have stayed here in the past, you’ll know why i’m

In June once all the snow had gone it was time to get on with repairing the house. The 2 people that we gave that task to were Elijah and Ethan. They are great workmen both with their skills and their work ethic. In September Elijah left the area to take his wife and children to Missouri as they were going to be training to become missionairies over the next 2 years and so we then had their father Eric carry on the good work here with Ethan

These pictures are how the house looked in June once the paintwork had all been scraped and powerwashed prior to priming and brush painting

Just wanted to share with you the Pavement drawings of Julian Beaver. An amazing talent as you’ll see below with his 3D chalk drawings on pavements around the world . Check his website above for more of his work and just in time for Christmas heres what happens when you drop your letter for Santa through the slit in the post box….

We were just “little people” living in England. 2 little people with normal little jobs living in a normal little house doing normal little things.. you get what i’m trying to say here

Living in a big city we were just “faces in the crowd” getting up, working long hours, getting home, having dinner, watch tv and then go to bed. Repeat this cycle 5 times a week. We were working to live and that was all as everything is so expensive there.

Heres a few facts..
In the UK there are 60m people and that figure is rising at a significant rate due to the EU (European Union) and all the member countries which mean that anyone pretty much right across the whole of Europe can come to UK and live.. and they do too.

60m people is about one fifth of the population of the USA but with America being as big as it is, you could fit the whole of the UK into an area the size of Maine, Vermont and about a third of New Hampshire!
1/5 of the whole population of the USA living in an area about 1/20 the size of America. Its crowded and shows no sign of changing any time soon

Its expensive to live there too.

Gas (petrol) in UK costs equal to around $8.20 a gall
Cars in UK that are also for sale in the USA cost approx twice the price in UK. As an example the Toyota RAV4 costs $28k in USA and in UK costs about £28k which equates to $56k. I tried this little cost exercise with 4 makes of car or truck and thats how it works out every time. My SUV would of cost me equal to £12.5k and you can’t even get a 3 wheel car for that in UK let alone a 3litre V6 SUV!

In UK you have to buy a licence for owning a TV once a year at a cost of equal to $300. Thats right, dog licence, drivers licence and a TV licence! You can have as many TV’s as you like for that $300 though but you have to have one otherwise the TV licencing police who drive around surburbia in the middle of the night with their detector vans looking to pick up radio waves coming from properties that the computers in the vans say are not registered as having a licence. If they come across a property like that they are within their rights to take you to court where you can actually be fined equal to about $2k or sent to prison for a few months! Yeah i know.. “big brothers” alive and well in the UK but thats how it is. The licence money goes to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) for making programmes, paying the wages of employees and presenters etc as the BBC is the only group of channels that does not have commercials, but thats not the point as the licence fee is outdated and should be got rid of in my opinion.

This is how it used to be in the early days

Nowadays things are more high tech as the following articles show

The old days

How it is now

Terminology of devices requiring a licence

According to the definition of TV receiving apparatus, a licence must be obtained for any device which is “installed or used” for receiving television programme services. This covers:

• Televisions
• VCR’s
• Set-top boxes
• PC tuner cards capable of receiving broadcasts (and similar devices).

Heres more from Wikipedia on the TV Licence

 Like i said, big brothers alive and well in the UK which leads me on to the next topic nicely.

CCTV otherwise known as “Close Circuit TV” is everywhere in the UK. On average you are caught on camera about 300 times a day going about your normal everyday business. Where ever you go you are being watched whether its bars, shops, train stations or just walking up the road. The UK is the most watched country in the whole world and there are approx 1 camera for every 14 people in the country. Another way to look at it is that one fifth of the worlds CCTV cameras are in the UK!  George Orwell who wrote the book “1984″ would be rolling in his grave if he knew what was happening nowadays. This article  in the Daily Mail (UK Newspaper) shows how many cameras are positioned right  around Orwells old home in London. There are even cameras on poles in city centres where the CCTV operator can shout at you via a microphone to stop riding your bicycle, pick your litter up etc. Heres a couple of “You Tubes” on it

So other reasons America is better than UK

Sales Tax! 5 or 7% in Maine and 17.5% in UK. Known as VAT (Value Added Tax) its already added to the price you see on the ticket so you don’t have to work out the cost of something as you do here in America. The only downside here is that for us Brits we don’t know what the final price is till we  get to the cash desk. When we first got here we’d forget that the sales tax wasn’t added to the ticket and we’d count out the exact money trying to give as much as we could in spare change and then the cashier would tell us “you forgot the tax” so back into the wallet goes the coins and out comes another $20 note and in return we got more coins to add to what we had before. We’d try and count out the money before we were served so as not to hold other customers up at the cash desk by counting it all out when we were being served. At last after a few months we’re getting quicker at counting coins but there are still times when my wallet is weighted down with coins and when i can find a nice quite shop i utter the words that all shop keepers/ cashiers dread when i come in to see them, ”would you like some change?”

Come to think of it, foods a lot cheaper here too whether your buying it from a shop or in a takeaway or restaurant where you get three times as much for half the price, free drink refills and doggy bags!

Homes are a lot more expensive in UK too. Our little 4 bed house sold for equal to about $377k and when we’d sold the house to fund the deposit for the Brewster Inn, we moved into a small one bed apartment that would probably fit into our living room now. The lady that owned it sold it when we had left for equal to about $300k and all it had was a bedroom, living room, kitchenette and very small bathroom that when you stood by the door you could touch all the walls of. It was a period property but thats still way too expensive hence a lot of people with good jobs just can’t afford to get on the property ladder in UK now

And i havn’t even got started on traffic light, speed and licence plate recognition cameras.. thats for some other day i think.

Are there any plus points about the UK you might be asking.. well its a nice place to visit, has plenty of history and lovely countryside but i really do prefer America. Its a great place to be

Here i am!!

Sorry for the delay in the updates but we kind of reached a “turning point” in the story. After chatting to friends over here “in the know” i need to leave a chunk of “our story” out. Shame really as i’d always planned  to tell the whole thing, leave no stone unturned etc etc but its for the best right now. A lot of guests and friends have said we could write a book about “our story”. Yeah we probably could but i don’t have time to read books now let alone write one hence the blog. Pretty much all our guests have asked us how we got here and so we tell them and then they begin to know and understand the whole story. The story has a long way to go too…..

Watch this space real soon

It was a busy day with a lot of preperation in the days leading up to it. On Monday (the day before) we had lots of help from people in town getting everything ready. Thanks to Laura, Judy and everyone that came for all your help. We also found we had supplies of flowers and pumpkins to help brighten the place up more with an autumn feel so thanks to Spring St greenhouse and Reny’s for that too.

After about a 16 hour day and a couple of hours work early on Tuesday morning we were ready for HGTV who arrived at 9am. We had Lori (producer) Jim (camera) and Scott (sound) here and it was busy busy busy the whole day long. Finally after a 10 hour day filming was done. Lori said it was one of the best ones she had ever done as we’d been fully prepared and that the house had so much history.

As well as HGTV we had 2 of the big State TV stations here WLBZ and WABI and the big State daily paper the Bangor Daily News as well as regional paper the Piscataquis Observer.

Below are links from the days actvities

The photos are from a very good friend in town called Judy (good luck in the council elections!!!)

Photos

Bangor Daily News

 WLBZ

We still have the State Sunday newspaper to do an article with and as soon as that happens i’ll post the link here. Its all obviously good for us at the Brewster as the TV show will be seen right across America again and again, but at the same time the publicity is great for Dexter as it will bring more people into the area and more businesses will benefit because of that.

I’ll update the next stage of the story on how we got here soon, probably by this time next week. Its been a busy 3 weeks getting ready  for and exhibiting at the State snowmobile association trade show thats was held for 3 days during the Columbus day weekend and then the days it took to prepare for the TV shoot but it was well worth it

Another quickie post for today just to let you all know that on October 16th we have HGTV coming to the Brewster Inn to film for their popular  nationwide TV show “If Walls Could Talk”!

This is something that we’ve been working on with “High Noon Entertainment” for a couple of months to spread the name of the Brewster Inn and the town of Dexter right across America as the more business we get here, the more people will come to Dexter, spend their money with businesses in the town and start to make Dexter a “stopping off” point rather than a “passing through” point which in reality it probably is right now

HGTV is the most watched group of channels in America after the main stations like NBC and Fox etc and the show will be repeated at numerous times in the future

 The TV crews will be here for around 10 hours on the 16th and we will be in series 9 of “If Walls Could Talk” which will air late Spring 2008. As soon  as we know the date, we’ll let you know and put it on the homepage at www.brewsterinn.com

Also while i’m here keep an eye out on the Brewster website as in about 4-6 weeks the 2nd version of the site will go live and even though we love how the site currently looks, there was always going to be a bigger more informative version appearing that will include all new photography, more information on Governor Brewster, Dexter and the area in general. I’ve seen “work in progress” and its brilliant!!

Ok, so i wasn’t planning on blogging tonight but i was surfing the net looking for some Nascar race footage from Darlington SC for a friend and i found these. They both pretty much explain it all. Its noise, colour and wind (generated from the cars kinda wind)

Almost at the end of our trip and its time for the big event. The Nascar race weekend at Dover Delaware. Our friends Tammy and Casie, Judith and me headed down from Maine for the race weekend. We were looking forward very much to  it and whatever else would happen to us with regard to Richard Childress Racing whilst we were there.

 We arrived at the track on  Saturday morning. I had instructions to go to the Nascar credentials truck to get the pit passes for all of us but they never had them so they directed us halfway round the speedway to a gate where we would have to give our names so that we could go in past the grandstands, cross the bridge over the track and get into the infield. This we did and we managed to talk our way past 2 security gates to get right down by pit lane. We were looking for a red single story building that was where we would have to show ID and they would get the PR guy from the 07 team to come out with our passes. 30mins later and whooohoooo we have the passes!!

So much happened to us over the next 2 days as we utilised our “hot” pit passes to the full. In Nascar terms “Hot” means “access all areas” and thats just what we did. It would take a long time to write half of it down here, so with words and pictures i’ll give you a feel for it for now.

Saturday was spent in the pits all morning until the Busch series race in the afternoon. We took plenty of photos of cars and people coming and  going all round us whilst practise and qualifying for the races was in progress

Kevin Harvick

Jimmy Johnson

 Ryan Newman

Mark Martin 

Kurt Busch

Tony Stewart

Dale Earnhardt Jnr

Judith met this guy…

Yeah, its Richard Petty and during our time at the track Judith wandered off. 5 minutes later she reappears and said “I got an autograph” to which i replied “Great! who of?”
“I don’t know” she said. “There was this other guy having his pit pass signed so i thought i’d get mine done too”
“Ok” i replied “where is he?” And Judith pointed to the man in the hat. None other than Richard Petty! LOL

A bit later on  we’re still watching what was happening in pit lane and there was a bit of a crowd gathering. On closer investigation we see Jeff Gordon surrounded by “his people” and about 10 yards away we see a tall guy surrounded by “people” too. Both groups get closer and then the 2 men go to each other,  shake hands and start walking slowly along pit lane talking like they’ve known each other all their lives. Turns out the other guy was the quarterback for the Philidelphia Eagles NFL team and this was a staged photocall.

Heres some more photos of the pit lane area this time from Sunday

The gas tanks they use are so much bigger than they seem on tv

And then during the pre race stuff, it was time for Nascar to interview me by Kevin Harvicks car for part of the “Nascar Nation” tv programme.The lady that interviewed me was tall at about 6′ and she had a cold that day too. This was all in preperation for the interview a few minutes later that was going to be done for tv with me and RCR owner Richard Childress. Heres some pictures from the interview session

Tammy, Judith, Jeff Burton (31 car) and me

Judith and me with Richard Childress. He was a really nice down to earth man as well.

Tammy, Richard and me

After the pit stops during a race the team members that work on filling the car with fuel each time then use a trolley to take 2 of the empty gas tanks down to a main filling area operated by Sunoco who supply the fuel for Nascar where they have to leave the empty tanks on the trolley and whilst they walk to the other end of the walkway, the Sunoco employees then fill the tanks before handing them back to the race team members who take them back to their own particular pit box

As the race started in 100+ degree heat we were up in victory lane watching what was happening. Victory lane might be where the winning car goes at the end of the race, but at the start its where all the unused race tyres are stored

Watching the 31 team during pit stops

It gets a bit crowded in pit lane during the race

And people can get injured

The race was won by Greg Biffle with the 16 “National Guard” car. The crewman above is one of his. Whilst i was up in victory lane during the race, the guy from the National Guard that was in charge of sponsorship for the 16 team came up  to stand by me and tripped as he reached the last couple of steps. We got talking and he asked about our trip. At the end of the chat he gave me his card and told me to get in touch when we got home which we did. About 5 weeks after we got home we had a package arrive from the National Guard with a t-shirt and signed diecast of the race winning car!

That was pretty much the end of the trip and at this time we realised we enjoyed being in America and it was while we were driving back to Dulles airport in Washington that we made the decison to try and make it to America to live and work and so the next stage of the story starts…

After leaving Perth we had a days drive to go around the south side of Montreal to Sherbrooke and then crossed the border back in to Maine at what seemed like a very quiet point. We hadn’t seen a car in ages as we approached the border crossing and as we drove right up to it a US border control guy (that looked around 70 years old) appeared and gestured for us to stop.

Here was complete car check number 2. Just like when we went into Canada this guy wanted everything out of the car as well, keeping us out of his view as he checked everything we had in the car. He couldn’t quite figure out why we had just spent 3 days in Canada no matter how many times we explained to him that we just thought the drive would be more pleasant going via Toronto than Cleveland but we don’t think he believed us. After an hour of checking us all out he decided that we were ok to travel on, gave us a guidebook on Maine and let us carry on our way to Belgrade Lakes.

Our destination here was Yeaton Farm Inn. Its a very historic property built in 1826 and run by a lady thats become a good friend of ours over time called Connie Parker. Shes a former art director thats worked in New York and Hollywood and after so many years of that life decided one day that she wanted to escape out to the country. Connies  helped us a lot to not only make it to Maine but also to offer advice and help now that we’re here too. If you want peace and quiet with no TV then this is another good place to be.

From here we headed to Bar Harbor and Arcadia National Park for a couple of days. This area is very pretty. Interesting places and things to see and do and the National Park is wonderful for sight seeing and walking. Then we took a  scenic drive down to Portland following  Route 1 most of the way. We stayed there over night before carrying on our journey to the town of Waterboro to stay with friends of ours for a week before we all set off to Dover Delaware for a weekend of Nascar racing prior to starting our journey back home to England

 We were staying with our friend Tammy, her husband Nelson and their teenage daughters Casie and Alicia. In this photo are the 3 ladies having lunch with us at Sarges Nascar themed bar and grill in Saco ME

Heres just a few photos that we took from around the Portland area.

 ”Lenny” the chocolate moose. 1700lb of the finest chocolate too!

Whilst we stayed with Tammy, we spent the weekend with them at their lakeside camp. We had a great time and i even got taught by Casie and Alicia how to fish!
Heres the proof. I know its just a “tiddler” but its a fish!

We had a bit of a “moment” with a box of Oreo cookies. Theres me, Judith, Tammy, Casie and Alicia sat around the dinner table. Tammy and her girls are dunking the Oreos into a glass of milk and suggest that i should do the same. I decline their most generous offer to dunk in their milk as i’m a firm believer that cookies (or biscuits as we say) should be eaten dry and not soaking in cold milk! Then they suggested to me a 2nd time i really should give it a try to which i again politely declined the offer.
Tammy however wasn’t taking “no” for an answer and she grabbed my hand which was holding a dry Oreo, pulled me towards the glass of milk and thrust my hand with Oreo still attached into the milk as she shouted “Just dunk the damn cookie!!!”

She drowned my hand and then demanded that i eat the now soaking wet milky cookie.
I had a little nibble and it tasted awful! And to roars of laughter i chucked the half eaten soaking wet cookie back on the plate on the table.

Next stop Nascar at Dover

On leaving Chicago we were heading for a 3 day trip through Canada to get to our last major stop off point of Maine. We decided that heading to Maine via Toronto was a nicer and more scenic option that going via Cleeveland Ohio. (No ones told us we made a mistake yet) First thing though is when you’ve set your watch to Central Time and your heading to a lunch date at a certain time back in Eastern Time, be sure to remember the time difference! Luckily we got hold of the people we were meeting in plenty of time  but that was our first experience of the different time zones in the US.

 The next morning we arrived in  Port Huron where the border crossing was situated. It was wet and dull when we arrived at the control point at the other end of the bridge that spans the water seperating USA from Canada.

We were the only car at the crossing and were parked outside a kiosk with a tinted glass screen. There was  someone behind it as we could see them moving although they seemed in no hurry to want to open the window. After about 5mins a young guy looking very official opened the window and wanted to know why we were  crossing into Canada. We told him and he proceeded to ask for our passports. He questioned us on how long we’d been in the US and why we’d traveled as far as we had whilst we’d been there. He never smiled and his questioning was blunt and to the point. All of a sudden with me in mid sentance replying to a particular question that he asked, he just shut the window. Then a couple of minutes later he opened it again and told us to park the car in a bay a little further down the road as we had apparantly been randomly selected for a car search. Well theres a surprise we were the only car there. We drove to the parking bay as asked where we then had 2 more officials with guns come to the car, asked us to get out and stand about 20 yards from the car. The one official came over to us and said that our car was going to be searched and did we have anything that we wanted to tell them. We told them which bag had all our laundry in that needed washing and we told them where we were headed to and then they started searching…and searching and searching right through the car. Everything came out including the laundry where they opened the bag and tipped it up dumping it all on the floor before they used a stick to poke through it. They went through all our cases and bags, through all our printed pages of itinery notes and then  proceeded to check all around the car with our stuff lying there. Each time we tried to explain anything to them about a certain item they were looking at or when we wanted to ask them a question they would just tell us to stand back and if they wanted to know anything then they would ask. The whole inspection lasted around 35mins and at the end they came across to us saying that we would be allowed into Canada and that we would have to put everything back into the car ourselves before they walked off. What a great welcome! We reloaded our car including the laundry bag and carried on with our journey toward Toronto having to get used to watching the kph section on the speedo rather than mph.

We were heading to Toronto during a public holiday and luckily for us all the people had left the city for the weekend and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We had a great time going for a guided tour around the Toronto Skydome which amongst other things is the home stadium for baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays and where the guide kept walking backwards whilst talking so as to keep an eye on everyone making sure they were all keeping together. Its a great tour too, goes on for an hour or so and you get to see all the sections of importance like the hospitality boxes, changing rooms and media section etc. There is a hotel built into part of  the Skydome with rooms that overlook the pitch and if you want these rooms whilst theres a game on you have to pay extra or for some events such as concerts there is a large screen put up in front of the rooms so you can’t actually see whats going on. The Skydome is now known as the Rogers Centre after a major communications provider in Canada.

After the Skydome we went across the road to the CN Tower. Heres a picture of the skyline that includes both buildings

The CN Tower is the tallest building in Canada at a height of 1,815ft. Heres the view looking down from the glass floor which is at a height of 1,122 ft and also looking from ground level back up towards the glass floor from the outside

To finish the day we took a boat trip out into Toronto Inner Harbour which included a trip round the Toronto Islands that allowed more great views of the Toronto skyline such as the picture below

The next day before our journey on towards Maine we went for a visit to the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame. Its a great museum with plenty of racing cars as exhibits and very informative. Certainly worth a visit if your ever up near Toronto

After a great couple of hours spent at the museum we started on towards a town called Perth which was going to be our overnight stop for the night. We picked Perth because it was not too far from Montreal. The next day though we would need an early start as we’d be driving all the way from Perth onto Belgrade in Maine. This part of the journey was also unique for one other thing. It was the first time that whilst driving on the “other side of the road” that i’d actually crossed a junction onto the wrong side. Luckily for us it was a section of road that was leading to a new retail development  and there were hardly any cars around so i was able to reverse back the 10yards or so back into the correct lane very easily. One of the things we always need to do when driving here is when we get to a junction in the road is to always check to see where our entry point is at the junction for the section of road that we’re headed towards. You always have to be aware of where you are and what your doing at all times on the road.

Perth was a very pleasant town, small with a very “country” style. Unknown to us till we saw the sculpture it was also home to a very famous “showjumping” horse called “Big Ben” that had been one of the most successful ever in world showjumping competitions and ridden for years by Perth resident Ian Millar. Heres what Wikipedia says about Big Ben

And then it was time to cross back into the USA at one of those little dirt track road crossing points in the forests. You know the ones where you don’t see another car for ages and then you get to the crossing point only to find a Homeland Security man there with a gun thats old enough to be your grandfather…

To be continued