The Great Barre Quarry Adventure Part I (And Redemptive Gas Station Indian Food)
Solid.
Jubilation! Jubilation!
It’s the time to live!
Come be one, two, three
With me, you and I, and us!
Norma Tanega
Oh man. Quarries rule. I went deep on some Barre, VT action this week. Come free with me……
Millstone Mountain Bike Trails
Apparently, Vermont has the best mountain biking in the US or something? I’ve lived here for 11 years and here comes my second summer mostly without a job to do so I figured THIS IS MY TIME. I found a used bike with clip-in pedals and almost died a bunch but have since put on regular normal person pedals and have not died. Turns out, when not almost dying, mountain biking in Vermont is quite enjoyable! Enter: Millstone Trail system in Barre. My friend Brett has a fancy app and it retraced our ride with animation and photographs and everything. It says we hit 23mph at one point but I’m sure it was downhill because that sounds super fast.
Weird/Wonderful: 6/8
The Quarry Project
I’ve been hearing wisps of this performance for a bit and now that we’re smack in a Quarry Edition™ it seems like an appropriate time to dig in.
According to creator/prime mover Hannah Dennison:
The Quarry Project is a site-specific dance/theatre piece being created for the Wells Lamson quarry, one of the oldest, deepest granite quarries in the country, now flooded and in “reserve.”
There’s dancers on the floating rafts, projections, set design, and the whole dealio seems like the very definition of WW. The performance for this year was pushed to next year because Covid but the 20 minute mini-doc does some great storytelling around the current status. Can’t wait.
Weird/Wonderful:10/10
Rock Of Ages
Rock of Ages is a giant granite company that went to media camp and now gives tours and has a souvenir shop and t-shirts and expensive promo videos. Granite demand must be cranking because the visitor center is very fancy and the welcome video in the bespoke movie room is for sure worth the price of admission (free, but the video is great!). After a quick debrief, Cynthia (below, a delight) led us in her giant blue F-350 to the most stunning view yet of the Barre quarry scene and talked into a little microphone and amp that hung on her belt. Amp and tiny microphone are not pictured, sadly.
Super intrigued, I bought a book from said visitor center for $6.99 and I read the book yesterday. It’s 70 pages long and now I know 70 pages worth of the history of granite in Barre. AMA I can now tell you the future…..
I totally recommend this two minute promo video that punches WAY above the weight class of a local museum. Someone’s been watching Koyaanisqatsi.
Weird/Wonderful:7/7
Rickie’s Indian Restaurant (aka Redemptive Gas Station Indian Experience)
Last week I had a tough experience with an unnamed gas station Indian restaurant but I am overjoyed to report that redemption is here! Once again, this week’s adventure was suggested by a reader (thank you Kristen!):
Google this place and the map listing is “Great Energy Store”? Wha? Did we just become best friends?!
Long story short, this joint is totally delicious. I’m loathe to throw up an iPhoto shot of butter chicken in a plastic tray so I put on my food stylist hat (it’s a new hat tbh) and tried to make this a little more dramatic. It’s like these dudes are eating the butter chicken, right?
Weird/Wonderful:8/8
I somehow totally spaced that my friend Claire’s new and expanded Butterfly Bakery, local maker of incredible hot sauces, cookies, granola, etc., is now right down the road from Rickie’s. She has a brand new retail space and you can go buy all your hot pickle Gustard there because of course my band Guster has a mustard and of course it’s called Gustard. Some things just fall from the sky.
Oooh this too but totally unrelated to granite! A few weeks ago I saw some cool pants on the internet and then I found the company that made the pants on Twitter and liked them or followed them or whatever. Then the fun part happened: I think they were fans of my band because they sent me a message and said “do you want pants” and I said “of course I do I love your pants.” They didn’t ask me to say anything else about it but I thought it was cool of them to send pants so I wanted to say thanks but most importantly show you the pants. Here are the pants:
The company is called JCRT and they seem like awesome fellas.
I have like a million more things to talk about but I’m gonna stop now because this may be a good length for a newsletter? I dunno this is only my fourth one, I’m still figuring it all out.
On that tip: THANK YOU FOR READING. This is super duper fun for me because I love adventuring and also love sharing my adventures. But most importantly I love hearing about WW things so please drop more ideas in the comments if you want, I’m learning a lot!
Love you stay weird bye
RM
IMPORTANT PS:
This week I’m introducing Weird/Wonderful scores for a bunch of stuff because that’s how I’ve been thinking about it for years. Both Weird and Wonderful are on a scale of 0-10 and totally up for discussion….. so a 10/10 is pretty much what we’re after on this thing and a 0/0 is the Denny’s that served me raw chicken fingers in 8th grade. Hate you Denny’s.
I so love getting these emails, such a great read. I'd hate Denny's for that too, raw chicken...yum.
10/10 for the Pee-wee reference ;)